The twelfth album from Colombian icon Shakira, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, is out. A hits filled collection that adds another successful era, to the already successful career of the singer-songwriter.

In fact, each of her albums released over the last 30 years, from 1995's Pies Descalzos to 2024's new set, have moved over 3 million units.

Today, we review the career and the discography in numbers, to see how Shakira defied odds to become the best selling Latin female artist of all-time.

Looking at the big picture: Shakira

Early days and career (1977-1993)

Born on February 2 1977 in Barranquilla, Colombia, Shakira Isabel Mebarak Ripoll was the only child of William Mebarak Chadid and Nidia Ripoll Torrado, although she had eight half-siblings from her father's previous marriage.

Her Catholic family was comprised of a rich background of Spanish and Lebanese decent, with distant Italian origins, although her father was born and raised in New York City, US.

From an early age, Shakira started to engage in many different interests, ranging from writing to singing to dancing. Taking every opportunity she could to perform, she started gaining some popularity in Barranquilla, by participating in various different events.

A theatre producer, by the name of Monica Ariza, arranged a meeting and audition for her, in front of Sony executives, which led to her being offered a 3 album contract. Staggeringly, she was only 13 years of age, at this point.

A year later, her debut album Magia was released. Impressively, 5 of the 9 tracks were written by herself. Sadly for her, it was a commercial failure, but she was afforded a second chance at success, with 1993s Peligro, unfortunately this didn't fare much better.

Both albums have long been out of print. Although regarded as promising by critics, back in the day, Shakira regards them as immature and not reflective of who she became as an adult, refusing to reissue them.

Smashing in Latin America (1995-2000)

With the disappointment of her first two albums, Shakira put her musical career on a backburner and focused on a change of direction, by starring in El Oasis, a Colombian TV-series, in 1994. At the same time, she issued the song ¿Dónde Estás Corazón? for a local rock themed compilation.

Unexpectedly, the song started to take off on radio, which led to Sony Music commissioning Shakira to record a third album, on the back of this hit single. In October 1995, Pies Descalzos was released.

The record became a huge hit in Colombia, before gaining traction in other Latin American territories. ON the back of this success, it was released in the US, in February 1996, where it went on to sell over a million copies.

This success made her one of the biggest names in Latin music and songs like Estoy Aquí, Antología and Pies Descalzos, Sueños Blancos became instant classics. Shakira wrote the entire album along with her producer Luis Fernando Ochoa.

Her following album Dónde Están los Ladrones? was produced by Emilio Estefan. Known to most as the husband of Gloria Estefan, he would go on to be responsible for the explosion in Latin music in the late 90s. After greatly contributing to the success of his wife, he helped nurture and establish artists like Ricky Martin, Thalia, Marc Anthony and Jennifer Lopez, amongst others.

Ladrones repeated the outstanding success of its predecessor, with massive singles in the Latin sphere like Ciega, Sordomuda, Inevitable, or Ojos Asi. The album sold well but only reached #131 in the US, which was mainly due to Soundscans limited coverage and collection of data from Latin music retailers, in the 90s. Released in late 1998, the album quickly achieved Platinum status by the end of 1999.

In the middle of an 8 singles run, she also released the critically and commercially acclaimed and hugely popular, MTV Unplugged live set.

A global phenomenon (2001-2006)

Having managed huge success with her works in Latin markets, Shakira decided to release her first crossover album. Laundry Service was the result, after the painstaking process of learning English.

Painstaking as this work was, it hugely paid of for her. The lead single, Whenever Wherever became a huge success in various territories. A #1 hit in most of continental Europe, including France, Italy, Germany and Spain, the song climbed to #2 in the UK and #6 in the US.

This paved the way perfectly for the album, Laundry Service, which debuted at #3 in the US and by the time she had finished it's promotion, she was proudly sitting on a 10 million global seller.

Despite debuting with such a monstrously successful English sung single, the diva proved it was no one of or fluke, as she continued this rich vein of success, with more hugely successful singles, such as Underneath Your Clothes and Objection (Tango). As we will see, from a commercial point of view, what really makes her stand out, are her truly gigantic songs.

In 2005, she returned with Oral Fixation, a project split over two volumes, with one album in Spanish and another in English. The Spanish album produced the single La Tortura, where she collaborated with Spain's top singer, Alejandro Sanz. The song did wonders given it was sung in Spanish, making the top 10 in many countries. In the US, the song topped the Latin chart for 25 weeks, an all-time record at the time, while the album's opening frame of 157,000 copies was an all-time high for a Latin record.

