Thanks for your opinion about the central Anglosphere, Martin. Based on my experience, Queen fans seem to be pretty sure Madonna fans are stupid and poorly educated morons who have a bad taste because they can't tell which music is more virtuous and better in general, while thinking it's obvious as 2+2*4 than Queen music is better than Madonna music, and only gays and feminists support Madonna because of non-musical causes: her sex, image, political message.

Considering Queen and their third world success, e.g. in Russia, the"righteousness" and the legitimacy of Freddie was based on his popularisation of classical music within the non-classical world. This aura has protected him from homophobia during the 70s-90s. The success of The Beatles as "almost Schubert spiritual ancestors" was promoted heavily in the Soviet Union, where classical music basically was an official religious cult - with 3000+ children music schools in Russia only, preparing 6-14 y. o. children for (life in Putin's Mordor) or hundreds of Music Colleges, preparing students for life as a music school teachers or dozen of Conservatories...
So, there's something that could protect Madonna from sexism, too.

1). American musicologist Susan McClary was trying to link Madge to Monteverdi in the 1980s (see "Feminine Endings").

2). In 2003, the author of "Revelations of Guardian Angels: Reincarnation" (bestseller - 100k+ copies) was officially excommunicated from the Russian Orthodox Church by claiming Madonna is re-incarnated Beethoven soul, among others, and so on.

3). In 2005, COADF had a luck to be analyzed by Moscow Conservatory students from theoretical point of view, and was labeled "dance symphony". Recently she's revealed her House of Rurik DNA which makes her related to the one and only self-taught Modest Mussorgsky, and his "Boris Godunov" with Pretender as a protagonist ("if it happened once, you know it happens twice"), famous fountain scene (almost "When you call my name..."). This narrative makes her songs a lot more interesting and mysterious.

Thus, Madonna channels in Barocco, German classicism-romanticism and Russian romanticism, all these musical traditions in her "stupid female pop songs", consciously or unconsciously. And classical music needs promotion these days because the majority of people have doubts about its relevance. Madonna can prove classical music's ability to solve almost every problem, thanks to music theory apparat.

IMHO, you can call it a conspiracy theory, in pop music, it's classical music fans in upper classes who were deciding what's allowed to be popular among the masses, most of the time. Green Day's "American Idiot" was OK, while Madge's "American Life" was NO which turned into universal NO for Madonna in US (it's a lifetime ban and virtual ex-communication). But in the long term, Madonna is not done. There are more than a hundred Modest Mussorgky "shows" each season, all over the world. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modest_Mussorgsky#Statistics

Madonna's legacy looks pretty safe in a 100+ year period. ))

All Madonna albums from the 80s and 90s sold more than any Queen's studio albums released during their time. To say you're a fan of classic music to overvalue Queen repertoire is pathetic.

Hello???

is it me you're looking for?

Lmao no

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!

Madame X has 150Million Stream on Spotify! Sold 500,000 copies WW

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.