CSPC Battle: 1975 Monster Rock Albums

Streaming Sales

Below table lists Spotify streaming of all songs from the five albums we are studying. The Comprehensive Streaming is reached by multiplying Spotify figures by 68/26. In fact, as shown in IFPI 2015 Report, there were 68 million paying subscribers to all streaming platforms by the end of 2015. While the exact count of Spotify paying subscribers by the end of 2015 is unknown, that figure reached 20 million in June 2015 and 30 million in March 2016, thus an estimated 26 million is used as of the end of 2015.

The equivalent album sales is the division of the comprehensive streaming figure by 1500 as it is now the norm in the new industry model.

A Night At The Opera album by Queen ends up well ahead of all other albums with almost twice as many streaming as remaining albums. It may be argued that it is barely thanks to the out of this world results of Bohemian Rhapsody. The fact is that removing the biggest hit of all those albums, A Night At The Opera still impressively remains the biggest of all.

The hierarchy among albums is not the same at all as the one shown on album sales. Wish You Were Here is the strongest seller but only #3 here, A Night At The Opera reverses both positions. Physical Graffiti goes from #2 in sales to #5 and last in streaming, the opposite of Toys In The Attic. Only Bruce Springsteen Born To Run by chance ends up #4 in both sides. Following pages will reveal why those listings are so much different.

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