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MTV of probably an EP, and from the 64 compilations, a lot of sales are from video sales, which don't count as albums.
Hi Jorge,
Various reasons were listed in the article regarding why Mariah's pure album sales suffered post 2000, let's go over them on a case-by-case basis.
#1 Collapse of Various Asian Markets
From the 90s, it was evident that Mariah was much bigger in Asia proportionally (and often, in absolute terms) compared to Europe. Entering the 2000s, however, lots of markets outside of Japan in Asia saw a steep decline in album sales, like in South Korea or Taiwan, some of her strongest regions. The 2001-2005 albums all did 700K to 1 million there, respectable figures that puts Mariah among the top international sellers, but was still a far cry from her 90's success. Then, entering the late 2000's/early 2010's, the album sales market there was literally in life support, similar to how the South American album sales market have been in recent years. This strongly limited sales of E=MC2 and Memoirs, which from streaming results showed that those albums had solid hits in Japan and the rest of Asia!
You can refer to the "Britney Spears sales in Asia" article to see for yourself how dire album sales were during the 2000's.
#2 Downloads era
This is significant as when Mariah had her resurgence of popularity with TEOM, her back catalogue albums which should have received a boost was strongly limited to cherry picking songs. Her Greatest Hits set did well enough during this time, but predecessors like Glitter and Charmbracelet failed to accumulate higher sales during this time due to people opting to purchase individual songs instead. Then of course, while Mariah was struggling to sell albums in Asia during the late 2000s/early 2010s, she was still doing stellar numbers in downloads there, as shown by her 12 million plus sales of downloads in South Korea.
#3 Inconsistent Hits
It's no coincidence that TEOM, which is the only post 2000s album with multiple successful singles, is also the only album with nice album sales. Upon release, albums like E=MC2 (TMB), Memoirs (Obsessed) and Charmbracelet (TTR) have solid lead singles, but after that, follow up singles massively underperformed, only achieving minor success here and there, and as a result, failing to support album sales in the mid-run.
Then of course, streaming took over which led to new materials released in 2010s like MIAM or Caution to have extremely low pure sales. That, and of course, the fact that those albums failed to produce any significant hits (even #Beautiful, a solid Top 15 hit upon release, failed to withstand the test of time) plus Mariah is already in her 3rd decade in her career, saw Mariah's pure album sales decline more and more.
By the way, it's interesting that you compared Mariah's relatively poor album sales to Madonna, Whitney and Celine, and simultaneously point out her streaming results is huge, when those 2 are more related than you think! Mariah's career is relatively 'younger' than all of them, and her image/genre is more appealing to younger generations that fancy downloads/streaming rather than pure album sales. It's explains why Mariah have many songs compared to her peers that went viral in recent years like TMB, obsessed, It's A Wrap. If you compare Mariah's and Madonna's respective albums in the late 2000s/2010s, the latter may sell much more in pure sales, but Mariah's downloads + streaming almost equalizes their final CSPC amount!
Hi matt!
Why are you revisiting history so grossly?
1) Dua Lipa
You stated that you were "mad at how inflated" her streaming ratio was. You said it on the back of a terrible argument (AM album chart, with all the flaws we know). With the new model, the former ratio appears to have been spot on, as her extrapolation is 1.50781.
2) Drake
You say that I claimed you were "delusional", please provide a link for that. I answered to you that we were actually working on an artist specific ratio, and that Drake was going to be around 1.9 (indeed, he is at 1.95477). Everyone can read this answer. In the past I also mentioned that we can't use the rare data available for AM but it was based on first week streams, as we know that AM streams are more frontloaded than Spotify's. These data points were suggesting Drake was getting more streams on AM alone than on Spotify, our current artist ratio shows a completely different story, as all-inclusive his results aren't doubled. What I often said was that US AM impact was overstated, and their charts largely missunderstood. This was correct and still is.
3) TEOM Asian sales
The only message you posted about this subject was you suggesting that TEOM had sold 200k+ in China. The answer is: no, it hasn't, this was a made up figure. So was the 90k claim in the Philippines. You actually made claims on the back of made up stories, but even a broken clock gives the correct time twice a day.
