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Exactly one year ago I posted the fifth CSPC article. The artist studied was the cult rock band Nirvana. Some 25 years after the hype around Nevermind, their popularity is still soaring. At current pace, this album is looking to become the very best selling catalog record on Earth. How come?
Taking into account that a mere two and a half years passed from the release of Nevermind to the death of lead singer Kurt Cobain, the impact of this Seattle band in the history of the music industry is unparalleled.
In total, Nirvana released only three albums, including one before their cross over. With such a tiny discography, and the fact that even Nevermind is not higher than the all-time Top 40 best selling albums, many millions behind other rock albums such as Led Zeppelin IV, AC/DC Back In Black, Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon and even Guns N’ Roses own Appetite For Destruction, among various others, one may cast Nirvana's real popularity under a shadow of doubt. The early passing of Kurt Cobain led Geffen Records label to extensively milk the group's existing material. Inclusively issuing two major live sets and later several compilations. All those records took catalog sales away from the band's original albums which turn out to be lower sellers than their popularity would justify. Thus, it is needed to merge and weight together all records sold on the back of the Nevermind LP.
Original Albums Sales
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are also factored in.
Bleach (1989)
- America
- US - 2,425,000
- Canada - 250,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - N/A
- Mexico - N/A
- Asia - 280,000
- Japan - 140,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 110,000
- New Zealand - 20,000
- Europe - 1,800,000
- UK - 450,000
- France - 280,000
- Germany - 300,000
- Italy - 215,000
- Spain - 80,000
- Sweden - 40,000
- Netherlands - 50,000
- Switzerland - 20,000
- Austria - 25,000
- Finland - 10,000
- World - 5,200,000
Nevermind (1991)
- America
- US - 12,600,000
- Canada - 1,360,000
- Argentina - 245,000
- Brazil - 480,000
- Mexico - 310,000
- Asia - 1,725,000
- Japan - 900,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 660,000
- New Zealand - 120,000
- Europe - 9,720,000
- UK - 2,430,000
- France - 1,710,000
- Germany - 1,550,000
- Italy - 685,000
- Spain - 505,000
- Sweden - 270,000
- Netherlands - 505,000
- Switzerland - 165,000
- Austria - 165,000
- Finland - 60,000
- World - 27,750,000
In Utero (1993)
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- America
- US - 6,425,000
- Canada - 750,000
- Argentina - 90,000
- Brazil - 180,000
- Mexico - 125,000
- Asia - 580,000
- Japan - 300,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 250,000
- New Zealand - 50,000
- Europe - 3,410,000
- UK - 825,000
- France - 635,000
- Germany - 410,000
- Italy - 375,000
- Spain - 150,000
- Sweden - 140,000
- Netherlands - 120,000
- Switzerland - 55,000
- Austria - 45,000
- Finland - 25,000
- World - 12,050,000
Original Album Sales - Comments
1989 Bleach - 5,200,000
1991 Nevermind - 27,750,000
1993 In Utero - 12,050,000
Now that’s what I call a short discography. Nevermind is clearly a massive selling album with a tally that keeps increasing at a fast pace year after year. In Utero is often disregarded, but 12 million copies sold is huge no matter what some might say. Bleach achieved an impressive total of 5,2 million copies sold strictly as a catalog album, despite none of its songs being known at first.
A total of 45 million units sold with just three albums is big, but perhaps not as huge as some would expect for a band as popular as Nirvana. As previously mentioned though, their sales aren't focused on just their studio albums. We will see during the next pages how successful they have been with sales of compilations, live albums and downloads.
Physical Singles Sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Bleach (1989) - 30,000 equivalent albums
About A Girl - 100,000
Nevermind (1991) - 1,077,000 equivalent albums
Smells Like Teen Spirit – 2,590,000
Come As You Are – 630,000
Lithium – 250,000
In Bloom – 120,000
In Utero (1993) - 75,000 equivalent albums
Heart-Shaped Box - 140,000
All Apologies - 110,000
Orphan - 75,000 equivalent albums
Sliver - 50,000
You Know You're Right - 200,000
Not selling anything of note in 1989, Nirvana sold a few singles starting with the release of Smells Like Teen Spirit. That song was huge, selling some 2,59 million copies, although obviously their main force was in the albums category. Many of their singles benefited a little from the fans collecting the band's products.
Digital Singles Sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between albums and digital singles.
