Fergie albums and songs sales
After Black Eyed Peas‘ victory in our poll regarding the next band to be studied, here is a little introductory gift with a study of Fergie‘s career. How big was she when she decided to go solo, although always with the contribution of her band mate Will.i.am?
If we think about it, the feeling is that she is one of the rare female singers that left a band to find success as a solo star. We remember very well how the members of the Spice Girls, Sharleen Spiteri (Texas) and Nicole Scherzinger (Pussycat Dolls) flopped in their attempt to go solo. In reality, lots of singers who began in bands achieved great success as solo artists. The thing is though, that we often forgot their early days.
Janis Joplin (Big Brother & The Holding Company), Diana Ross (Supremes), Stevie Nicks (Fleetwood Mac), Gloria Estefan (Miami Sound Machine), Annie Lennox (Eurythmics), Lauryn Hill (Fugees), Beyoncé (Destiny’s Child), and Gwen Stefani (No Doubt) all achieved multi-Platinum albums as solo artists and in bands. Then there is Cher and Tina Turner, both big with their respective husbands until finding bigger success as solo singers. Career-wise, the closest to Fergie is likely Lauryn Hill as we are still waiting for their sophomore efforts. Where are they?
ChartMasters’ method: the CSPC
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC) in order to relevantly gauge the act’s results. It will not only bring you sales information for all albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will really determine the act’s popularity.
If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, below is a nice and short video of explaining the concept. I recommend watching it before reading on and to the sales figures. You’ll get the idea in just two minutes.
And if you want to know the full method as well as formulas, you can read the full introduction article.
Now let’s get into the artist’s detailed sales figures!
Original Albums Sales
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are also factored in.
The Dutchess (2006)
- America
- US – 4,100,000
- Canada – 375,000
- Argentina – 30,000
- Brazil – 120,000
- Mexico – 60,000
- Asia – 630,000
- Japan – 430,000
- South Korea – 7,500
- Indonesia – 30,000
- China – 60,000
- Oceania
- Australia – 290,000
- New Zealand – 30,000
- Europe – 730,000
- UK – 320,000
- France – 52,500
- Germany – 140,000
- Italy – 20,000
- Spain – 7,500
- Sweden – 10,000
- Netherlands – 12,500
- Switzerland – 20,000
- Austria – 12,500
- Finland – 2,500
- World – 6,450,000
Original Album Sales – Comments
2006 The Dutchess – 6,450,000
Sales of The Dutchess are as good as they are frustrating. The album did wonders in North America, Australia, Brazil, Russia, China and Japan (the last four countries being truly hard to break for international stars). At the same time the album was somewhat of a flop in various far more accessible markets, including all over Europe. The Black Eyed Peas sold very well in countries like the UK and France however, The Dutchess still peaked outside of the Top 10 album chart in every European market.
Physical Singles Sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Selling 720,000 physical units of singles from an album mostly exploited during 2007 is a solid result. It could have been even better if the four leading markets for that format by then weren’t France, the UK and Germany (where she performed relatively poorly) and Japan, where international singles are almost never released.
The Dutchess (2006) – 216,000 equivalent albums
Fergalicious – 75,000
Clumsy – 25,000
London Bridge – 190,000
Glamorous – 125,000
Big Girls Don’t Cry – 280,000
Party People – 25,000
Orphan – 9,000 equivalent albums
Gettin’ Over You – 30,000
Digital Singles Sales
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between albums and digital singles.
