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By mid-2017, Post Malone was barely getting a name in North America while still unknown elsewhere.
From the explosion of Rockstar in late 2017 and during the next 5 years, he was unstoppable.
We have heard much less about his last two efforts Twelve Carat Toothache and Austin, with his genre moving into the pop / rock territory. How does that translate into sales?
[expand title="Get to know Post Malone" trigclass="noarrow"]
Post Malone's real name is Austin Richard Post. Born in July 4, 1995 in the state of New-York, U.S., he raised in Texas from the age of 9. Surrounded by music from a very young age, he started recording during his teenage years.
Post Malone was first regarded as a rapper. He actually began playing rock music, but started to break through in 2015 with a hip hop / pop crossover sound. His recent output has been moving into pop / rock territory.
5. Post Malone issued his debut album Stoney in 2016, follow up Beerbongs & Bentleys in 2018 and Hollywood's Bleeding in 2019. In 2022, he returns with Twelve Carat Toothache, and then Austin in 2023.
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It's not easy to follow up a breakthrough success as big as Rockstar. The song went to #1 in virtually every English-speaking market, the US, the UK, Canada, Australia, Ireland, New-Zealand, but also all over Scandinavia and multiple more countries.
He confirmed this success with ease still. Psycho, Better Now, Sunflower, Wow, Goodbyes, and Circles all went on to become highly popular.
It raises questions as to how big the American artist really is now that he is up to 5 albums.
The Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC)
As usual, I'll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge his results.
This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Post Malone's albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity.
If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.
There are two ways to understand this revolutionary concept. The first is the Scribe video posted below. If you are unaware of the CSPC method, you will get the full idea within just a few minutes.
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If you are a mathematical person, and want to know the full method as well as formulas, you can read the full introduction article.
Now let's get into the artist's sales figures in detail in order to apply this concept and define the act's true popularity!
Post Malone Albums Sales
Updated Studio Album Sales & Comments
[wpdatatable id=30 var1=246dkjvS1zLTtiykXe5h60]
Artists who have been able to build a fan base before the collapse of pure sales can enjoy some purchases. It's rarely the case of true newcomers though.
This is ever truer for urban artists as their followers have made the transition to streaming services for many years already.
Results of Post Malone's pure sales are thus not outstanding, although they are definitely gaining traction as they are now getting collected thanks to their highly positive critical reception.
The last couple of albums is failing to reproduce this success though.
Combined, in spite of limited releases in many markets, these albums add up for 2.25 million.
Want to compare Post Malone's albums with others?
Post Malone Songs Sales
Below, we list down results from the artist through physical sales, digital sales and streaming.
Please be aware that when the artist is regarded as the lead act, he is rewarded with 100% of these units, while featured acts share among them a 50% piece of the totals.
Physical Singles Sales
[wpdatatable id=27 var1=246dkjvS1zLTtiykXe5h60]
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
To the surprise of nobody, Post Malone did next to nothing there. One could have expected that none of his songs ever came out in physical formats.
Many of them did though, mostly as collectors. Sales in absolute terms remain tiny.
Digital Songs
[wpdatatable id=28 var1=246dkjvS1zLTtiykXe5h60]
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.
The career of the rap star is so young that even downloads were dying when he started making some noise.
Giving this context, it's quite impressive to see Rockstar closing in 2.3 million sales. It is his top seller up to date.
From his debut, there are 3 singles with similar sales, all over a million, these are White Iverson, I Fall Apart and Congratulations.
Songs from Hollywood's Bleeding have been immense too. Sunflower is over 1.5 million, one of the greatest selling songs outside of China since its release to date.
Circles and Wow are both very strong as well, at over 900,000 and over 800,000, respectively.
All singles plus album cuts register nice scores, with a career total which stands at 17 million sales in this format.
Streaming
Streaming is made up of audio and video streams. Our CSPC methodology includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track.
