Every year, thousands of albums are released. Only a few of them, from the pop stars we all know, have a good shot of selling truly well. Albums off the popular radio stations radar like Classical or Jazz records aren't supposed to be part of them. In 2003, Norah Jones broke the rules to crush every competition in a completely unexpected fashion.

2002 album Come Away With Me and to a lower extent Feels Like Home marked an era. They were the trademark of the end of the teen mania happening just before with the likes of Britney Spears, N Sync or Backstreet Boys. She also happens to be the original flagship of the second generation of divas, less controversial than Madonna & Cie and closer to past singers songwriters a la Katie Melua, Amy Winehouse, Amy McDonald, Duffy and, of course, Adele.

More than a decade later, what's left of Norah Jones? A few weeks ago, she issued her already sixth album, Day Breaks. At the same time, the general public likely thinks she hasn't released a record since Feels Like Home way back in 2004. Is she just a silent superstar as she has been at her very beginning or is success fully gone for her? As someone that seems to be more of an album seller, how is the move into streaming era impacting the singer? Some answers are needed!

Original Albums Sales

Come Away With Me (2002)

• America

  • US - 11,700,000
  • Canada - 1,125,000
  • Argentina - 120,000
  • Brazil - 240,000
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia

  • Japan - 675,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 825,000
  • New Zealand - 200,000

• Europe - 7,970,000

  • UK - 2,590,000
  • France - 1,590,000
  • Germany - 900,000
  • Italy - 375,000
  • Spain - 200,000
  • Sweden - 220,000
  • Netherland - 440,000
  • Switzerland - 160,000
  • Austria - 120,000
  • Finland - 30,000

• World - 23,900,000

Feels Like Home (2004)

• America

  • US - 4,900,000
  • Canada - 450,000
  • Argentina - 75,000
  • Brazil - 110,000
  • Mexico - 65,000

• Asia

  • Japan - 380,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 260,000
  • New Zealand - 65,000

• Europe - 4,760,000

  • UK - 1,190,000
  • France - 850,000
  • Germany - 680,000
  • Italy - 270,000
  • Spain - 110,000
  • Sweden - 110,000
  • Netherland - 420,000
  • Switzerland - 140,000
  • Austria - 100,000
  • Finland - 17,000

• World - 11,500,000

Not Too Late (2007)

• America

  • US - 1,800,000
  • Canada - 200,000
  • Argentina - 60,000
  • Brazil - 60,000
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia

  • Japan - 240,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 75,000
  • New Zealand - 20,000

• Europe - 1,670,000

  • UK - 250,000
  • France - 350,000
  • Germany - 280,000
  • Italy - 105,000
  • Spain - 55,000
  • Sweden - 70,000
  • Netherland - 115,000
  • Switzerland - 70,000
  • Austria - 45,000
  • Finland - 10,000

• World - 4,400,000

The Fall (2009)

• America

  • US - 1,000,000
  • Canada - 100,000
  • Argentina - 40,000
  • Brazil - 15,000
  • Mexico - 10,000

• Asia

  • Japan - 130,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 35,000
  • New Zealand - 10,000

• Europe - 730,000

  • UK - 100,000
  • France - 155,000
  • Germany - 135,000
  • Italy - 55,000
  • Spain - 20,000
  • Sweden - 25,000
  • Netherland - 40,000
  • Switzerland - 25,000
  • Austria - 20,000
  • Finland - 5,000

• World - 2,200,000

Little Broken Hearts (2012)

• America

  • US - 500,000
  • Canada - 60,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 10,000
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia

  • Japan - 100,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 25,000
  • New Zealand - N/A

• Europe - 350,000

  • UK - 40,000
  • France - 90,000
  • Germany - 70,000
  • Italy - 25,000
  • Spain - 10,000
  • Sweden - 5,000
  • Netherland - 10,000
  • Switzerland - 15,000
  • Austria - 10,000
  • Finland - 5,000

• World - 1,150,000

Day Breaks (2016)

• America

  • US - 125,000
  • Canada - 10,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 5,000
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia

  • Japan - 60,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 15,000
  • New Zealand - N/A

• Europe - 160,000

  • UK - 15,000
  • France - 35,000
  • Germany - 40,000
  • Italy - 10,000
  • Spain - 5,000
  • Sweden - N/A
  • Netherland - 5,000
  • Switzerland - 10,000
  • Austria - 5,000
  • Finland - N/A

• World - 400,000

Original Album Sales - Comments

2002 Come Away With Me - 23,900,000
2004 Feels Like Home - 11,500,000
2007 Not Too Late - 4,400,000
2009 The Fall - 2,200,000
2012 Little Broken Hearts - 1,150,000
2016 Day Breaks - 400,000

There is two ways to look at those figures. The positive eye will mention how 43,55 million album sales from 6 albums only is extraordinary. The negative one will notice each album struggles to sell half of its predecessor and the trend doesn't seem to reach its end. A dip in popularity had to be expected after such a monster debut album but it was still faster than forecasted. In fact, an album like Not Too Late never managed to sell to consumers all advance orders of retailers in various countries like in the US which shows a really disappointing result from a commercial point of view.

No doubt, Day Breaks isn't the best selling album from 2016 with 400,000 units shipped to date and possibly not many more to be shipped in the future. It is not necessarily that bad if Norah Jones has been able to compensate the pure album sales collapse with strong digital results in both singles downloads and streaming as others like Maroon 5 or Justin Bieber did.