The Dutchess (2006) – 4,935,000 equivalent albums
Fergalicious – 6,000,000
Clumsy – 4,100,000
London Bridge – 5,600,000
Glamorous – 5,800,000
Big Girls Don’t Cry – 8,000,000
Party People – 1,400,000
Remaining tracks – 2,000,000
Orphan – 600,000 equivalent albums
M.I.L.F.S.$ – 300,000
L.A.LOVE (la la) – 1,200,000
A Little Party Never Killed Nobody – 500,000
Gettin’ Over You – 1,300,000
Remaining tracks – 700,000
Streaming Sales
Streaming is made up of two families – audio and video. Our CSPC methodology now includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. As detailed in the Fixing Log article, Spotify represents 132 million of the 212 million users of streaming platforms, while YouTube is pretty much the only video platform generating some revenue for the industry. Below is the equivalence set on the aforementioned article:
Audio Stream – 1500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream – 11,750 views equal 1 album unit
Thus…
Equivalent Albums Sales = 212/132 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750
Part 1
No song from The Dutchess has truly gigantic Spotify streams. Four of them are impressively solid though, with London Bridge at 35 million, Fergalicious at 50 million, Glamorous at 53 million and Big Girls Don’t Cry at 75 million. The last three also top easily 100 million YouTube views. The remaining album tracks are not too shabby either, although not that impressive for a relatively recent record. In total, those streams are worth 328,000 equivalent album sales.
The career of Fergie has been messy lately with various songs coming out without the arrival of an album. Some did okay in the streaming area though. Both L.A.LOVE (la la) and A Little Party Never Killed Nobody top 100 million Spotify streams. M.I.L.F.S.$ and Gettin’ Over You are closing in on 200 million YouTube views. Thanks to the more favorable streaming market when they were issued, those Orphan songs combined beat the total of tracks from The Dutchess, with a total of 418,000 equivalent album sales.
Full Length related record Sales
It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era – studio album, physical singles, downloads, streams – to get the full picture of an album’s popularity. For older releases though, they also generate sales of various live, music videos and compilation albums.
All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the value originating from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued, this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains this method.
This being said, Fergie only released one digital-only EP, which sold an estimated 50,000 copies to date. That’s worth 25,000 equivalent album sales, all assigned to The Dutchess as The Dutchess EP included only songs from that record.
Fergie Career CSPC Results
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each Fergie achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
In the following results table, all categories display figures in equivalent album sales. If different, pure sales are listed between parentheses.
As a reminder:
- Studio Album: sales of the original album
- Other Releases: sales of compilations generated thanks to the album
- Physical Singles: sales of physical singles from the album (ratio 3/10)
- Download Singles: sales of digital singles from the album (ratio 1,5/10)
- Streaming: equivalent album sales of all the album tracks (ratio 1/1500 for Audio stream and 1/6750 for Video stream)
Artist career totals
See where the artist ranks among remaining singers
The Dutchess closes the countdown with nearly 12 million equivalent album sales. As shown in our Understanding article, her music style was no doubt impacted by digital sales, although during the early years of downloads damages were still limited.
With that said, 12 million remains a superb result no matter how we look at it. We will soon be posting the entire Black Eyed Peas discography to see how The Dutchess performs against the likes of Monkey Business and The E.N.D.
Adding the few Orphan songs to the diva, Fergie is up to 13 million equivalent album sales overall. We will stay tuned to see if she ultimately announces a second LP!
The following section lists her most successful songs.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Billboard, Spotify, YouTube, Chartmasters.org.
Bonus: biggest tracks by Fergie
The list of most successful songs is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each of them. It includes the song’s own physical singles sales with a 0,3 weighting, its download and streaming sales, and with appropriate weighting too, plus its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
1 2006 – Big Girls Don’t Cry [The Dutchess] – 3,340,000
2 2006 – Fergalicious [The Dutchess] – 2,310,000
3 2006 – Glamorous [The Dutchess] – 2,270,000
4 2006 – London Bridge [The Dutchess] – 1,740,000
5 2006 – Clumsy [The Dutchess] – 1,190,000
We have more for you…
… the Black Eyed Peas‘ full CSPC analysis
… Will.I.am‘s full CSPC analysis
… checking out the upcoming artists or even voting for them!
… similar artists
… best-selling artists, albums, and singles