Bleach (1989) - 285,000 equivalent albums
About A Girl – 900,000
Remaining tracks – 1,000,000
Nevermind (1991) - 2,070,000 equivalent albums
Smells Like Teen Spirit – 5,800,000
Come As You Are – 2,500,000
Lithium – 1,500,000
In Bloom – 800,000
Remaining tracks – 3,200,000
In Utero (1993) - 690,000 equivalent albums
Heart-Shaped Box– 1,600,000
All Apologies – 600,000
Rape Me – 700,000
Remaining tracks – 1,700,000
Orphan - 443,000 equivalent albums
Sliver – 200,000
The Man Who Sold The World – 1,000,000
Lake Of Fire – 400,000
Where Did You Sleep Last Night – 500,000
Jesus Doesn’t Want Me for a Sunbeam – 150,000
Plateau – 150,000
Oh Me – 150,000
You Know You’re Right – 200,000
Remaining tracks – 200,000
With an estimated 23 million singles downloaded, Nirvana performs very well in the digital world considering how few singles they released. Some 13 million of those have been achieved by songs from Nevermind. This is a tremendous result.
Streaming Sales
Streaming is made up of two families - audio and video. Our CSPC methodology now includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. As detailed in the Fixing Log article, Spotify represents 132 million of the 212 million users of streaming platforms, while YouTube is pretty much the only video platform generating some revenue for the industry. Below is the equivalence set on the aforementioned article:
Audio Stream - 1500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream - 11,750 views equal 1 album unit
Thus... Equivalent Albums Sales = 212/132 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750
Streaming Part 1
As incredible as it may seem, even tracks like About A Girl or In Bloom are higher than anything Madonna released prior streaming years. This fact highlights how strong Nirvana's discography is on the Spotify platform. The song Smells Like Teen Spirit is the third biggest pre-2000 song overall at 278 million, a terrific achievement. Come As You Are is up to 180 million, while Lithium cracks 100 million too. Every track from the original Nevermind album is well over 10 million Spotify streams.
The band's views on YouTube are just as extraordinary. They are also led by Smells Like Teen Spirit at a massive 689 million.
In terms of equivalent album sales, Bleach's streams result in a solid 166,000 equivalent album units sold, while Nevermind has a monster result in more than 1 million units!
Streaming Part 2
Just like in terms of album sales, In Utero appears to be not too shabby at all in the streaming world. Heart-Shaped Box is almost on 100 million and four more tracks top the 20 million milestone. The most impressive fact is maybe that every song of the original track listing is up to 6 million or more. Lower than Nevermind for sure, this figure is much higher than a lot of all-time best sellers. All in all, its songs add for almost 360,000 equivalent album sales.
One more surprisingly high result is how three tracks originally issued on MTV Unplugged In New-York are over 30 million Spotify streams as well. Enjoying their live version videos, songs from the Orphan category total 450 million YouTube views. It is worth 254,000 equivalent album sales for songs belonging to the Orphan folder.
Full Length related record Sales
It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era - studio album, physical singles, downloads, streams - to get the full picture of an album's popularity. For older releases though, they also generate sales of various live, music videos and compilation albums.
All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the value originating from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued, this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains this method.
Remaining Long Format - Part 1 - Compilations & Boxes
How to understand this table? If you check for example the Nirvana compilation line, those figures mean it sold 7,700,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 1,291,000 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.
The second part on the right of the table shows how many equivalent streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents on the overall package. Thus, streaming figures tell us songs from Nevermind are responsible for 59% of the Greatest Hits track list attractiveness. This means it generated 4,548,000 of its 7,700,000 album sales and so forth for the other records.
A few comments now, Nevermind is obviously the main selling machine of the group's catalog. It represents more than 50% of the strength of all compilations and boxes. Line after line, the album amasses huge sales. Truly huge.
Remaining Long Format - Part 2 - Lives & Videos
Nevermind continues to be the major contributor of all records. MTV Unplugged In New-York is one of the few Video / Live / Compilation from Nirvana in which less than half of its sales are generated by the 1991 blockbuster. This is the consequence of both the absence of Smells Like Teen Spirit and the presence of various new and popular songs, giving a solid part of this record to the Orphan Album.
In total, four records Nevermind it from 2 to 7 million sales each. We have already studied various mega albums from the 90s so far, the biggest of all being Whitney Houston's Bodyguard, which banked in 53 million CSPC sales. Nevermind is responsible for more than 20 million of sales from albums listed on those two previous tables, an unreal total which coupled with the original album sales, will definitely make it onto the biggest albums of all-time list.
Full Length related records Sales - Summary
Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album's success - the amount of compilation sales of all kinds it generated. Due to the dependency of sales of the original studio albums on these releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.
Nirvana sold an impressive 37,65 million units of their various long formats outside of their studio albums. While the power of Nevermind was obvious, Bleach at 3,8 million, In Utero at 5,8 million and the bulk of Orphan songs at 7,1 million are incredibly strong too.