You also pushed Emotions at 100k in Sweden, which is a typo, and claimed MelOn would be better to gauge Korean streams than Genie. Now you come here pretending you saw it all before anyone else and were right about everything. Hum.
And no, I've no issues at all admitting mistakes. There are typos in all articles, and that's precisely because I always reconsider everything unlike Mediatraffic or the OCC that our figures are so accurate right now. I even opened a log about updates, to explain mistakes as they were fixed, although it was too time consuming to maintain it. The thing about your rewriting of history seems to be more about you confusing answers which address an argument (TEOM in China, Apple Music album rankings, Drake's Scorpion debut numbers, etc) and the extrapolation that you do, and how you feel it about that extrapolated outcome at your end ("completely in the wrong", "swore up and down", etc).
This leads me back to TEOM sales, as this is a good example of a core issue there, which is the state of the art (of record sales estimations). Because there are two "errors": the good ones and the bad ones. Ironically, fans/readers mostly contest "good" errors, while the bad ones are virtually never identified. Let me explain it in full.
The good errors, are inaccurate estimations compared to the real values, but still the best possible estimations given the available data. Bad errors are real errors, meaning that with the available data, something has been misued/misinterpreted, leading to an error.
I took forever when updating Mariah's numbers, it was more of a pain than Sinatra's complete study. I digged local press from Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, etc, reviewed all Brazilian codes, converted a dozen more national charts into sales thanks to my algos, defined completely new and better indicators for ringtones numbers, and at last found a way to accurately gauge Japanese imports of all albums. Basically, I pushed the 'state of the art' further, because given our current accuracy standards at ChartMasters, more had to be done for Mariah considering her relatively much stronger impact in areas that aren't that relevant for most artists.
I was also mad at myself during this update because I saw way too many "bad" errors. In general, there are close to none. Which is why I answer in the negative to most people challenging the data: because based on the state of the art at a given moment, there are near no error. I know/use 100% of the information available here and there, it is properly interpreted (which is were fans usually get lost, as they do not have the experience to understand all the data and their specificities), without even mentioning all our backing tools.
Back at Mariah though, TEOM global estimate from 2017 was a "good" error, I'm perfectly fine with it. The estimate was the best possible, indeed fitting with the IFPI data and the interpretation we could do from it. I ignored the claims which suggested the IFPI data was incorrect (like that Chinese claim), and I was correct to do so. In truth, there have been only 1 element which changed the outcome, which is the fact that the available was actually available on clubs in the US, and that it sold so much there (an extra 5% roughly). This is now known thanks to Discogs, years ago the club editions were more often not even identified as such, it wasn't possible to know this stat. This US situation changes the barycenter of sales time-wise, which changes the 2005-release to date extrapolation and gave room to more sales worldwide. It doens't mean that former made up claims were true. Calculations based on various indicators/algos give 54k in China and 45k in the Philippines for it.
In the same way, fans were claiming Butterfly was over 1.5m in Japan due to a 1999 Sony Music Japan communication. My former numbers had it at 1.3m+, now revisited to near 1.6m. Yet, my former estimation was good. I knew by experience for reading several of them that these Sony Music Japan breakdowns were full of typos (iirc the one about Mariah itself lists Music Box as a 15m seller in the US), and considering Butterfly's tally of just over 1m and Mariah's trend for imports, 1.3m something was the best estimation we could set for this album in this country. Now, the state of the art evolves, and I've been able to twist Discogs to gauge the imports there. Butterfly did get a much larger share of imports there than the remaining albums. It ends up confirming the 1.5m+ figure. Of course, fans will say "we knew it!". Yes, just like they knew so many fake stats. Hence my reference to the broken clock. When a data looks fishy, it's an error to take it at face value, even if it ends up that this particular data was correct. In poker you can go all in with 72o and crack aces, it won't mean that was a good play.
