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Thanks for the reply, do you reckon you could predict some of Stephen Stills solo albums sales at least? Specifically the Manassas debut and his first solo album?
Specifically are they under-certified in the USA(theyre both gold), and would his 1975 album Stills have sold 500,000 copies in the US by now?
Hi again cass!
I would say that both Stephen Stills and Manassas are safely well past Platinum by now. When I apply my formulas to convert runs into sales, these are some of the results:
After the Gold Rush - 1,166,000
Stephen Stills - 1,168,000
Stephen Stills II - 361,000
Manassas - 808,000
Down the Road - 229,000
Stills - 228,000
Then for catalog sales:
After the Gold Rush - 1,045,000 at Soundscan with 3,099 Discogs CD owners
Stephen Stills - 516 CD owners - converts to 174,000 soundscan sales
Stephen Stills II - 174 CD owners - converts to 59,000
Manassas - 485 CD owners - converts to 164,000
Down the Road - 189 CD owners - converts to 64,000
Stills - 207 CD owners - converts to 70,000
After the Gold Rush sold about the same from the point it left charts to the start of Soundscan than during the Soundscan era. If we apply this, we get:
Stephen Stills - 1,516,000
Stephen Stills II - 479,000
Manassas - 1,136,000
Down the Road - 357,000
Stills - 368,000
These are very simplist ways to get a realistic result. Here I'm doing something I never do though, using the metrics of an artist and applying them to someone else. If Neil is more collected than Stephen on Discogs for example, that downgrades the calculations of the latter's Soundscan sales. If I had to study him, I would build metrics which fit specifically to him as it is done on all articles. Also 'weak' albums are disadvantaged here since I haven't consider something special for the months just after leaving charts which are relevant for 200k-ish sellers.
Thanks for that, it's very interesting. Looking at the figures of After the Gold Rush - the US sales you have are 3,445,000, yet the sales in the comment above only adds up to 2,161,000, where did the other million US sales come from?
Would you ever consider doing the whole collective, it feels odd including CSN sales in with Neils analysis when he didn't appear on the majority of their albums, yet doing CSNY plus solo and other bands as a collective would seem a better more consistent approach, allowing you to continue with the premise of including albums that the main artist didn't appear on. You would be allowed to include all these other acts, such as Manassas, The Rides, Crosby & Nash, CPR, The Byrds, The Hollies, Au Go Go Singers, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, and Graham Nash. And as you said in the post including these would top 200 million, so surely it should be done?
MJD, I have a curio (a million....): we know that Harvest sold over 300k in Norway, but how many copies sold Fork In The Road? it reached #1 in 2009, his second #1 in Norway after Harvest. Do you have any idea?
Hi!
I don't think it sold well for very long as it's sales were very frontloaded as shown by its 1-10-30-35 run. It also failed to hit IFPI Norway's yearly list.
It wasn't certified gold for 15k so I don't think it passed this mark.
MJD, please, do you have an estimate of how much On The Beach has sold since it was reissued in 2003? I'm obviously talking about physical copies.
RIAA
Comes A Time
Released on October 1978, it was certified Gold by rhe RIAA one month later.
The RIAA database shown only that Gold award, but now seem that we have also a Platinum certification from 1986. not on RIAA database:
Neil Young Comes A Time RIAA Platinum Album Award – MusicGoldmine.com
Hi ! 92 million EAS for the tle Loner en may 2021 and 132 million in october 2024... I suppose a big glitch somewhere, isn't it ?
Physical sales should certainly be recalculated: many albums have been released since 2021 (studio, compilations, live albums) and perhaps some old albums are underestimated. But a gap still remains
