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There is always wrong with sales when the artist we don't like post decent results. Nicki is huge celebrity worldwide. And an actual mainstream female rapper. Streaming numbers of her music are among top 5 women ( top 10 I know). They make perfect sense
Hi SexyRedd fan!
You suggest that 115k pure in first week sales is bad. Do you have many examples of rap albums doing better? There's no way these can be seen as bad numbers. You also point out that Tate McRae is already higher as if that was something she should be ashamed of. Tate McRae has the biggest non-xmas hit worldwide for quite some time, she is doing incredibly on her own. PF2 daily numbers are great in an environment filled with Christmas material/playlists. It has more tracks top 200 that Tate's effort by the way, not even mentioning the fact that Spotify is less favorable to a rap album.
These are very bad arguments to make it look dreadful. Nicki Minaj is over 40, the album is already over 1m and seems a safe bet at 2m+ when all is said and done, possibly more. Turn it around as much as you want, these numbers reflect a successful artist.
Hi Analord!
A body like Luminate make reports about total market data, adding figures from all artists/records on their database, so they will need the total to be 100% of the market. We don't do that, we try to reflect the success of each artist the best we can, we don't need to stick to total songs being 100%.
Then when we list the most successful songs, we take only 1 total, the one from the lead singer. We aren't inflating totals by adding 100% + 50%. Most of these songs aren't part of several studio albums either so there will be no double counting either. As for artists totals, as I said I think that 100/50 reflects the impact of artists better, the 75/25 is flawed. Taking off a fourth of the total to the lead singer is wild, this is his/her project, and nobody can say a track would have done worst without a feature, and I won't even pick extreme examples like One Dance. This method deflates artists who are effectively bigger than their guest performers. The 1 total also ignores the fact that consumers may have consume a song for both artists. Say tomorrow a Drake/Travis collab comes out. Every listener who would have been interested by a new song from both these artists become less than one (0.75/0.25) listener for the artist.
We do have the same 'problem' with albums/songs' CSPCs when albums contain multiple very strong hits. They do not appear that high among top songs' lists, because when a consumer loved Billie Jean and bought Thriller, he won't buy the album again if he would have been convinced by Beat It too, and then Thriller. That's why songs which are the only big hit from their album are with an advantage, but it's difficult to counter that. Here the situation is the same, if a track has 3 superstars on it, and consumers would have streams tracks from all 3, I don't want to push numbers down for each just because the consumer won't be playing the track on repeat 3 times more.
Hi Don!
We can't just through out totals without caring about the method. US units ignore ringtones, totals here include them, they are worth 540k units for PF from the US alone. Then our model values downloads as 0.15 rather than 0.1, PF has 1.7m or 2.6m units from them in the US depending on the method. It doesn't mean our totals are bigger than if we would use a US type method though, as we value YouTube views lower. Our method gives PF 485k global sales from YT views, the RIAA method would give it 2.18m. Applying their model, the debut album would be at 9.80m units.
Then pure album sales are way more US-based than streams. PF2 debuted with 60.8m streams in the US, 58m elsewhere, so roughly a 50-50 split. It's wilder on YT, Super Freaky Girl debuted with 13.7m global views with 'only' 4.7m coming from the US.
Her new album sales is a little bit of a misinformation with that 1,5 mill sales globally... Her latest album is at 500k at best cuz it's opened 266k globally, and the album loaded only the third week of it's life time
Some of these albums are veryinflated
It's hard to believe that an album that has only been certified in 3 countries is ahead of albums certified in 10 or 15 countries, and even harder to believe the digital sales of Nicki's first two albums.
And Pink Friday, Roman Reloaded, and The PinkPrint being higher than 4, BEYONCE, no way
I think we all think so (except barbs), an album that in 13 years has only been certified in 3 countries suddenly seems to be a worldwide success
Hi Hamzi420!
This total includes units generated by singles released prior to the album, mainly Super Freaky Girl. It did not sell this in a few weeks only.
A great and interesting analysis. The Cardi and Taylor swift fans saying it’s inflated lol. These numbers make perfect sense. The only smaller numbers are starships and anaconda, I thought they’d sell better. How much did Starships sell in markets like Germany, France and Italy. Or platinum in Japan and 400k in Canada/Australia looking at the year ends. One of the best analysis you’ve done so far. Interested to see other pop artists like Sia, Nelly Furtado, Camila Cabello, or Kesha.
Bedrock, The Drake collab, Turn Me On and some of her other collabs are counted because she included them in the tracklist of her album, which many rappers do. The pure sales for the albums make sense. The digital sales make sense and the streaming data is right there on YouTube and Spotify if you can count. She’s a mainstream artist not a random flop.
Those certs only reflect the pure sales for the album. Platinum in Australia and he estimated 75k. Platinum in the UK and he has it at 372k. It’s also platinum eligible in New Zealand and Canada if you look at the year end. The album had great longevity in all English speaking countries. Its sales elsewhere are low and he did not inflate them. The majority of her units are from the Anglosphere countries though she has a lot of global hits.
Why are "Up All Night" and "Make Me Proud" from Drake's albums being included as part of 'Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded'? As far as I'm aware they were never part of the era...
Not hating on Nicki or anything, but it's weird that she is taken as such a popular and successful figure of the 2010's when her best selling album hasn't even sold 3 million copies. She's usually put on the same category of superstars like Katy, Gaga, Rihanna, etc. But her album sales don't much their numbers. I know she's very successful for a female rapper but she's usually considered as a pop artist too, she's been very popular, her eras weren't unnoticed by the general public. I think the problem is outside USA because her numbers are decent in America.
Also could you please do article on Jessie J, Sia and Kesha?
Hi omi!
Rap fans move away from higher priced products earlier than other consumers. They translated from album sales to downloads very early, and then from downloads to streams early too. Also the US as a whole started to replace albums with downloads earlier. By 2010, it was still very possible to sell a lot of albums in Europe, while in the US that was being eaten up by DLs already.
All that together mean that US rappers and pop artists from these years aren't good comparisons. If you compare Nicki's 2.9m seller to Drake early 2010s hit albums, they are on par. He never did more than 3.4m, and he sold less downloads than Nicki's albums. From 2008 to date, Kanye's top album is below 3m pure.
Also I don't think anyone really compare her to Katy, Gaga or Rihanna at their peak. All these have arguments to say they were the biggest pop star on earth at some point. Nicki would be more comparable to singers like Miley Cyrus, Alicia Keys or P!nk. Great sellers, consistent, but never the very biggest star.
Hi Lala!
Your feelings about which albums should be bigger or weaker may not portrait a definitive truth. All numbers are out there, detailed by format, you are free to challenge all of them to see if they are made up or not.
Thanks for your answer, I didn't know that. Her low sales in Europe still surprise me though.
How is P!nk comparable to Alicia or Miley. Her albums sold way better than Katy, Gaga or Rihanna. Her peak was also huge. Missundazstood sold 12 million. Which is more than any Beyoncé or Christina album.
She’s a rapper, female rap to be specific which is a non event outside US/Canada. Her sales are good for her genre. We all saw how she smashed once she started doing basic pop like Starships and Turn Me On.
There is nothing surprising. Black rappers never cracked europe in album sales like eminem did and the reason is very obvious, which eminem even accepted in song that he sells more records due to certain reasons. Rappers are known there but people don't purchase their music. No you all can act oblivious. Whereas likes of eminem accepted their privilege
Yeah, these were only included on the DVD portion as music videos. Never on the actual album CD.