While TEOM global sales and Butterfly Japanese units are two examples of "good" errors, as I said I was myself frustrated due to several bad ones during this update. For example, I used the US promotional campaign sales / release to date sales extrapolation for 'Mariah Carey' and 'Emotions' to estimate UK's up to date units, knowing their 90/91/92 sales, and then applied the same process from the UK to Australia. This was silly as hell. As both albums were already super big in the US upon release, they added a small percentage of sales later on. In the UK (& Australia), Mariah boomed with Music Box, so her previous albums added a way bigger amount of catalog units relatively speaking there, same in Australia. This leads me to the previous comment about addressing an argument. I remember answering about the recent 5xP cert of the debut in Australia to InnocentEyes (iirc) that we couldn't use the yearly ranking because it was points-based back then. That was/is true. Yet, a completely different issue (the original vs catalog sales ratio in the US vs UK/Oz) happens to justify the new cert. The Emotions Platinum cert was a typo instead, so this hasn't been changed. Goes on to show we need to carefully check each case, rather than just assuming everything is true.
Another really bad error was related to sales off charts, but still during the promo campaign. Say an album sells 5m in the US while on charts in the 90s, and 5.5m to date, and 50k while on charts in the Switzerland. It makes sense to expect it is at 55k to date in the latter market. This logic is flawed though if the album was promoted for 1 year and charted for 1 year in the US, while it charted for only 20 weeks in Switzerland. There are still 30-ish weeks of promotional efforts, where the album was potentially just outside the top 50, which adds a significant % of sales to its charted tally. That is the case of Butterfly, Rainbow or Glitter there for example, that's why their estimates are now healthier. This was a really bad error, completely avoidable, especially as it was replicated in multiple markets and albums. Total studio album sales in GSA countries went up by about 20%, that's wild.
For #1's, in 2017 I calculated club sales thanks to the 5xP cert minus soundscan units at the time, and then added up to date Soundscan tally. That's nice... but this misses entirely club sales after the last award (Jan 2003), while the comp was still selling there. That was another real bad error, and I would have got no problem 'admitting' it if it had been pointed out. There were more errors that I haven't in mind right now, and then about downloads and singles as well. The thing is that fans are often too busy trying to push some ludicrous narratives (TEOM 200k in China, the debut 10m in the US, 200m "according to Billboard" while it's a freelance journalist claim, etc) rather than really trying to look what's behind the number.
I appreciate it when people have a critical mind, it's a top quality to me, for real. And if you feel some frustration towards my messages, surely I'm responsible, as I always lack tact when speaking about numbers. Still, rewriting history is not nice, and your comment is clearly not honest intellectually speaking.
That's correct ClockingBell, MTV Unplugged's line is inside the EP block in the main sheet, which means it doesn't add up to the total album sales. To be honest, I see it myself as an album (the ratio is set at 1), so I'll likely just replace the line and re-upload the picture.
Hi Jorge!
To be honest I'm surprised at your comment about Madonna, Celine and Whitney. Since 2001 to date, Mariah is similar to Madonna and Celine in that they have one strong seller around 10m (TEOM / COADF / ANDHC), and then albums down to 2-4m for all of them, and recent albums much lower. The only one different is Whitney, as her two releases since 2001 hasn't done well.
What we can say instead is that Mariah secondary albums sold 2m-ish while Madonna's and Celine's are more on 3m-ish, but then she has different, younger demographics which gave up purchasing albums earlier, and like Raffi said she had a larger share of her sales coming from markets which collapsed strongly in early 00s.
Hi Kiimi!
I think I've though about it a dozen of times while doing the study, but still managed to forget to add it! So no, Chinese sales aren't included in these 185k sales, and the 'Other LP' line should be added. I'll just wait a couple of days for more typos to be evidenced and then I'll fix the 3-4 flaws.
Hi Winston68!
The Beatles are definitely in the pipeline, although this can take a bit of time as we will also publish the CSPCs for all solo members. There are also a lot of activity lately with many top current singers returning soon, so we may push some easy updates for them in-between!
Hi Gus!
As Denysanatol said, the 19.2m includes everything (including sales of albums/comps thanks to the track) and is expressed in equivalent album sales. AIWFCIY's EAS from streams is 2.66m, which would be 26.6m equivalent singles sales. I'm really not a fan of equivalent units expressed in singles though, as they are mostly used to inflate totals by media, it's not a metric used in the industry.
