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My bad, thanks for noticing guys, the final table is now updated!
With regards to ASR, for the EDS part does it work like this? (Didn’t fully understand the explanation in the article. Or how Taylor’s was created
Artist A has 6 albums that sold 10m CSPC and orphan that sold 20m
Their EDS would be (10/80)*10m=1.25m per album
Is orphan EDS 0 or 5m
CSPC is 80m
ASR = sqrt (80m) * sqrt(7.5m)
or
ASR=sqrt(80m) * sqrt(12.5m)
Artist B has 8 albums that sold 10m
CSPC is 80m
EDS is 1.25m per album (10m total)
ASR = sqrt (80m) * sqrt(10m)
Taylor’s BB sales were reported yesterday here’s the change from July 2019
Fearless — 7.21 million (+0.03M)
1989 — 6.25 million (+0.06M)
Taylor Swift — 5.75 million (+0.03M)
Speak Now — 4.71 million (+0.03M)
RED — 4.49 million (+0.04M)
reputation — 2.28 million (+0.05M)
Lover — 1.22 million (NEW)
Holiday Collection — 1.08 million (=)
folklore — 1.04 million (NEW)
Sales increase since her last update on July 2019
But like this article assumes that all her first 4 albums didn’t increase, 1989 increased by 10K and rep by 20k. Did other countries estimated sales decrease?
Link
A sale is a sale, a mothly subscription on Apple Music in China costs only 10 RMB, while it's 9.99 dollars in US, and an album costs 10~15 dollars on iTunes. You'd better learn some economics.
If you think the price compared to US should take into considration, why not "discount" sales in Turkey and Russia and "double" the sales in Japan due to the price? Each country has their own cosumpstion level, those “transition” is not reasonable.
Hi Fanofpop!
There are 2 elements to consider there. The first is the update date, to be 100% transparent, I first updated Taylor's numbers this summer, in late August IIRC, but then I got all the issues with the server and all (I'm still working on adapting various developments related to the tools to move into a new server), so these publications have been delayed. I re-updated figures for recent albums and easy ones (streams, Chinese DLs etc) but I haven't gone through the whole process of update.
All figures were still within' 10k between my spreadsheet for SS estimates and the figures communicated by BB yesterday.
The reason why you don't see these new sales impacting the totals as much is because in the past there were a lot of copies left on shelves (for all albums). That's why even if my figures haven't increased as much, they remain higher thana SS figures (minus Reputation which is 10k short). Over the last 12 years digital sales exploded, and then orders through online sites like Amazon, and now there are a lot of physicals getting sold in B2B through official artist sites (and Taylor is a perfect example). Thus my estimates of copies net shipped but yet to be sold is lower and lower as years pass. By 2010, I would have considered that a good selling catalog album would have 50,000 to 100,000 copies to be sold on shelves, in 2020 I expect this figure to be closer to 10,000 to 20,000. Since all figures displayed in our articles are aimed to reflect net shipment, that explains why new increases are in general lower than newly sold units on tracking systems like Soundscan.
Thank you for the explanation MJD, I did notice that the 35.1m number is still higher than her current SS total, and all the sales are within 1% anyways so it's just a time thing I guess. Can I ask you a q about the ASR formula?
With regards to ASR, for the EDS part does it work like this? (Didn’t fully understand the explanation in the article with regard to orphan units. Or how Taylor’s 205 was created
Artist A has 6 albums that sold 10m CSPC and orphan that sold 20m
Their EDS would be (10/80)*10m=1.25m per album
Is orphan EDS 0 or 5m
CSPC is 80m
ASR = sqrt (80m) * sqrt(7.5m)
or
ASR=sqrt(80m) * sqrt(12.5m) (with orphan counted)
or
EDS=(10/60)*10=1.66m per album
total EDS=10m
ASR=sqrt(80m)*sqrt(10m)
Hi again fanofpop!
You can't convert album sales in EDS sales this way. They need to be weighted thanks to the strength of their content. The key later on EDS is the D, equivalent Discography sales.
Artist A has 6 albums at 10 million each. For the fake of the example, let consider that the 6th album is a compilation instead of an album. Let consider too that each of the 5 studio albums have the exact same content value (= they have the same total of streaming units right now), so each account for 20% of streams of the artist total. We will also assume there are no orphan songs.
Thus, each of the 5 studio albums that sold 10m reflect 2m (10m * 20%) "discography sales", because 20% of the discography's strength was purchased 10m times.
