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Thank you for update!
It's great to see prople still love a classic rock bands.
The figure 2 120 000 for Bohemian Rhapsody soundtrack seems wayyy too small.
According to United world chart, during 2018 and 2019 years it was sold 4 077 000 units.
1.329.000 equivalent sales from 2018 - http://www.mediatraffic.de/albums-2018.htm
2.748.000 equivalent sales from 2019 - http://www.mediatraffic.de/albums-2019.htm
According to the same source,
Queen's Greatest Hits during 2019 had 1.297.000 equivalent sales
and Queen's Platinum Collection - 1.253.000 equivalent sales.
http://www.mediatraffic.de/albums-2019.htm.
Has it been evaluated in the study??
Mediatraffic is as far from a credible source for album sales as you get, first of all does these figures include a lot of streaming which is why they're so high.
2.12M is pure sales, mediatraffic is a points system that varies wildly between albums (for the two biggest soundtracks of 2018 it literally inflated for Bohemian Rhapsody and deflated for A Star Is Born).
I think it much depends on that if there will be a sequel - another movie about Freddie from 1985 till his death, what could cause another boost of Queen sales (rumors says it could be). If no sequel - maybe only after 30-50 years Queen will catch Elvis.
According to MJD opinion and methodology, Classic Queen isn't the same album as Greatest Hits II, just for America market.
No, I don't think so. But still, they are very very popular around the whole world.
There is nothing strange, considering that Queen nowadays (actually from 1984 and this gap becomes even bigger post Classic Queen album era) are much more popular in Europe than USA, and just various complications of hits sell pretty well in N. America, but not studio albums, when they were released (from 1984).
The 1991 version sold 150k copies there in recent years thanks to a CD and DL release in 2011 plus a vinyl release in 2017.
Nice work! Based on your data some nice analogies can be made. For example, three big British bands of different decades that are relatively less succesful in the States, aren't usually considered to be artistically hailed, though loved by large numbers of fans. Oasis sold almost 50 ml albums, of those almost 27 in Europe, according to this website, while Dire Straits, with also one bestseller, sold just above 100 ml albums worldwide, 57 in Europe. Queen , whose Bohemian Rhapsody is the only pre-2000 song that is streamed more than Wonderwall, now sold almost 200 ml albums, 97 in Europe. So the numbers double while the band is a decade older. Too much a coincidence to not be mentioned ;-).
Great work by MJD and the team!
Queen have had a huge boost in their numbers since this was last updated.
There is one thing that I've noticed that doesn't look right.
The Spotify streaming total for 'Who Wants To Live Forever' seems too low. There appears to be two versions of the track that have nearly streamed the same total. The original version on the album (up to today) has been streamed 47,211,974 times. This version run-time is 5 mins, 16 seconds.
There is another version of the song though that is on Greatest Hits 2 that is a different version (it's run-time is 4 mins 55 seconds) and has 47,342,440 times. I only noticed the difference when I ran the numbers app on your website- it is listed right near the end of the results next to 'I'm Slightly Mad' and Hammer to Fall.
If you also add the 3 other versions of WWTLF on Spotify - the remix 'Forever' at 14,003,861, the Live At Wembley version at 3,838, 343 and the Live At Budapest versions to the 2 versions you get a total of 115,183,812 and even with the extra time the versions have had to add streams since this analysis was done it should have easily exceeded 110,000,000 in total rather then the 67,514,000 figure you ended up with?
I always thought the WWTLF Spotify number was low compared to some of their other tracks so I'm assuming these 2 versions being streamed almost identically in number is the reason?
OK, so they beat Madonna in SALES.
She beats them in cultural impact and music influences as well as worldwide popularity. Queen are right now at their most popular, Madonna had decades of MJ level popularity, even if she is not nearly as big now.