Hi Smiley!
To be honest I wouldn't put my hand on it, in recent months we noticed several files which had some errors in parts of the formula for the ASR, and as numbers are indirect it's not easy to just look at numbers and point out the flaws. We will have a better view once Madonna/Celine are updated. Anyway total sales of Madonna/Celine/Mariah/Taylor are now in a 20% range, so even if Madonna maintains a healthy lead in absolute terms success wise they are all really strong.
Hi tsaotd!
I mentioned the state of the art in my comment to matt, and about Asian sales there are still room for improvement really as Mariah is incredibly poorly tracked given her success. Improvement in terms of accuracy, that doesn't mean numbers can only go up.
Anyway as it stands, the main deflated market by her fans is likely Indonesia, indicators are really good there. Our calculations add for 1.86m in this market, including 100k+ for every studio album up to Rainbow included, and 200k+ for MB/Daydream/Butterfly. Here are country totals, again subject to change in the future as the quality of data continues to improve:
4.58m South Korea
2.32m Taiwan
1.86m Indonesia
1.44m China
1.17m Philippines
1.12m Malaysia
0.84m Thailand
0.77m Singapore
0.72m Hong Kong
0.12m India
In other forums, someone posted that she has sold about 80k more than Celine in the 90s, even though Celine's articles were last updated in 2016 😂
Hi Chartmasters, can you add MTV Unplugged sales in the country section? The RIAA counts it as a studio album, and it is very important for Mariah's sales in America and Europe 🙂
I expected her numbers would go up, but 15mln more is much more than I thought. Her catalog have aged very well, and not just the Christmas material. What is happening with several album cuts from E=MC2 and Memoirs also tells me that the reason for their initial underperformance was likely a wrong choice of singles. Glad those records are now getting a well deserved re evaluation.
Hi MJD!
I have to say, I'm quite surprised at how you mentioned updating Mariah's stats was more difficult than Sinatra's considering the vast catalog size of the latter! Still, I have to say, it paid off quite well, as not only is the updated article so much more comprehensive, but the fact you did so much to analyze data and correct past oversights shows how far Chartmasters has become!
Honestly, seeing Mariah's updated article feels kinda nostalgic considering I was 16 when the first article came out, and it's so funny to see me reacting as hyped and positive for this article as the old one 7 years ago!
Keep up the good work MJD!
P.S. I have some questions/comments for you, but I see some have already been addressed in other comments, and I'm still dissecting this article, so I'll just gather my thoughts and type them out later.
Hi MJD!
I saw that you're currently reworking the article to find typos/add China sales/adjust total album sales, and I spotted a few that I would like to point out (in case you didn't find them):
#1 You mentioned everytime I close my eyes with babyface in the physical singles section, but you didn't include it there, although you did include it in the downloads section.
#2 Speaking of everytime I close my eyes, the streaming section also saw its total at 0 on both Spotify and YT. I also noticed some songs having wrong totals, like I'll be There at 96K streams on Spotify.
#3 In the Intro under The Emancipation of Mimi, "Several of its songs became hits, with We Belong Together remaining to everyone her unparalleled skills". I think you mean 'reminding everyone of' rather than 'remaining to everyone'
#4 That’s 147 million worth of sales released in 7 years only, plus the stand-alone singles issued during this period! I think you meant 'minus' rather than 'plus', as the 6 albums from 1990-1997 add up to over 147 mil alone.
#5 I noticed I know what you want achieving 400K+ downloads, but if I recall, you had it at 1 mil in the old article, right? I find the new figure kinda hard to believe considering its good streaming stats.
There are also some grammatical errors here and there, but not too bad that it's noticeable. Overall great job on the artice!
I do have 2 comments regarding the methodology:
#1 Different tracklist in different countries
I'm sure you encountered this before from other artists, but with Mariah, I recall #1's having a different tracklist in Japan, where AIWFCIY is included. Normally, this isn't an issue, but in this case, I feel it's quite significant considering that almost 4 million of #1's 16 million sales come from this country, where AIWFCIY is arguably her biggest hit and likely convinced consumers to purchase this album there. In this case, how would you assign sales of the compilation?