Our goal is to get a real understanding of sales figures. Obviously, a 23,9 million selling album can't be define as something else than a massive success. Still, while Come Away With Me is the biggest selling studio album of the 00s, is it really the most successful one? In our to date CSPC summary, the leading pack was the one below.

1 2000 Eminem – The Marshall Mathers LP – 29,577,000
2 2000 Linkin Park – Hybrid Theory – 29,366,000
3 2008 Lady Gaga – The Fame / The Fame Monster – 28,697,000

Will Come Away With Me happen to be the biggest album out of this list after factoring in all information?

Physical Singles Sales

Well, no need to say physical singles sales wasn't the fort of Norah Jones. Here we go with the few ones she still sold.

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.

Come Away with Me (2002) - 60,000 equivalent albums

Don't Know Why - 150,000
Remaining Singles - 50,000

Feels Like Home (2004) - 30,000 equivalent albums

Remaining Singles - 100,000

Digital Singles Sales

In the past we used to talk about album sellers and singles sellers, Norah Jones clearly fitting into the former category. Cherry picking download singles with the availability of all tracks all the time fully changed the game. For many music consumers, download tracks haven't replaced former physical singles but yes previous catalog album sales.

Thus, although she had very little appeal in physical singles format, Norah Jones sold her share of download singles. As catalog items, hits from her first couple of albums are her easy leaders while most recent songs failed to attract many buyers.

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.

Come Away with Me (2002) - 1,590,000 equivalent albums

Don't Know Why - 3,400,000
Come Away with Me - 3,200,000
Turn Me On - 1,400,000
Remaining tracks - 2,600,000

Feels Like Home (2004) - 435,000 equivalent albums

Sunrise - 2,500,000
Remaining tracks - 1,400,000

Not Too Late (2007) - 180,000 equivalent albums

Remaining tracks - 1,200,000

The Fall (2009) - 270,000 equivalent albums

Chasing Pirates - 700,000
Remaining tracks - 1,100,000

Little Broken Hearts (2012) - 120,000 equivalent albums

Remaining tracks - 800,000

Day Breaks (2016) - 15,000 equivalent albums

Remaining tracks - 100,000

Orphan Album - 180,000 equivalent albums

Remaining tracks - 1,200,000

Streaming Sales

Below table lists Spotify streaming of all songs from the five albums we are studying. The Comprehensive Streaming is reached by multiplying Spotify figures by 68/26. In fact, https://www.ifpi.org/downloads/GMR2016.pd f" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">as shown in IFPI 2015 Report, there were 68 million paying subscribers to all streaming platforms by the end of 2015. While the exact count of Spotify paying subscribers by the end of 2015 is unknown, that figure reached 20 million in June 2015 and 30 million in March 2016, thus an estimated 26 million is used as of the end of 2015.

The equivalent album sales is the division of the comprehensive streaming figure by 1500 as it is now the norm in the new industry model.

Streaming Part 1 - Strong Start

With Come Away With Me and Don't Know Why singles averaging 70 million plays on Spotify, Norah Jones early hits are very solid streaming songs. Her appeal as an album artist is visible on her streams too as every track from her debut record amassed more than 7 million plays. Overall, all those play equal to nearly half a million album sales.

Feels Like Home contains a notable hit with Sunrise too, but the rest of its track list although not doing bad is on a lower level. On its side, Not Too Late saved the consistency too but utterly lacks a smash single with Thinking About You up to only half of the weakest Come Away With Me tracks.

Streaming Part 2 - The Fall

If pure album sales kept going down and down, the last albums quite reversed the trend in the streaming field. The Fall totals more than twice as many streams as Not Too Late despite preceding streaming era too. Added recently, plays of Day Breaks are just getting started.

Streaming Part 3 - Orphan Songs

Apart from her standard career as a solo Jazz singer, issued various collaboration records with mostly unknown teammates. None of those songs is a stand-out moment in streaming results but many of them accumulate decent plays.

Full Length related records Sales

Norah Jones never released a compilation album nor a live record. She does have a few music videos to go along with the aforementioned collaboration records which will be automatically assigned into Orphan Album category on listings below.

How to understand this table? If you check for example Live In New Orleans live album line, those figures mean it sold 650,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all songs included on this package add for 229 million streaming plays on Spotify as of November 3 2016.

The second part at the right of the table shows how many streams are coming from each original album plus the share it represents on the overall package streams. Thus, streaming figures tell us Come Away With Me songs are responsible for 96% of the Live In New Orleans tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 623,000 of its 650,000 album sales and so on for the other records.

Since most of the music videos got released after the band very first albums, the main responsible for the large majority of their sales is the respective album of the promotional tour.

Norah Jones Career CSPC Results

So, after checking all figures, how many overall equivalent album sales each Norah Jones album achieved? Well, at this point we barely need to do the addition of all figures defined all over this article!

[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]

As previously mentioned various acts fully replaced studio album sales with huge digital results. This is clearly not the case of Norah Jones. Her streaming results aren't bad, but she hasn't sold much digital singles nor compilations or live albums. All those facts put together mean her good catalog sales for Come Away With Me are not as good as we think since they are largely benefiting from the absence of competition from other formats or other LPs.

In spite of being the biggest seller in studio album form, her debut set ends up being topped by the main records of Eminem, Linkin Park and Lady Gaga among the 00s top eras. Don't get me wrong, owning one of the five biggest records of the decade in the world is still absolutely amazing, an achievement even more impressive for a singer with Norah Jones style of music.

In total, her tally is 50,3 million equivalent album sales. As she is struggling more and more with her new records, she will be relying in her first album catalog appeal to continue to increase her results.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, Chartmasters.org.

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