The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. To factor in the growing impact of multiple Asian countries where these platforms aren't always the go-to site for music streaming, more sources have been added.
In order to account for their real popularity in each relevant country, the below sources have been used along with the mentioned ratios that reflect the market share of each area.
Audio Streams
– South Korea: Genie streams * 2.20 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan: AWA streams * 100 / 4 (AWA has 4% of the Japanese streaming market)
– Arabic world: Anghami streams
– Sub-Saharan Africa: Boomplay + Audiomack streams
– Elsewhere: Spotify streams * Spotify market shares based on artists' market distribution
Video Streams
– China* : QQ video streams * 50 if the song is available for audio stream, QQ video streams * 5 elseway (scale built based on known figures for several major artists)
– Elsewhere : Youtube views increased by 10% to account for various local platforms
*since Chinese streaming platforms are mostly video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted on par with YouTube streams.
Audio Stream value – 1,500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 6,750 views equal 1 album unit
Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * ArtistRatio + Genie * 2.20 + AWA * 100 / 4 + Anghami + Boomplay + Audiomack ) / 1500 + ( QQ views* 50(or 5) + YouTube * 1.1 ) / 6750
Top Hits
Post Malone records the incredible feat of having 8 hits at 1.4+ billion streams on Spotify alone. No other artist does that well.
Rockstar has been leading for long, now with 2.81 billion, plus 2.58 billion on YouTube. It's the 11th most streamed song of all-time in the former platform.
Incredibly, this isn't enough to lead anymore. Late 2018 hit Sunflower is now 6th biggest of all-time on Spotify, and it's Post Malone's most global hit, with the best scores in Japan, China as well as YouTube at 3 billion.
Both songs are over 4 million equivalent album sales from streams. Only Ed Sheeran can claim the same feat.
The song ended up being part of Hollywood's Bleeding tracklist as well as early hits Wow and Goodbyes.
The former is one more large billionaire while the latter is over the mark by now too. Circles, issued just before the album release, is his third 2 billion performer on Spotify.
Both Sunflower and Circles are among the 10 longest running Top 10 hits of all-time in the US, with 33 and 39 weeks, respectively.
From Beerbongs & Bentleys, two more songs do wonders, Better and Psycho add for 4.6 million EAS from streams alone.
In sharp contrast with the first 3 albums, albums Twelve Carat Toothache and Austin struggle to make a real impact. At least, after very bad initial numbers, the former got two decent hits with I Like You and One Right Now, each with around 800,000 EAS from streams.
From Austin, only Chemical makes the singer's top 40 at the bottom of the list.
His success remains more modest in Asian platforms so far although it is improving as time goes by.
In terms of albums, Hollywood's Bleeding leads the way with a stunning 16.25 million equivalent album sales.
Full catalog breakdown
If you are familiar with the artist's catalog and want to check details of each and every song, you can access to all of them right here.
Keep yourself up to date
Our website provides you a fantastic tool which fetches updated Spotify streams as you request them, use it to watch these results grow day after day!
Post Malone Career CSPC Results
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each album by Post Malone achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]
It would be easy, but highly wrong, to claim that Post Malone sales aren't impressive because they are made mostly of streams.
The fact is that streams take longer to amass large numbers than sales. It takes billions of plays, and even more minutes of people listening to them.
To reach numbers as incredible as 13 million for Stoney and 17 million for Beerbongs & Bentleys in a relatively short time is then pretty outstanding.
The release Hollywood's Bleeding has been an unreal success story as well, closing in 18 million, ultimately beating his strong predecessors.
Clearly, the most recent albums are nowhere near these numbers. Twelve Carat Toothache mid-run has been good though, now over 3 million units. We will see if Austin can get a surprise hit too, for now it's way down at a million.
That career total of Post Malone is up to 55 million equivalent album sales.
