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Read my comments on the previous page (Page 6), in reply to the same question from
"elliofun", for an explanation.
In all fairness, there is next to nothing between Madonna and Houston on Spotify and over 500m towards Houstons total, comes from the posthumous Higher Love single, which is really a Kygo track IMO. On top of that, Houstons death clearly helped elevate her streaming figures.
Also, if you were to exclude Careys abnormally and insanely popular Christmas track, her "normal" catalogue is pretty much in the same ball park as the other two.
Yes Whitney has a streaming era hit with "Higher Love", I forgot about it 😀
Even discounting Whitney's posthumous hit and Mariah's perennial Christmas hit I think that Madonna's numbers are a bit disappointing. If we discount Mariah's Christmas hit she and Madonna ends up with basically the same streaming numbers, something that honestly is surprising considering Mariah's limited appeal outside of the USA. Per example "Deaydream" has 500 mln streams on Spotify, almost the same as "Like a Virgin" and more than "True Blue", "Like a Prayer" and "Ray of Light". Songs like "Always be my Baby" or "Hero" have more spins than "Papa don't Preach" or "Frozen". "We belong toghether" has 100 mln more spins than "Hung up". I really think that Madonna's back catalog seriously underperforms on Spotify compare to Mariah and Whitney. I honestly didn't think she was in the same ballpark as them, I think she would be way ahead of them, like she is on pure sales term. I think that on one hand, she still suffers from the "American life" backlash that seriously damaged her reputation in America and also that several of her behaviours and choices of the past decade really damaged her brand in front of the newer generations. Mariah, per example, is much more disciplined and smarter while using social networks, take per example how she cleverly jumped on a "Tik Tok" challenge to revive "Obsessed", a song of hers that actually underperformed when released
I agree and I've often said, considering how huge Madonnas star was and how universal she was, that her current popularity is very, very disappointing.
Being British and being old enough to have witnessed all threes careers from the beginning, Madonna and Houstons tracks are just so much more well known and recognisable to me and I'd say the majority of Brits. They both have so many classic tracks, that transcended genre and became true mainstream hits, unlike Carey, who I'd say only really has All I Want and even that took years, to grow into the beast it has become.
I guess it must be a backlash against Madonna in the US because I'd still say to this day, in the UK, more of Madonnas back catalogue is known and played on radio, TV etc, than the other two. Saying that, the other two clearly have bigger, more popular tracks (All I Want.., I Wanna Dance.., and I Will Always..), just not as many.
Well here in Italy Madonna is insanely popular so, maybe that's why I am a bit schocked by her streaming results. Even relatively minor hits of her still get some airplay on the radio like "Who's that girl", "Secret" or "You'll see". There is a special link between Madonna and Italy, probably due to the fact she was very proud of her italian origin .Whitney here is pretty popular too, probably the second most popular foreign diva after Madonna. Apart from her classics ("I will always love you", "I have nothing" and I wanna dance with somebody") here "All at once" is extremely popular. Basically she performed the song on "Sanremo", the most watched italian TV show and it became istantely one of her signature songs, even though it's a relatively minor hit in other countries. "My love is your love", on the opposite, is not very popular, that album, unlike in other countries, was not well promoted in Italy and even the title track failed to make to the top 20 and has never receieved much airplay (pity cause it's my favourite Whitney's song). Mariah has had hits and platinum or multiplatinum albums but her hits simply has never stick with the general audience. Her only songs who receives airplay are the Christmas one and her duet with Whitney, but even there it's probably more beacuse of Whitney than because of her.
It seems Italys love and appreciation of those three, pretty much mirrors that of the UK, with Madonna way out in front of the other two, when it's comes to popularity, sales and recognisability, then Houston, then Carey.
That's my favourite Houston track also.
Madonna's underperformance on Spotify is 100% because of USA, if you check the Rolling Stone Top500 chart, she's bubbling around #400-#450 which is terrible compared to Mariah and Whitney who have double the weekly streams of Madonna in the USA...
and Also when you check Madonna's most popular cities in Spotify it's mostly Latin American and European cities.
and Also another indicator is Madonna's hits that were only big in USA (such as Take A Bow) have terribly low numbers, but when it comes to her hits that are more popular outside of the US like Hung Up and La Isla Bonita they have much healthier numbers.
the American Life backlash and somewhat even Erotica really hindered her popularity in the USA and still continues till this day.
What could truly help Madonna's catalog to be revived / more appreciated is either a new hit which seems unlikely at this point because of how she killed her career with her last 4 albums, or the movie coming up. if that movie does well it could do wonders
The US only represents about 20% of Spotify users now, so even if she did terrible there it wouldn't affect overall totals as much as you want to believe.
From what I've seen old artists and songs can get resurges out of nowhere these days due to TikTok and such so you never know really.
It all depends on where you came from. Im from Asia and its safe to say Mariah Carey was far bigger than Whitney was here and especially Madonna. Dont think Madonna ever exploded the way that Mariah did here in Asia, not even close. Plus I could be wrong, but I think Madonna failed to appeal to the younger audience in the US considering how urban American music is these days. Whitney & Mariah always have the pop/soul/R&B thing going on, so they probably have bigger support from the younger generation compared to Madonna.
“Pink Friday Roman Reloaded” has a full version called “Pink Friday Roman Reloaded + The Re-Up” with more streams (1,5 billion)
plssss notice me……
Funny how marian's daydream outstreamed celine dion's Falling into you and let's talk about love while daydream only sold around 20m pure sale and celine's two albums both sold amost 30m pure sale