BONUS: Compilation Albums Sales
MTV Unplugged in New York (1994)
- America
- US - 6,725,000
- Canada - 1,060,000
- Argentina - 180,000
- Brazil - 400,000
- Mexico - 200,000
- Asia - 810,000
- Japan - 350,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 605,000
- New Zealand - 100,000
- Europe - 5,670,000
- UK - 910,000
- France - 1,130,000
- Germany - 815,000
- Italy - 545,000
- Spain - 400,000
- Sweden - 125,000
- Netherlands - 245,000
- Switzerland - 125,000
- Austria - 140,000
- Finland - 35,000
- World - 16,050,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in also.
From the Muddy Banks of the Wishkah (1996)
- America
- US - 1,600,000
- Canada - 275,000
- Argentina - 35,000
- Brazil - N/A
- Mexico - N/A
- Asia - 370,000
- Japan - 175,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 175,000
- New Zealand - 25,000
- Europe - 1,380,000
- UK - 260,000
- France - 380,000
- Germany - 100,000
- Italy - 155,000
- Spain - 80,000
- Sweden - 30,000
- Netherlands - 40,000
- Switzerland - 20,000
- Austria - 35,000
- Finland - 15,000
- World - 4,100,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in also.
Nirvana (2002)
- America
- US - 2,550,000
- Canada - 360,000
- Argentina - 75,000
- Brazil - 170,000
- Mexico - 150,000
- Asia - 760,000
- Japan - 400,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 385,000
- New Zealand - 55,000
- Europe - 3,020,000
- UK - 965,000
- France - 470,000
- Germany - 310,000
- Italy - 280,000
- Spain - 160,000
- Sweden - 65,000
- Netherlands - 80,000
- Switzerland - 90,000
- Austria - 65,000
- Finland - 25,000
- World - 7,700,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in also.
With The Lights Out (2004)
- America
- US - 600,000
- Canada - 80,000
- Argentina - N/A
- Brazil - N/A
- Mexico - N/A
- Asia - 140,000
- Japan - 80,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 25,000
- New Zealand - 5,000
- Europe - 290,000
- UK - 60,000
- France - 60,000
- Germany - 40,000
- Italy - 35,000
- Spain - 10,000
- Sweden - N/A
- Netherlands - 5,000
- Switzerland - 10,000
- Austria - 5,000
- Finland - N/A
- World - 1,200,000
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in also.
BONUS: Total Album (all types) Sales per Country
- America
- US - 35,525,000
- Canada - 4,505,000
- Argentina - 710,000
- Brazil - 1,565,000
- Mexico - 960,000
- Asia - 5,060,000
- Japan - 2,570,000
- Oceania
- Australia - 2,280,000
- New Zealand - 390,000
- Europe - 27,250,000
- UK - 6,490,000
- France - 5,040,000
- Germany - 3,750,000
- Italy - 2,490,000
- Spain - 1,460,000
- Sweden - 770,000
- Netherlands - 1,015,000
- Switzerland - 515,000
- Austria - 520,000
- Finland - 185,000
- World - 79,800,000
Please note that some of the countries totals may be slightly incomplete when the figure is N/A for minor releases. Countries with too much missing information to be precise enough are listed as N/A.
Nirvana Career CSPC Results
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each Nirvana album achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]
This is it! Nevermind made it, crossing the mind blowing 50 million sales equivalent barrier. If nobody doubted this album was a very successful album, it is actually more than this, a true all-time blockbuster. It is only 300,000 sales away from the Bodyguard. A much bigger catalog seller on all fronts, the album will undoubtedly be #1 soon. The album recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. In fact, we will soon be able to say it is quite simply the most successful album that came out since its release.
In Utero will be up to the 20 million mark within a couple of years, while Bleach is pushing strong to get into the 10 million area. The Orphan Album is also a relevant segment of the band, once again mostly thanks to the MTV Unplugged In New-York album's unreleased songs.
As for the band's overall total, the cumulative tally of Nirvana is up to 89,2 million equivalent album sales, an unreal total for an act that issued the tiny number of three original albums.
The following pages list their most successful songs as well as their records and achievements.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Chartmasters.org.
