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Interesting list, the opposite of one-hit wonders in a way. Of course MJ is a special case having released so few albums, and Elvis peaked before the album era.
I'd just note that Metallica's total includes Garage Inc which is partly a compilation, I get why you class it as a studio album but considering its total is barely over 10m we might argue they only have 7 "real" studio albums, and therefore the top 5 acts on this list are somewhat detached from the rest.
Actually I just remembered that Come On Over's "international" version mix removed the country elements, and I think it was also the case for the single versions in the US.
Even if we just subtract this international version (about 20m I guess) it seems possible that Fearless could pass it eventually.
She literally lost atleast half million sales from China by not releasing there. I wonder why this time😭
I agree with the Eagles, HC is definitely not country, if we throw every Americana/Folk record in the country basket then we will also need to add Rumours or Tapestry there, these aren't country the way we percieve it really.
About COO, we can't ignore the international sales, if we do that then we discard Fearless too. I'm old enough to remember the release of Love Story, and that one got a "Pop mix" for international markets just like COO's songs.
I'm not quite sure we are comprehensive among top selling country albums, some could be over 20m, including unexpected ones like Johnny Cash with His Hot and Blue Guitar, Lenny Rogers' Gambler or Patsy Cline's Showcase, and then a bit below many records on 10m+ sales more obvious ones like Dixie Chicks' big albums, Billy Ray Cyrus' debut, etc. I think for one we may be missing a good chunk of what would be Country's top 20 albums ever.
True about Love Story's "international version" but the difference is that the entirety of COO was remixed, so technically it's not a country album. But then it gets complicated with EAS/CSPC totals because even in the US singles had a pop mix... OK my head is hurting too much now.
You might be right about other country albums being possibly around 20m though I can't think of one selling much more than that. I'd definitely love to see the country artists who have a shot at 100m (namely Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers) being studied but looking at the leaderboard rn it should take a while...
Eras tour has now 151 shows worldwide including 50 shows in stan twitter and atrl's precious europe. She has multiple albums charting everywhere in Europe. When she tours there next year, her discography gonna get more boost. If it was only europe tour only, it would be still one of biggest tours of all time with it only. Madonna the biggest female artist ever, her tour sweet tour had 42 shows in Europe for example. I guess Taylor isn't doing bad for someone who supposedly does bad there! In amount of stadium shows, does any other female artist have done more than 50 stadiums there? ( note stadiums, not small arenas ) .
It doesn't seem so:
Adele toured mostly Arenas on her 25 tour (which is kinda wild in retrospect)
Madonna's sticky and sweet tour was a combo of arenas, stadiums and a bunch of shows in parks. I would say sticky/sweet has a bigger geographic footprint in Europe (Serbia, Estonia, Gothenburg for instance are places Taylor didn't tour) but Taylor very clearly was just hitting big markets, she could have probably hit Gothenburg or Estonia for instance, but in Belgrade or Budva or Sofia who knows
-- also in many of these park shows the attendance is for sure comparable to stadiums
MDMA didn't have a comparable amount of European stadiums but again had some more diversity like shows in Moscow (which to be fair to Taylor would be impossible rn) and Istanbul (which Taylor could probably sell out at least one night)
-- Frankly though a lot of the attendance's are a lot lower than Taylor's dates will be, for instance in most of the stadium's the attendances are in the 30000's
Pink's Beautiful Trauma had way less dates and a lower geographic diversity
Celine's taking chances didn't sell out many of the stadiums it booked, which already sold way less tickets than they could've (ex. 20k tickets in Olympiastadion in Munich, of which only 17k were sold and the venue's capacity is 70k)
Yeah but point is selling out most stadiums. She has the record. Tina Turner dis 100 plus shows in Europe during one tour but most were arenas.. With 3 million people attending. That might be record in terms of attendance
US Weekly Pure Sales for the week ending 11/24 Hits DD Final Chart (week leading up to black friday)
1989 TV -- 63,484
Midnights -- 21,004
Lover -- 18,016
Folklore -- 19,902
Speak Now TV -- 19,372 (more than it's SEA!)
Red TV -- 14,455
reputation OG -- 1,144
evermore -- 7,957
Fearless TV -- 10,993
Total -- 176,327 from those 9 projects (The other projects add for a marginal couple thousand, perhaps 180k total across her discography)
Taylor is most streamed artist on spotify india ( international). Local queen to india. Her equivalent units makes perfect sense when u see her penetrating markets with massive populations. Streaming hasn't inflated numbers. But actually has made music reach new audience. So the numbers match the demand.
200m by the end of 2024 is pretty much guaranteed. Let's see how high she can go
On Asian Countries YE Wrapped Lists
Indonesia: #1 overall
Japan: #31 overall, #7 female, #1 western artist
Malaysia: #1 overall
Pakistan: #8 overall, #1 female, #1 western artist
Philippines: #1 overall
Saudi Arabia: #1 overall
Singapore: #1 overall
UAE: #1 overall
Vietnam: #7 overall, #1 female, #1 western artist
Couldn't find the playlists for Thailand, Taiwan or HK
Nothing, good for her. Waiting for year end charts to come out now, hope midnights end up in t10 in lot of them.
Keep changing the goal post. She is overall most streamed artist across the world. That is most important thing.!
She is number one western artist. How she isn't huge? She is biggest western artist there.
That's just spotify though. I know countries have their own streaming services like Angami in Middle East. Or has Spotify surpassed them all?
Midnights is now the most streamed album on Spotify in 2023. I wonder if it can go #1 on the IFPI album chart this year
A #2-#1 run would be very impressive
She was #3 last year on Anghami and will likely be the most streamed international artist on Anghami this year. She's a multi-platform international phenomenon 🙂
Taylor is disadvantaged on Spotify because she's huge in the US and Asia where Spotify has a lot of competition. That's why her artist ratio on Chartmasters is around 1.8 while most artists are around 1.5.
She made 100 million dollars from spotify alone in 2023 according to billboard.
( no production cd cost there). And she sells lots of physicals. Like she sold little less than 5 million album pure in USA . I wonder globally how much pure she sold in streaming era. At this point, she is money printing machine. She is like rock artists. Singles hit or not, her main point is selling album and her catalog. Charting multiple albums in every continent. Which differentiate her from other female artists. And no greatest hits to eat her catalog