The best had yet to come though. While her heyday might have felt over, considering the very cold reception of the English release Oral Fixation vol 2 and its lead single Don't Bother, the second track was about to completely banish that perception and view. Hips Don't Lie quite simply slayed everywhere, from the US to France to Australia to India to the UK to Latin America to Italy to the Middle East, it performed fantastically well.

Featuring Wyclef Jean, the festive tune became the anthem of the 2006 football World Cup and remains a stadium favorite to this day. While every year the music industry has its share of global hits, Hips Don't Lie even made it big in countries that barely even listen to English-speaking songs, making it a one of a kind success.

Roller coaster years (2007-2010)

She followed it with a feature on Beyonce's Beautiful Liar. It became her 3rd chart topper in Germany, France and Italy, it also made it to the top in the UK, while it peaked at 3 in the US.

In 2009, her comeback album She Wolf had mixed fortunes, performing well in some territories but not so well in others, although the title track, issued as the lead single, did perform rather well overall.

It really would not be overstating things to say that Whenever, Wherever and Hips Don't Lie became genuine sports anthems, during the 2002 and 2006 football World Cups, so it was little surprise that Shakira was asked to record the official single for the 2010 edition, Waka Waka (This Time for Africa) was there.

For the third time in her career, she dropped a track that went mainstream all over the world, managing to penetrate though to way more than just your regular music consumers. Another #1 in countless countries, the song has more than 5 billion overall views on YouTube, the most viewed pre-2011 song, a perfect illustration of the global reach of this track.

Ironically, it peaked at the rather lowly positions of #21 in the UK and #38 in the US, although even in these countries it ended up becoming a best seller in the long term.

On the heels of the success of Waka Waka, Shakira released her first Spanish language album in 5 years with Sale el Sol.

As happened with all her Latin releases since 1995, it smashed in Latin America. Sale el Sol also managed to do wonders in other markets, like in France where it attained Diamond status, selling half a million copies. It was supported by the smash hit Loca as well as Rabiosa.

Side projects and personal life-axed years (2010-2013)

After dating Argentine lawyer Antonio de la Rúa from 2000 to 2010, Shakira met the football player Gerard Piqué, while shooting the video for Waka Waka. They started a relationship the following year and had their first child at the start of 2013. A second child would follow in 2015.

In 2010, she debuted S by Shakira, her own beauty line, which mostly sells perfumes. In both 2013 and 2015, she was a judge on American TV show The Voice.

Her musical output naturally reduced during these years, although she still issued a live rendition of Je L'Aime à Mourir, a cover of the French classic by Francis Cabrel. It went to #1 in both France and Belgium. She became the first artist ever to top the former country's chart with songs in 3 different languages.

The Latin Queen (2014-now)

Shakira returned in 2014 with the eponymous album and her last English effort to date. The lead single Can't Remember to Forget You was heavily anticipated as it featured Barbadian star Rihanna. Ultimately, Dare (La La La) was nearly as big, again becoming a hit for the World Cup.

The album itself though sold quite poorly and again Shakira was in a situation where her career looked to have peaked and her best days were behind her. Needless to say, this would yet again be a false perception and yet again, she impressively turned things around.

With the explosion of streaming, the importance of Latin markets began to grow and she began to focus on Spanish songs again. 2016 proved to be another big year for her. It started with her providing a voiceover in the animated movie Zootopia, as well as singing the theme song Try Everything. Then, her back to back songs La Bicicleta and Chantaje with fellow Colombian stars Carlos Vives and Maluma, respectively, smashed hard.

The former track won both Record and Song of the Year prizes at the Latin Grammy Awards, same as La Tortura a decade earlier. They were both eventually included on 2017's El Dorado, which also featured Me Enamoré and Perro Fiel.

She was under the spotlight again in 2020, as she performed at the halftime of the Super Bowl LIV along with Jennifer Lopez. The following year, she sold her catalogue of 145 songs, to Hipgnosis Songs Fund. While the amount has remained undisclosed, it's assumed it was easily a 9 figure amount.

Over the last couple of years, she has repeated this recipe many times, with additional hits like Te Felicito, Monotonia, Bzrp Music Session vol 53, TQG and more. Several of these famously refer to her 2022 separation from Gerard Piqué, which created a massive buzz online. They are all part of 2024's album Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran, which accumulated billions of streams on both Spotify and YouTube even before it came out.