The compilation owns the main hits of all albums, we will consider they amount for 80% of the total streams form the discography of the artist. Its 10m sales conclude on 8m discography sales. The reasoning is that a record encapsulating 80% of a discography value will impact negatively future sales to the same consumer than an album reflecting 20%. This consumer is satisfied with 1 purchase, while the one that went through the studio albums earlier had to buy all of them to get all the hits.
So in this example, the EDS will be 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 8 = 18 million. It means the 60m sales equal to 18 million persons purchasing material adding for 100% of the artist discography value.
In this case, ASR = sqrt (60m) * sqrt(18m) = 32.86 million. Considering Michael Jackson's ASR (who's the reference in the Base 1000 scale) is 176.53 million, the artist A final ASR indicator will be 186 (1000 * 32.86 / 176.53).
Now consider instead the artist A sold 20m singles units with orphan tracks. These orphan tracks reflect 40% of the discography value, one song that sold 12m is responsible for half of it, then the rest is made of small songs with 2% of the discography streams each.
Their EDS value will be: 12m * 20% + 8m * 2% = 2.4m + 160k = 2.56m.
The artist total would be 1.2 + 1.2 + 1.2 + 1.2 + 1.2 + 8 + 2.56 = 16.56 million. The first 5 values of 1.2 are the studio albums (sold 10m, but in total they now add for only 60% of the total streams since orphans make up 40% of them), the 8m doesn't change since the compilation will typically also include the largest orphan songs.
You can notice that in spite of a larger CSPC, the EDS is lower, which means the discography was better milked commercially speaking (by having a lot of records, sales are diluted and chances that consumers go after several records are higher).
The ASR will still post an increase since the CSPC is larger. ASR = sqrt (80m) * sqrt(16.56m) = 36.40 million. The indicator (base 1000) will then be 206.
Hi MJD, you noted above that one chinese download is 0.4 for every 1 Taylor album but I see Folklore Asian album sales being 45.000 while Folklore has 900.000 digital sales in China alone. If we multiply 900k by 0.4(your weighting method to balance cheap Chinese downloads and Western downloads), we would get 360k album sales from China alone, but why are Folklore Asian album sales given at a 45.000-mark only, I am surprised. Thanks for your reply beforehand
[…] more. Four million more copies than Taylor Swift’s best-selling album, 1989, at just over ten million […]
I'm pointing out that not releasing albums on streaming will inflate pure sales, did you read my comment?
Gap on YT: 4B
Apple Music doesn't release data, but they have reported in the past that Rihanna was their most streamed female ( https://www.macrumors.com/2018/03/12/rihanna-most-streamed-female-artist-apple-music/#:~:text=Rihanna%20is%20the%20worl d's%20most,%2C%20Beyonc%C3%A9%2C%20and%20Ariana%20Grande.).
Amazon Music is an extremely small market.
Amazon Music is not a major streaming platform, YouTube generates significantly less revenue (hence why it is weighted less than audio streams in every consumption metric - IFPI, Billboard, etc), and Rihanna is more streamed on Apple Music, per their last update. QQ is hard to get a read on and Gaana's total contribution is minimal.
Sorry, but Taylor Swift is more streamed than Rihanna on Apple Music. That update you posted is from 2018. In 2019, Apple updated the list again. https://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/pop/8501699/apple-top-streaming-female-artists-international-womens-day
"Apple Music's most-streamed female artists of all time:
1. Ariana Grande
2. Taylor Swift
3. Rihanna"
And mind you, that was before the first single off of Lover was even released. So Taylor's gap on that platform over Rihanna has only grown.
As for "Amazon not being a major streaming service" its early 2020 subscriber count was close to Apple's (55m for Amazon vs. 60m for Apple). https://9to5mac.com/2020/01/23/amazon-music-subscriber-numbers/
I would consider it to be major...
Thank you so much for the reply that makes more sense now. So is the % of discography measured purely by streams?
e.g artist a has three albums
album A sold 10m CSPC 20% streams
B sold 20m, 10% of streams
C sold 5m 70% of streams
it would be 2+2+3.5?
like if the first album has 12% of discography streaming units then it’s multiplied by 12%.
or is it like pure is broken down into pure
single sales is broken down into singles
streams is broken down as well
sorry for all the qs, it’s clear I still have a lot to learn about it.
If it’s possible, as you post more artists and updates over the next few months could you share a couple more updates on different artists asr?
Hi Frank! As mentioned by Fanofpop it stands at 454,000 🙂
Folklore is a bit more expensive than her remaining albums in China, at 25 Yuan, so the factor is 25/50 = 0.5. By the date of the article, it was at 908,000 as shown on "Compilation sales figures listing" section.
This Chartmasters is biased 🤮🤢 they would never do that. They are Lady Gaga haters wbk