Singles CSPC results
The list is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each song. Therefore, these figures are not merged units of singles formats. Instead, it includes weighted sales of the song's physical single, download, ringtone and streaming as well as its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
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Discography results
[xyz-ips snippet="ArtistASRstats"]
Records & Achievements
- At 13,081,000 EAS, Stoney is the 3rd most successful albums from 2016.
- At 17,115,000 EAS, Beerbongs & Bentleys is the most successful album from 2018.
- At 17,626,000 EAS, Hollywood's Bleeding is the most successful album from 2019.
- At 2,971,630,649 streams, Sunflower is the 6th most streamed song of all-time on Spotify.
- At 8, Post Malone has the second most songs over 1.4 billion streams on Spotify.
- At 39 weeks, Circles has the 4th longest run ever inside the US Hot 100 Top 10.
- At 33 weeks, Sunflower has the 7th longest run ever inside the US Hot 100 Top 10.
- All first 3 Post Malone albums are among the 20 most streamed ever on Spotify (in release order at 17, 7 and 4).
NB: EAS means Equivalent Album Sales.
Dynamic Spotify Key Performance Indicators
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs, Billboard.
You may be interested in...
... Post Malone's streaming masters analysis
... checking out the upcoming artists or even voting for them!
... best-selling artists, albums, and singles
We have created amazing cross-artists tops. Click to see all CSPC and raw sales results compiled so far!
... similar artists
To put Post Malone's figures into perspective, click to reach career breakdowns of similar artists:
I'm really impressed with his numbers. There are artists with more streams in absolute terms but I think Post Malone has the highest ratio of streams to overall EAS of any artist you've covered so far. Is it accurate to say he's the highest-selling act to have debuted in 2015 or later, as well?
Hi Orange,
Yes, that's completely true! He is hands down the biggest artist to emerge in the last few years!
Legend, but can we do Sam Smith next because we’re their third era no update since their debut
Hi, how does HB compare with WWAFA. Given the 4 months gap since the update I’m guessing it’s rn a 700-800k lead? But HB outstreams and is newer.
Is there a chance it can catch up? Or Is it unlikely.
If he does manage it and has the biggest album released in 2018 and 2019, would he be the first artist since Beatles to top 2 years back to back?
Hi again Fanofpop!
You are perfectly right, if updated now WWWAFA would be on about 9.8 million. There's always a chance especially with Sunflower and Circles continuing to do so well, but 800k is a lot to catch up against an album doing as well as WWWAFA, which also sells very decently. At least for now I would expect Billie to stay ahead, this can change if Malone returns with another successful album soon.
In case this happens, he would join Elvis, the Beatles and Celine Dion, who's the last to do it in 96/97.
i'm interested to see how his new album will perform seeing that his recent singles underperformed and it has been almost 3 years since his last album, in those years the musical landscape moved on from its 2017-2019 pop trap phase.
So it's safe to say Posty is the artist with the most 10mil sellers since streaming took over? Or am I missing some super obvious artist?
For now yes, but BTS has 1 10m+ seller and 3 more in the pipeline all with 8.5m+ so depending on how his new album performs he will either be tied at 4 or surpassed if the new album underperforms
Looking at how well physicals are moving for them, they will have at least 4 this year. If not more.
Hello, I have been a fan of this page, but there is something that has always bothered me. Why on the cspc results singles chart are album sales spread across songs based on streaming numbers? I think they should also count digital and physical sales to better reflect the impact. This is much more important for older artists like the Beatles or Madonna, there we would see a lot of difference. Or what is the reason why they only use streaming?
he and billie are same case ..both were fueled by their aesthetic and celebrity rather of artistry.. their music was more known because of their publicized personality and once that novel aesthetic became old people started to move, they moved from billie faster ( her second album) than post ( his fourth album) but she still has loyal fanbase something post seems to don't ....
Digital and Physical singles sales are being counted. Read the introduction and read older artists page. The Beattles and Madonna are among the biggest Physical Single seller and their Single Sales are being weighted proportionally. Streamings takes a bigger share these days because nobody buys albums or singles anymore. They just stream it.
