Yes, but they let her so is their fault. Her debut album is specially funny with all that featuring is like a compilation album. At the end it is a chart manipulation and I think she doesn’t need but anyways

I feel like biggest female album is kinda arbitrary. Because there’s only like 6 big female artists at a time so some years are much more competitive than others.

Biggest album overall seems better.
2010-DW&H
2011-21
2012-Red
2013-Frozen
2014-X
2015-25
2016-Views
2017-Divide
2018-BB&B
2019-WWAFA
2020-FN
2021-Sour
2022-Bad bunny

right! adding EVERY single feature that you're on to your album is not a normal practice... I wonder why Chartmasters doesn't realize this and deweight the excessive amount of features she adds to her "albums". Her debut would only be at 8.45M if we solely count the original issue and not the fraudulent additions from other artists, in a similar league to albums like Reputation and Don't Smile At Me.

It seems as if Dua's streams excluding Spotify are a bit inflated as an earlier commenter noted... Every platform that is NOT dependent on playlisting (her lifeline as she has the three longest running songs ever on Spotify's Today's Top Hits as well as some of the highest playlisting audience peaks for any artist ever) she underperforms significantly in such as AM where FN and her debut is nowhere to be present in the top 200.

Hi Matt!

I already mentioned it in the past, the AM album chart is pointless. They only include streams from the specific version, while an album like FN has tons already, and ignore altogether streams that do not come from itself, which is like the immense majority of streams.

If the same method was applied on Spotify, the album would be charting very, very low too.

Also, US Apple Music is far from being the be-all of remaining platforms nowadays, and AM in the US is used by a specific user base, which streams a lot of urban music. The situation is very different in most other countries, while YouTube Music and Amazon Music largely favor pop hits, where Dua Lipa reigns supreme.

Hi Ethan!

As mentioned to Matt, the numbers aren't inflated, it's a bad understanding of how the Apple Music album ranking works.

Just a quick check tells us that Cold Heart and Levitating have 153 million and 134 million on demand audio streams in the US by week 20 in 2022. In that same period, US Spotify charts reveal they got 70 million and 48 million streams, respectively.

It means they are getting 41% of their US streams on Spotify.

Hi again Ethan!

Actually, from her debut, there are only 1 track where she is regarded as a featured act, that is No Lie. This track is already downweighted, it accounts for 517,000 EAS from streams rather than 1.03 million.

The same happens for Prisoner on FN.

But the truth is that Apple Music main market is US and she is not even in the top 10 of most streamed female artist this year, that’s a big sign of how weak she is on Apple Music (in relative terms with Spotify)

Hi Jorge!

Levitating is #10 on Apple's global chart for the year, nearly as good as on Spotify. There have been no "most streamed female artist" list published by Apple Music. I don't know where this myth of Dua Lipa being especially weak there came out, but it seems to be at best a weak argument from some haters. Not to mention that both YouTube Music and Amazon Music are favorable platforms for her, and it's the sum of it all that matters, not if an artist has done slightly below average in one platform in one country!

The real truth aren't myths, truth are for example that her big hits are getting barely 41% of their US streams through Spotify, meaning that she gets 1.5 times more streams elsewhere compared to Spotify.

Hey,
It's a very great article. Miss lipa is absolutely smashing right now. But i wonder how many streams does her songs have in USA?

Please see my detailed response to your magnificent profile in Sinatra just posted on that post in comments and please respond to my questions when you have a second. Your work if I have any impact at all ( and w/o it)will be the definitive profile on him and endure for decades and more, absolutely superb ( though it may have some missing pieces). Also I see Madonna sells 500 albums in week one of a cd release and personally buys enough to falsely chart then drops off after a week. As you say unless she passes her sales are dead since really 2006 so I assume FS being steady is likely to pass her over time and might rise past 2 others as well. Thank you for your patience with me and the beautiful job!👍👏👏👏 ❤️Jay🤝

Dua is great but I can’t help but wonder how successful her albums would be if she hadn’t added 10+ songs to both. They aren’t albums, more like compilations/time capsules for the releases within an era. It’s unfair to new artists like Billie Eilish and Olivia Rodrigo with genuinely successful albums.

It would be nice if you did other artists that smashed around the streaming era. Camila Cabello, Sia, Melanie Martinez, or Imagine Dragons. Lots of big streaming era albums are missing and it would great if you did that. Plus they have small discographies so it wouldn’t be hard. Regardless great analysis as always.

Radical Optimism is a huge bomb, will probably end up in the 2.5-3M range, a massive decline from Future Nostalgia. Disappointing because it seemed like the UK industry had finally produced a singing and dancing classic pop star that could compete with American counterparts (previously, UK female artists who crossed over were always more of the singer songwriter variety).

So she is adding previous song to album in some playlist. But diff from past is that her previous eras were successful. This is artificial inflation