Shakira album sales

Updated studio album sales & comments

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Despite her ups and down, from 1995 to 2010 Shakira managed to sell at least 1.75 million with all her releases. Of course, her peak came with Laundry Service, her most global album to date. It is now over 13 million sales.

The remaining 6 albums from that period sold an average of 3.7 million. An impressive feat is, that her Latin albums sold just as much as her English efforts. It's especially impressive once we consider that the market was never as high as it should have been in Latin America, due to heavy piracy. Still, Pies Descalzos and Dónde Están los Ladrones? combine for a stunning 5 million copies in the region.

Starting from the release of Shakira in 2014, numbers go down sharply. No surprise there, as the arrival of streaming replaced historical pure sales, even more so in Latin America, than elsewhere. With that in mind, we understand why the numbers of the 2024 album Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran are what they are.

With over 36 million pure album sales, Shakira is easily among the best selling Latin acts ever.

Want to compare the act's albums with others?

Shakira 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, they are rewarded with 100% of these units. However, featured acts share a 50% piece of the total.

Physical singles

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As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between albums and digital singles.

During the 90s, album sales were good in Latin America but singles sales were almost non-existent. Most of Shakira early singles only sold a few units, mostly thanks to limited edition packages.

By the time Whenever, Wherever was issued, the North American market had collapsed too. That being said, she did wonders in Europe, selling almost 1 million units of that song, in both France and Germany.

All together, Shakira sold 9.2 million physical singles. It obviously doesn’t look that impressive but in reality, at 3.7 million Whenever, Wherever is one of the very top selling post-2000 songs in this format.

What’s more, Hips Don’t Lie is just as well placed among post-2005 songs and very few songs released since 2010, can challenge Waka Waka in this field. Each of those three singles gained historical sales in the format, with their figures being limited only due to market constraints.

Additional songs did well too, with Underneath Your Clothes at 1.6 million, Objection (Tango) at 710,000 units and La Tortura at 530,000. Other singles supporting their parent album did well despite not selling as much by themselves, this includes the Carlos Santana collaboration Illegal or Gypsy.

Digital songs

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As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between albums and digital singles.

Similarly to physical sales, Shakira is somewhat poorly represented in digital sales. English-speaking countries, most notably the US and the UK, were been by far the leading download markets, along with South Korea. In these markets, amongst global stars of the last 25 years, she is probably one of those artists who’s gained their lowest share from this avenue.

This doesn’t mean she hasn’t sold downloads though, she clearly did, getting as high as 11 million with the gigantic smash Hips Don’t Lie. Waka Waka is runner up, at well over 8.5 million. US downloads make up only a fourth of that total.

Her top 10 is solid as well, with all songs being million sellers. Beautiful Liar and She Wolf are over 4m, Whenever, Wherever and La Tortura over 3m, while Loca stands at 2.5m. She has 13 tracks in 7 digits in total, spanning a total of15 years from 2001 to 2016.

In more recent years, downloads collapsed in a similar fashion to pure album sales, leading to very low numbers. Even a super hit like TQG with Karol G, has yet to sell 100,000 copies.

Overall, she moved over 62 million downloads and ringtones in her lifetime.

Streaming

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

Hips Don't Lie, despite being nearly 20 years old, dominates this list with outstanding numbers - over 1.6 billion on Spotify and 2.3 billion on YouTube. It's the most played track from its year of release, on both platforms.

Its streams represent 2 million equivalent album sales, just enough to hold off Waka Waka, which is on its way to 1 billion streams on Spotify, but its insane YouTube views, closing in on 6 billion, put it nearly as high overall.

The strength of Shakira on YouTube is indeed quite something. She scores 1 billion plus views with 13 distinct songs, and shoots to almost 45 billion once her entire discography is considered.

The diva is the perfect illustration of YouTube's historical strength in Latin America. In fact, El Dorado's era, which contains songs like Chantaje, La Bicicleta, or Perro Fiel, is the artist's biggest era in terms of YouTube views at 9 billion. Interestingly, her numbers also reveal how Latin America moved from YouTube to audio streaming platforms in recent years, as her biggest era on Spotify is no other than Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran with over 3.8 billion.

The fact that her numbers fit with the evolution of market mechanics, show the amazing resilience of Shakira. Her top selling album is Laundry Service from 2001. The era with the most singles sold is Sale el Sol from 2010. Her album with the most views is El Dorado, while the most audio streams come from Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran. And she made it big in the 90s!

