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Music Box(1m-1.1m), Daydream(67.5k), Merry Christmas(600k), Butterfly(300k)
Can you please tell us how you got her sales from countries like Indonesia, Philippines and Thailand and albums breakdowns? There's almost 0 info on these countries when it comes to sales like certifications or articles. I find it especially interesting how you said butterfly did better than her other albums in Asia(I'm guessing you meant Asia outside of Japan and S Korea) and yet looking at it's sales and singles performances pretty much everywhere Butterfly sold half of Daydream or even more in nearly every country, so you would never think it did better in those specifically
The determination process is explained at a certain point on this site. In short, chart positions, certifications, Discogs articles, etc. are used, which are processed with statistical figures (Discogs users compared to the respective country's population) and corresponding calculations.
Many of the SEA units for post-2002 albums were drastically over-estimated in this new update. There is no way that Charmbracelet suddenly has > 620K units that are more than Butterfly and Rainbow, the units for TEOA, E=MC2 and MOAIA also seemed a bit too high.
Charmbracelet got such high streaming EAS due to the inclusion of I Know What You Want to the album, a bonus track in the International edition of the album released in some countries back then.
As for E=MC2 and MOAIA, both albums had tracks that had a great resurgence of popularity on Tik Tok in the last few years (TMB, Obsessed, IAW), plus if you look at the streaming section of this article, singles from these 2 albums had great streams in platforms like AWA (Japan), Genie (South Korea) and QQ (China), showing that these albums had great success is Asia, but it wasn't reflected in pure sales.
Then for TEOM, I don't think anyone is surprised this album is one of her greatest catalog seller (in terms of streams) due to WBT enduring popularity.
Yes noticed that too when they announced yesterday Heartbreaker double platinum so out of curiosity went to check and - zero - not one digital download. Which is weird cause i know i've downloaded it...
Many of these albums got a huge resurgence due to Tik Tok. Let's not forget that the last update had been in 2017. Since then she re-released all albums on vinyl as an anniversary release and they're all sold out. Touch My Body soared out of the blue to 400 million streams, Obsessed went from nothing to 600 million streams with triple platinum certification in 2020 US alone. It's a Wrap went from 1 million streams as a non commercial album cut to 110 million streams in one year with it's own vinyl release as well. All three albums mentioned got a jump in their multi platinum RIAA certifications as well as UK, Canada and Australia in 2020 and 2022. Emancipation alone garners almost 1 million streams per day (x365x7 years since last update). And then there's Christmas of course with new releases, new special edition vinyl pressings that sell out in days. And then there's weird phenomenons such as looking on Amazon listings - Music Box (sold 500+ last month) and Daydream (sold 500+ last month) which I have no explanation for. While I'm sure some will say her estimates are underestimated by chartmasters, others will say they're overestimated, the truth is that a total discography estimate sale has to be AT LEAST above all worldwide certifications, otherwise the credibility of this site would be questioned (eg. RIAA says 11 million for this album in the US alone, and chartmasters says 10 million worldwide would be a huge stretch considering the lack of certification update that many albums and singles have). While I do see in some articles such as this one, that some of her singles are missing altogether (eg. heartbreaker???), I do believe this website is the closest approximation to reality we have, considering so many countries don't provide numbers at all, however their minimal contribution.
? Some of these are already in place. #1's is already 6xP since 2022 - the coloured vinyl is sold out on amazon already but i don't think she did a pressing of 1 million vinyls since then, memoirs was already platinum in 2022, as well as emancipation 7platinum already in 2022. I'm not going to go one by one, but many of these "eligible" certifications have already been awarded, some > 7 years ago
music box sales should be higher, albums like true blue and like a virgin have +40M with less pure sales and streams
Hi Gaby,
While in terms of recurrent popularity Music Box may be on par/better than Madonna's 2 biggest albums, thus showing higher streams, its higher pure sales are not due to it being more popular, but rather due to Music Box benefitting from a better market condition in the mid 90's, especially in Asia where the album market there had yet to boom in the mid 80's when LAV and TB were big.
Furthermore, the cannibalization factor comes into play here, as The Immaculate Collection came out in the early 90's, selling huge amounts and limiting any significant catalog sales LAV and TB could have during the healthy 90s album market. Plus, Madonna had way more comp/live/remixes that sold healthy amounts compared to Mariah, thus in a CSPC method, LAV and TB were rewarded with those 'lost' sales from comps and have a higher EAS figure than MB.
It's the same case when we compare Mariah's own Music Box and Daydream album, where Daydream's singles were initially just as big as Music Box's singles, and time proved the former to be much more enduring than the latter, yet Music Box's pure sales surpasses Daydream's by a longshot because the release of #1's just 3 years after Daydream shot down any catalog sales that Daydream could acquire in the long run. Yet here, we can see that Daydream is on par/surpasses Music Box in EAS.
Her sales are massive, she had a more consistent career and more stability than Britney Spears despite singing pure R&B
Saying you've had more stability than Britney Spears, isn't really saying much.
I wouldn't call Mariah's music "pure R&B". Especially her early music. She's more on the pop side of R&B but it certainly became more R&B after Daydream.
Her only albums with a strong pop influence are Music Box and Daydream
Debut: R&B/Soul
Emotions: R&B/Soul/Gospel
Music Box: Pop/R&B
Daydream: Pop/R&B/Hip Hop
Butterfly: R&B/Hip Hop
Rainbow: R&B/Hip Hop
all her other projects are r&b
