Forum
First of all congratulations to all that have contributed to this effort. I'm a chart freak and I could spend days reading your findings.
I haven't understood how you count the video streams. For example, when it comes to youtube do you take into consideration only the video that is provided officially by the artist or all the videos of the song (even if it's a remix or a live recording or even a cover)?? For example the official video of Madonna's Who's that girl has today (3 May 2020) 2 million views, while a different one uploaded not by Madonna has 11 million.
If you take into consideration only the officially uploaded videos, do you take into consideration one of them or all (for example, the official video, the official audio and two live recordings) or the one that has the most views?
Hi Dimitris!
Thanks for your nice words 🙂
Concerning youtube videos we take into consideration:
- official video clips
- lyric videos
- remix videos
- individual live videos
- complete concerts if the song is part of it
All the videos that match with these categories are selected, and their views are added together.
In the case of Madonna's Who's That Girl, the total would be: 11 + 3 + 2.8 + 2 + 1.2 + 1.2 + 1.1 = 22.3m views!
Thanks. I really appreciate your answering me. When you revisit Madonna, I expect huge overturn between Like A Virgin and True Blue.
If you don’t care about rankings/numbers/charts, then why are you in chartmasters.com? Oh, piss off!! Lol Xoxox
Hi MJD, in your Erotica album sales breakdown you have the album at 960K sales in Asia, 500K of which come from Japan. Would you mind posting a breakdown or at least some sort of estimate for the rest of that sum?
Hi Lucy!
Estimates for it were 150k in Taiwan, her largest market in Asia after Japan, as well as over 30k in Singapore. The rest is calculated thanks to the share of these markets as per her own distribution for albums that are better tracked in this area (for most 2000-2005 albums we have most figures).
Love your research and devotion on charts and especially on Madonna. She is such an untouchable legend.
However, don’t you thing a Madonna update of your charts is long overdue? Especially since there has been a kind of explosion in her videography in comparison to the data you provide above (e.g. La Isla Bonita has 300+ million of additional views to your number and Material Girl 100 million more streams to your data.)
Moreover, Madonna’s official album sales haven’t been updated since 2008 or even since late 90s in some cases! Warner and her management are to blame of course, but if all aforementioned data is too be added, Madonna could possibly rank within the Top 3 All Time Artists, wouldn’t she?
Hi Giannis!
All sales figures mentioned inside the article were estimated as of the date of the article ; there aren't figures not updated since 2008 or so.
Streams are already updated daily inside the top artists list, that's why she appears with 243.2m rather than 241.1m as shown in this article, because she gained 2 million EAS from them since the writing of the article. Her pure sales since 2017 would bring her to 245m at best, still over 20 million below Queen. In fact the next change inside the all-time top artists ever is more likely the Stones moving ahead of her! Basically, her catalog sales are good for an 80s/90s artist, but they do not compete with numbers from the artists she competes with in this ranking.
Hi MJD. Is there any other artists that you think might get ahead of her in the 10-20 years? Also, will Eminem pass ahead of her and become the 2nd best selling solo artist ever.
Obviously no one knows what will happen in the future, so it's impossible to say. Many things could happen in the next 10-20 years, deaths, films, increased interest, decreased interest etc that could drastically change how current sales and streams of artists are.
If things were to stay relatively the same, you could easily see The Stones and Floyd pass her and possibly Eminem but he'd need to out sell/stream her each year, by around 3m to pass her in 20 years and by around 6m to pass her in 10.
Oh and if Eminem passed Madonna, he would become the 3rd best selling solo artist ever, not the 2nd.
Hi Jazz!
As Martin says, nobody knows the future. If everything remains the same, it's clear that the Stones will / already move(d) ahead of her. Pink Floyd will top her at some point as well.
Eminem has a shot to reach the all-time top 5 behind the Beatles, MJ, Elvis and Queen. He has far and away the largest organic pace of increase from the all-time top 40, and he is already #14, soon to be #13. There are still a lot of sales to catch, it will take time.
Also, Madonna's catalog has not been a strong ongoing catalog for very long. Everytime you think someone will move ahead of her thanks to catalog appeal, she does one more sales spike to gain some millions and secure her lead a few more years. And then again, and again. So while she seems poised to drop to 6, then 7, then lower, we can never leave her out of a race.
Interesting analysis. I guess we cant always count her out since she does have a habit of rebounding strongly everytime people thought her career is over.
Hi MJD. Do you have an estimate for Madame X's sales? According to Mediattrafic the album did 500k units but this figure seems grossly inflated.
Actually, 4 Falling into you, Let's Talk About Love, All the Way...a decade of song, and The Color Of My Love.
Do you guys have a link to the claim of her Italian sales of "the first album" (1983)?
Hello MJD, I have been following your page for a couple of years now and I have always wondered what were your exact estimations of Madonna's album sales in Asia, outside of Japan, like how much did each of her albums sell in Taiwan, Philippines, Thailand, Malaysia, India, Hong Kong etc.
"Into The Groove" was released in Canada in 2 formats: Cass-single and 12". Sold 100k copies there as RPM clearly states on their 1986-07-26 issue (at the time had 40k from "Into The Groove" cassette singles made it the best selling cassette single in Canada so far). You can read the original issue PDF scaning that also have other interesting info about other artists here: https://web.archive.org/web/20210124041521/https://worldradiohistory.com/CANADA/RPM/80s/1986/RPM-1986-07-26.pdf
I'm sure it must be hard to find info about sales on most countries previous to the 00's decade as most was only printed on weekly magazines or internal industry reports and still aren't available to the public. Hope it helps.
Hi
In brazil
Like a virgin and like a prayer sell more than 800k and true blue sell more than 900k at 1993.
Souce newspaper Jornal do Brasil.
But magazine veja brings other nunber, i send to messenger too.
I send this photo in your messenger.
Mdna no sell more than hard candy in brasil.
Certificade coul be double because 2cd deluxe
Same rebel heart
Edition 1cd 31k
Edition 2cd 10k (x2: 20k)
Madame x
Universal refused release in cd, after complaint. Was release one mounth latrer, one edition 2cd with 3k copies. The price was 3x higher than the any other cd