Her new music continues to be very relevant to this day, with no end in sight. Her last two albums are responsible for 5 of her 8 most streamed songs.

One could wonder if her legacy catalog, now 25+ years old, will continue to do well, as people seem to largely listen to her new material, yet here, we see more outstanding results. Every track from Pies Descalzos is over 15 million streams on Spotify, and all songs from Dónde Están los Ladrones? are past 21 million.

These make them stone cold classics in the Latin field. Ladrones is the 2nd most listened to legacy album (pre-2010), only beaten by all-time top seller Romance by Luis Miguel.

Last but not least, Shakira claims 10 tracks over 100 million streams on Spotify, issued in the 90s, 12 from the 2000s, 15 from the 2010s and already 11 from the 2020s. Simply incredible.

Full catalogue 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!

Shakira compilations sales

Assigning compilation sales to original studio albums

How do you understand this table? For example, if we check the Grandes Exitos line, these figures mean it sold 1,985,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included in this package add for 3,853,204 equivalent album sales from streams across all formats.

The second part (on the right of the table) shows how many equivalent streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents in the overall package.

Therefore, the streaming figures convey that songs from Dónde Están los Ladrones? equate to 42% of Grandes Exitos' tracklist attractiveness. Meaning, it generated 835,000 of its 1,985,000 album sales and so on for the other records.

Raw compilations sales

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Re-assigned compilation sales – Results & comments

Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album’s success – the amount of compilation sales of all kinds it generated. Due to the dependency of sales of the original studio albums on these releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.

These numbers are obtained by applying the method from the section The distribution process to all packages listed under Compilation sales figures listing category.

We can see that the incredible strength of tracks from her first couple of albums, her label exploited them with several releases like The Remixes, MTV Unplugged and Grandes Exitos.

Bonus: Total album (all types) sales per country

Please note country-specific numbers may miss sales of a few minor releases, although totals are complete.

Shakira: career results (CSPC)

Albums results (CSPC)

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As expected Laundry Service finishes up as the most successful album from Shakira. At 19 million EAS across all formats, it is a highly valuable record, which continues to grow. It's poised to hit 20 million over the next years.

Both Oral Fixation, Vol 2 and Dónde Están los Ladrones? are close to each other, at around 10 million apiece. Sale El Sol is very strong as well, at over 8 million. At 7 million, Pies Descalzos completes her top 5.

The consistency of every album is impressive. Fijación Oral, Vol. 1 comes next at 6 million, El Dorado at 5 million, Las Mujeres Ya No Lloran and She Wolf at 4 million. Shakira. closes the list with 3 million, still quite healthy for the bottom end.

Topping 10 million daily streams on Spotify most days since the start of 2023, the future looks bright for the Colombian legend. She Wolf is also close to 1 million equivalent album sales from streams, her last album that needs to do so, so her entire output keeps climbing up the ladder.

So far, she records a whopping 82.5 million album sales in her career. This make her the most successful Latin female artist of all-time, topping the likes Gloria Estefan, Jennifer Lopez or Thalia.

Singles results (CSPC)

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Want to compare the act's songs with other top hits?

Discography results (ASR)

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Records & achievements

• At 82,611,000 EAS, Shakira is the most successful female Latin artist of all-time.
• At 18,943,000 EAS, Laundry Service is the most successful album from 2001.
• At 10,414,000 EAS, Oral Fixation Vol. 2 is the 10th most successful album from 2005.
• At 470,000 pure sales, Pies Descalzos is one of the highest selling albums ever in Colombia.
• At 3,702,500 physical units, Whenever, Wherever is one of the top 5 best selling singles issued since 2002.
• At 5.75 billion, Waka Waka (This Time For Africa) is the most viewed pre-2011 song on YouTube.
• Shakira is among the rare artists with songs over a billion streams on Spotify from 3 distinct decades.
• Shakira is the only artist with 10 or more songs over 100 million streams from 4 distinct decades.
• At 1,721,000 EAS, Dónde Están los Ladrones? is the most streamed 90s Latin album.
• Shakira helds 4 singles (Whenever Wherever, Hips Don’t Lie, Beautiful Liar and Waka Waka) which topped charts of at least 10 countries.
• At 19.89 billion streams on Spotify, Shakira is the most streamed female artist to debut before 2000.

Dynamic Spotify key performance indicators

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As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs, Billboard, Luminate.

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