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Hi MJD,
I am sorry for bringing this up again. I am really ok with Titanic album sales not added to Celine cos it isn't a Celine Dion album.
Your explanation on your comment on this article is clear. But when I think about "The Bodyguard", isn't it because of the movie people bought the album? A movie soundtrack album is called a movie soundtrack album because it is for the movie, not for Whitney. It is to sell the movie, not to sell Whitney. The album was made for the movie, not for Whitney. As you have said , we should wonder what the consumer went after.
Whitney Houston's name may be on the bodyguard soundtrack album cover but isn't Kevin Costner's name on the cover too? And I know Whitney is the executive producer but she wasn't the only one. And because it's a movie soundtrack album, then it's not surprising that 6 songs are performed by other artists.
That's why I really think "the bodyguard" should not be considered a Whitney Houston album.
Just putting more emphasis on my opinion but it's ok if you don't agree.
Hi RLAAMJR!
I hope you aren't serious with that Kevin Costner argument 😉
In any case, with Anthony we agreed for several months that to avoid never ending and pointless debates, we will simply stick to a concrete rule: soundtracks are assigned to an artist as soon as the RIAA or lescharts family of sites assigns it to an artist. All articles since Phil Collins are consistent to this rule and following ones will continue to stick to it.
My heart will go has sold a bit more than 600,000 digital copies the last 22 months.
So,would Celine's total physical single sales look something like that -36,500,000/37,000,000?
I have seen that MHWGO has sold 600,000+ digital copies the last 22 months.This is a good result.
Hey MJD,
Do you know why MHWGO didn't go #1 in Japan? It wasn't released in New Zealand but how do you explain it in Japan? Thank you, your job is amazing.
Amazing that 3 of the top albums of the 90s were released within weeks of eachother. It would be interesting to see a year-by-year comparison of how many units were sold by the albums from each year, rather than sold during each year. My guess is that you would see a lot more random variation between the years and market size having less impact, though of course it would also skew in favour of older albums since they've had more time to accumulate catalog sales.
(Also, a minor note about the first page of the article, "tainted" might not be the best word to describe Celtic-influenced popular music as it has a much more negative connotation than I think you intended. Though I could be wrong!)
Hi Orange!
We do have an Excel file with this data and I admit to check it myself quite often. Some results are absurd and I love it: for example, 1990's albums studied so far fail to reach 100 million while 1991's albums are well past 300 million already! And then tons of 1991 blockbusters are still missing (Pearl Jam's Ten, R.E.M.'s Out Of Time, Garth Brooks' Ropin' In The Wind, Bryan Adams' Waking Up The Neighbours, Michael Bolton, Boyz II Men, Simply Red, etc...).
While these statistics are kind of trivia data, they do show something I try to point out very often: the market size doesn't impact CSPC totals that much. Successful recordings generate sales year after year so even if you start during the 60s (like the Beatles) truth is your sales will be spread over decades meaning even an act that disbanded / passed away long ago still enjoyed later market increases.
I'll check that about tainted, I admit I didn't knew it had a negative connotation!
That's fascinating! I expected big gaps but not to that huge of a level. I suppose missing albums (especially from smaller acts that probably won't be analyzed) also contribute to those differences, but clearly some years happened to produce more iconic music than others!
Titanic was Gold in Mexico by February 1998. So the "N/A" for Mexico can finally disappear. Also, it was 4xPlatinum in Thailand, 3x Platinum in Malaysia, 3xPlatinum in Singapore and Gold in Indonesia by then.
https://www.americanradiohistory.com/Archive-Music-and-Media/90s/1998/MM-1998-02-28.pdf
And it sold 230k in the Philippines by April 1999.
https://books.google.com.ph/books?id=Pg0EAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA77&dq=titanic+soundtrack+230000&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwianOWYzPDjAhWU6nMBHUJyBcIQ6AEILzAC#v=onepage&q=titanic%20soundtrack%20230000&f=false
Hi djdj, thanks for this new information, very helpful as usual!
Can we get a quick breakdown of sales of My Heart Will Go On for each country/continent?
It's interesting to see an overview of the 29.3m units EAS it got 💋
Hi francis!
Here is a breakdown per format:
- 22.72m EAS due to LTAL album
- 10.72m EAS due to Celine Dion other LPs
- 22.86m EAS due to Titanic album
- 3.47m EAS due to Titanic other LPs
- 2.07m EAS due to physical singles (6.91m units)
- 0.67m EAS due to digital singles (4.47m units)
- 0.24m EAS due to streaming
If we add everything, the total reaches 62.75m EAS!
And as MJD pointed in “More features, less problems” article:
“It was the fact that not all artists and genre perform equally well in distinct platforms, like Spotify and Apple Music for example,
many Celine’s global hits are very popular in other platforms.
Billboard( https://www.billboard.com/lists/celine-dion-my-heart-will-go-on-hot-100-chart-rewind-1998/)has post official stream figures for My heart will go on，”Heart” has drawn 5 billion in cumulative airplay audience and 728 million official (only counted !)U.S. streams ,and over 588 million streams in 2019 but only less numbers in Streaming Masters – Celine Dion article in 2021.
And only one song from the ’90 inside top 10 most US streamed songs of the ’80s and’90s No. 1s, according to（Billboard）Nielsen Music（ https://jezebel.com/which-no-1-singles-from-the-80s-and-90s-stand-the-test-1844294232?rev=1595250877341
So stream figure of “Heart” must be very underrated, as well as Titanic Soundtrack’s.
