CSPC: Nirvana Popularity Analysis
Exactly one year ago I posted the fifth CSPC article. The artist studied was the cult rock band Nirvana. Some 25 years after the hype around Nevermind, their popularity is still soaring. At current pace, this album is looking to become the very best selling catalog record on Earth. How come?
Taking into account that a mere two and a half years passed from the release of Nevermind to the death of lead singer Kurt Cobain, the impact of this Seattle band in the history of the music industry is unparalleled.
In total, Nirvana released only three albums, including one before their cross over. With such a tiny discography, and the fact that even Nevermind is not higher than the all-time Top 40 best selling albums, many millions behind other rock albums such as Led Zeppelin IV, AC/DC Back In Black, Pink Floyd Dark Side Of The Moon and even Guns N’ Roses own Appetite For Destruction, among various others, one may cast Nirvana‘s real popularity under a shadow of doubt. The early passing of Kurt Cobain led Geffen Records label to extensively milk the group’s existing material. Inclusively issuing two major live sets and later several compilations. All those records took catalog sales away from the band’s original albums which turn out to be lower sellers than their popularity would justify. Thus, it is needed to merge and weight together all records sold on the back of the Nevermind LP.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge their results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Nirvana‘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.
Let’s go!
I think the stastics are changed differently by the system. right?
9,561,000
(01/02/23)
9,701,000 diminished?
(02/03/23)
Hello, I was confused because more than 10 days with 6,000 coppies a day. but increase only 32,000 CSCP. is this stastics goes differently?
sorry for the comment. maybe I still not understand the word CSCP.
5-60,000 coppies of Streaming sales dissapeared.
Because of the gap between GNR and Nirvana was around 60,000 coppies.
Is there SOMETHING IN THE WAY?!!! This year the Nirvana classic got hyped by the new Batman movie. It set the perfect soundtrack to the moody feeling of the movie. And a whole new audience was introduced to Nirvana. See how “Something” has climbed the Nevermind ranking this year. Top 6 Nevermind tracks on Spotify as of jan. 1st 2022: 1 Smells Like Teen Spirit – 1,178.4M 2 Come As You Are – 793.4M 3 Lithium – 380.4M 4 In Bloom – 194.4M 5 Polly – 133.3M 6 Something in the Way – 125.8M Top 6 Nevermind tracks on Spotify… Read more »
Also, Nevermind’s least streamed song (On A Plain) just reached 50m streams, the only pre-2000 album with more streams being of course Dark Side Of The Moon (76m).
Actually I can’t think of a pre-2010 album with its least streamed song at 50m+, there’s definitely one in 2010 (Kanye’s Twisted Fantasy, 65m).
DSOTM is there as well, Spotify has a glitch on the last song Eclipse, which some days shows 21m streams, and others its comprehensive playcount which is 61.5m by now!
Hello, MJD.
Is there a similar glitch present on some tracks on ‘Wish You Were Here’?
I seem to recall the album being around 34 million EAS a short time ago but it now seems to be registering a million or so fewer than this?
Yes same issue and The Wall, think maybe same happens to MJs Off The Wall as well, as its daily streams are quite different some days.
streams of WYWH, the song got split into 2 versions recently. The one on the album we use for CSPC went down to 169m. I recently switched it to a version that have the 538m version plus a few live takes for the streaming ranking. But it hasn’t been fixed for CSPC yet.
I mentioned it above actually, also I would say 76m because Eclipse isn’t quite a “song” imo, my definition would be at least 2 minutes long tracks (Eclipse lasts over 2min but the last 40sec are essentially blank).
Yes, now there seems to be a playable 1:54 min. 2011 remastered version with 21.469.766 plays.
And a non-playable 2:10 version with 61.708.535 plays.
I suspect the former number used to be included in the latter. We probably shouldn’t combine the two for at total of 83M+
Tricky. In other cases I would have combined the figures without hesitation!!
The Pink Floyd glitch also affects Echoes on the Meddle album.
hello MJDangerous, what happend to Streaming statistics?
8,960,000? diminished now?