CSPC: Enya Popularity Analysis
Of all the music phenomenons over the past decades Enya is a remarkable one for a number of reasons that set her appeal aside from the norm.
Born in Ireland, she started her music career in the early 80s and put out her first album during 1987, managing a highly solid career with a great average-per-album total. However, some aspects are weird and unusual: she is quite “faceless” compared to other female acts, she has generally taken long breaks between each effort and, most notably, she never went on tour.
The above are, in general, great handicaps. Not only becoming hugely popular, but also in maintaining a long lasting success that she, no matter what, achieved. In particular, the long breaks are hard to overcome when they occur so early on in an artist’s career and more so when the public isn’t quite as familiar with your face as they are with other pop/rock stars. Despite all of this Enya has been incredibly successful.
What has helped all this time, though? Arguably her music roots. For most people she is the absolute reference of new age, a genre of music that has become common in the last 4 decades with Enya as the greatest example. Anybody interested in new age will more than likely start with one of her LPs. Be it a studio album or a compilation. This is without any doubt a major benefit for her, which she capitalized on amazingly well.
With all of the above this article represents a great opportunity to delve into her catalogue, see how much she has sold and what various formats have brought to her. Where will she rank at the end? We shall find out.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge her results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Enya‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.
Hi MJD, can we get a breakdown for The Very Best of Enya? It’s the only major release that is missing :))
pleased to know her sales in Ireland!
Hi MJD!
I was just looking over all the estimates and found a calculation error in the album sales total concerning her Asian sales.
Adding all her studio album plus PTSWS compilation, the total for Japan adds for a little over 6m, while sales outside Japan in Asia is over 5m. But in the page where the total album sales listed, her Japanese sales total a 7,26m, leaving just over 4m for the rest of Asia! I hope you’ll correct this soon!
Hi Raffi!
I have some identified Asian sales in my sheet (Shepherd Moons 320k in SK, 225k in Taiwan, The Memory of Trees 250k there, etc), they got ignored from the total! Now fixed 🙂
Did you include the frog prince (French Lesson) soundtrack from 1984?
I looked it up and it was Enyas first project. She wrote 9 instrumentals for the soundtrack.
I would think that should be included
Hi Nathan!
Actually, I didn’t even wonder if that should be included or not for her since I found no sales at all about it. The album wasn’t even released outside Europe and then it was reissued on CD in 1999 on budget label Spectrum in the UK / Germany and both times it had no impact at all – at best it sold a few thousands!
Not a fan of Carribean Blue. Orinoco Flow should outsell it someday, soon
Damned she’s sexy too!
Never in a million years, would I have thought she would’ve had a higher album sales than Britney Spears. But unsurprisingly she have lower CSPC than Britney.
I knew she had great sales, but I didn’t expect her to be this global! She’s one of the few females who truly made it big everywhere – North America, Europe, Oceania, South America and Asia, with the last two being quite hard to crack for most artists!