BIGGEST TRACKS - Nirvana
The list of most successful songs is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each of them. It includes the song's own physical singles sales with a 0,3 weighting, its download and streaming sales, and with appropriate weighting too, plus its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
1 1991 - Smells Like Teen Spirit [Nevermind] - 17,330,000
2 1991 - Come As You Are [Nevermind] - 13,880,000
3 1993 - Heart-Shaped Box [In Utero] - 5,910,000
4 1991 - Lithium [Nevermind] - 5,830,000
5 1989 - About A Girl [Bleach] - 5,180,000
6 1991 - Polly [Nevermind] - 4,310,000
7 1993 - All Apologies [In Utero] - 3,440,000
8 1994 - The Man Who Sold The World [Orphan] - 2,710,000
9 1993 - Rape Me [In Utero] - 2,550,000
10 1991 - In Bloom [Nevermind] - 2,480,000
11 1993 - Dumb [In Utero] - 2,460,000
12 1991 - Something In The Way [Nevermind] - 2,010,000
13 1993 - Pennyroyal Tea [In Utero] - 1,680,000
14 1994 - Where Did You Sleep Last Night [Orphan] - 1,490,000
15 1991 - On A Plain [Nevermind] - 1,320,000
Records & Achievements
- At 89,2 million equivalent album sales, Nirvana is the highest selling act ever with 4 albums or less. In fact, they did it in spite of issuing only 3.
- In terms of equivalent album sales, Nevermind will soon become the highest selling album released since 1990.
- With over 16 million pure sales, MTV Unplugged In New York is among the Top 3 highest selling Live albums ever, only topped by Eric Clapton's Unplugged and virtually tied with Serious Hits Live by Phil Collins.
- Nevermind is the first pre-2000 album ever to crack 1 million equivalent album sales from streams. It tops Michael Jackson's Thriller which is the runner up.
- On its way to reaching 10 million European sales, Nevermind is the highest selling album ever by an American band in the old continent.
- Thanks to catalog sales that pushed its pure album sales to 27,75 million, Nevermind has now passed Backstreet Boys' Millennium and Santana's Supernatural to become the second best selling studio album of the 90s by a group. It is topped by Metallica's Black Album.
We have more for you
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... best-selling artists, albums, and singles
Well, I see that with the new update the Nirvana have increased by about 2 million albums sold equivalent, in fact last year were 87 million and today are 89 million.
Then I would like to know if U2 with the new updates the sales of their albums will be increased or decreased.
Must agree it's a little frustrating seeing Thriller in so many articles but still not having its CSPC! It must be over 80M, far and away the biggest ever!
So, I think I understand most of the methods used here but there are two things that I require explaining. Firstly, on the Physical Singles Page (page 8) the song "About a Girl" has been listed under the Bleach studio album - there was no physical single of the Bleach version of this song. The physical single of the song "About a Girl" came from the Unplugged album. Secondly, on the same page physical sales are listed for the song "You Know You're Right" and again there was never any physical retail single for the song "You Know You're Right", it was only available as a download commercially. So I am guessing it has something to do with the "equivalent albums" figures.
Hi Michael!
"About A Girl" being displayed under Bleach is due to the concept. We focus on albums that created the value, About A Girl was created at that time so independently on when it got promoted, its sales go under that album only!
As for You Know You’re Right I need to go throughout my files as I can't locate the source of that figure. Since my old template from 1 year ago had both physical and download sales on the same page, it looks like that song sales glitched from one section to an other when separating everything! I'll fix that, thanks for noticing 😉
Great job!
With only 3 regular studio albums and a bunch of post mortem releases it must have been some task to figure out which songs were orphans 🙂
Nevermind is a monster! I just finished my own update of Nirvana Spotify streaming figures and Nevermind is possibly the biggest pre-2000 Spotify album ever! It's just a question of days before it crosses 1 billion plays ( 982.9 million on my count). Bigger than Metallica, Appetite for Destruction and even Thriller.
The smallest figure for a Nevermind track (not counting bonus tracks) is Stay Away: 13,624,000! This is insane. All 3 albums mentioned above have tracks <10,000,000. In fact Metallica and GnR each has a track <7,000,000 plays - half of Stay Away!!!
Back in Black looks pale with 4 tracks <6,000,000.
One factor could be the short career of Nirvana. Listeners of MJ, Metallica and AC/DC has sooo many eras to dig into, unlike Nirvana (and GnR...)
I think it's depend on popularity. usually we would click our favorite things. Nirvana relese various albums with different songs.
I have a question for volume of With The Light Out.
I can remember some source with different soundscan Number of it. that number are 925,000(Wrong)-625,000 in Jan. 2007. 10 years have passed but still Soundscan may not collect whole box set format.
MJD, would you tell me the reason you know please. thanks.
Why was the fall between nevermind and in utero so big? More than 60 percent. And in utero he had a great sales boost with the death of Kurt Cobain ...
Poppie, it's because Kurt Cobain really wasn't happy with the success of Nevermind so he made a record that was intentionally more abrasive and un-mainstream.
There is no bright side of the moon really. Matter of fact it's all dark