#2 Adding tracks from bonus/deluxe editions
I recall the earliest discussions of this topic during Dua Lipa's article, where you mentioned that it's fine to add deluxe tracks into the final total of an album, considering that a good chunk of those songs' to-date streams was achieved after they were added to the album, so it's fine.
I'm mentioning it here because I noticed you put I Know What You Want as part of the Charmbracelet album. To me, I have no problem with its downloads and streams added to the album total, as both were achieved after the track was added to the album.
The main problem is extrapolating the individual EAS units for songs, in which 82.4% of Charmbracelet's streams comes from IKWYW, so the song was assigned 2.5 million of the album's 3.03 million sales. But as I recall, the album achieved most of its sales way before IKWYW was added to the deluxe edition, and Through The Rain was the one that drove Charmbracelet's album sales during Q4 of 2002. In this case, I feel that the popularity of individual songs is distorted if we use stream % to assign sales to individual songs.
I get that for recent albums, it doesn't matter much as pure album sales are already low, but for older albums, especially those with songs that blow up suddenly in streaming (i.e. It's A Wrap for Memoirs) might inflate their EAS. What do you think?
Also I think her post TEOM eras have an extremely messy rollout, both e=mc² and TMB had higher peaks/debuts in most countries than both TEOM and WBT, showing she still had some massive hype, but the era went downhill as soon as she released Bye Bye as the second single, by the time I'll Be Loving You Lopng time was released people probably forgot she even had released an album, also not touring didn't help at all, both taking chances and hard candy got a huge boost for their tours while mariah didnt even do that.
With Memoirs it got even worse, as the hype wasn't there anymore, but the era was still handled badly, for example in the UK she released the album 3 months after its US release so even though she did a lot of promo, and even performed at huge TV shows, by then no one was anticipating the album there
Do you think that, adding the solo stuff with the Beatles release, the Beatles could actually come close to the famed 1 billion claim, at least in unweighted terms?
Agreed! I honestly find E=MC2 to be the most disappointing in her entire catalog, considering it was the follow-up to the massive TEOM, plus the era started off strong with TMB, and yet the album quickly fizzled out after its first month or two. It kinda killed the momentum that she established, and I feel that had the album been a bit bigger, it would have likely pushed TEOM and her 90s catalog to higher numbers. Not to mention various tracks on the record (e.g. Migrate, I'm That Chick) sounded like bonafide smashes that suited radio and crossover appeal at the time.
The lack of touring also didn't help there, but she never was a touring act to begin with, and she always managed to sell huge amounts with few tour stops in the 90s and 2000s.
There are some upsides to these albums though. Plenty of its songs have garnered virality in recent years that allows it to accumulate decent EAS from streams, and it seems that TMB and Obsessed (and honestly, most of her 2000s output) hold up just as if not better than most of her 90s output.
Also, looking at AWA and QQ streams, I'm quite surprised about how big the numbers for the E=MC2 singles were! It's a shame the album market in these countries were really dire during this time.
Any reason the Justin Bieber feature is the one mentioned in Top Songs "All I want for Christmas is you"? It's not even responsible for 10% of the song's original sales / streams
Mariah Carey's Billboard 200 entries, ranked by weeks in top 10:
1. 49, Mariah Carey
2. 34, The Emancipation of Mimi
3. 33, Music Box
4. 29, Daydream
5. 22, Merry Christmas
6. 12, Butterfly
6. 12, MTV Unplugged EP
6. 12, Emotions
9. 8, #1's
10. 7, E=MC2
11. 6, Rainbow
12. 3, Memoirs Of An Imperfect Angel
13. 1, Glitter
13. 1, Charmbracelet
13. 1, The Ballads
13. 1, Merry Christmas II You
13. 1, Me. I Am Mariah...
13. 1, Caution
Total: 233 weeks
Not with Celine updating...
Although the equivalence system favors Mariah due to Christmas music, Celine will continue to lead the most relevant list, which is sales of pure album copies.
