CSPC: Spice Girls Popularity Analysis
https://flic.kr/p/nxZ4P2
Exactly 20 years ago, the music industry was going through one of the most hyped eras that it had ever had. The Girl Power phenomenon was everywhere thanks to their unstoppable flagship, the iconic Spice Girls. Wannabe was concluding its run at #1 in the US, and the album Spice was on its way to climbing the top of the album chart as well. In the UK, both the album and the single Mama / Who Do You Think You Are? were dominating, the latter being their fourth #1 hit in their native country. Less than a year prior they were unknown. This was the Spice Girls – an utterly massive, dominant, group from the very first day.
As usual – we already met the case with the Beatles or ABBA – when a music act destroys the charts like no one else myths quickly start surrounding it them. Some are true, others aren’t. Their countless #1s were all over the place, as were their record breaking sales in each field – album, singles and videos. The legend tells that the Spice album sold over 30 million units while Spiceworld moved 22 million, while the group as a whole set a mark of 85 million physical records sold. As you can guess, this includes a fair share of exaggeration. With the Spice Girls, the case is quite easy in reality – all their official album sales are known and you will be finding them right here. As they did well in various formats, we need to check the complete picture to accurately rate their success.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge their results. The concept will not only bring you sales information for all the Spice Girls’ albums, physical singles, download singles, and music videos and streaming, but it will also accurately weight all this information to conclude their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC idea, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend you check it out before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to get straight into the figures. Let’s go!
I’m sure once their numbers are re-worked, they’ll pass DC again as the top selling Girl Group of the last 30 years.
Maybe . Not sure !
They’re at number 99? that sounds wrong and very low, but at the same time it doesn’t and I’ll explain why. The fact is that most of the Spice Girls success and big global success was only based on 2 albums! They literally were only together as 5 for 2 years and only recorded 2 albums as a group of 5. Spice Mania was mega explosive but very short lived. They perhaps could have lasted longer, but they were overworked, probably more than other big artists, they released Spice and Spice World within a year from each other or even… Read more »
you can say whatever it is, but Baby One More Time was more resounding, both in numbers (5.33 x 5.05 million physical singles) and in the impact the music video made, the girls wanted to be Britney, the boys they wanted to have Britney, the parents wanted Britney as a daughter, the record companies wanted to have their Britney Spears. This was reflected in the album sales ( BOMT 24.2M X Spice 21.9M)
They definitely didnt overworked a lot more than anybody during that era. I mean Britney released 3 albums in less than 3 years, went on for 3 world tour, released a Barbie Doll, Playstation game, book, etc. Compared to Spice Girls who released 3 albums in 4 years. Spears performed 282 concert dates from her 1999-2004 while Spice Girls performed 105 dates. So obviously Britney was far busier and far more over worked. Backstreet Boys released 4 albums from 96 – 00. Doing non stop promotions, went on 3 world tour performed at a total of 356 concert dates (almost… Read more »
Ho! This year will be the Spice Girlsâ 25th! Can I suggest a new post with updated numbers?
And the sales for each solo spice maybe? Iâm so curious!! đ
Think about it!
Anyway, love your site!
How much would Spice and Spiceworld have sold on BMG and Britannia Music Clubs if you could extrapolate from the rest of their sales?
Hi Bruh, There was no BMG music club in the UK. At one point there were numerous music clubs in the UK but all had folded by the late 90s, with only Britannia remaining, it eventually folded sometime around 2007. In all truth though, it had been dying a death from the turn of the century. I do not have music club figures for Spiceworld but I have exact music club shipments for Spice, which are; 1996 — 2,749 1997 — 154,094 1998 — 41,636 1999 — 8,844 2000 — 1,431 2001 — 679 2002 — 203 2003 — 81… Read more »
Thanks Martin.
Sorry, I made a mistake in my question. I meant BMG and Columbia House. I was asking about potentially lost US sales.
Thanks again.
Hi! Very interesting page! Said that, in 2019 they toured the world to an IMPRESSIVE 700,000k tickets sold from just 13 dates, thsi means that they’re not only remembered by now 30somethings, but they are still very much considered as iconic even from youngsters of this generation. When you wrote this article figures were, yes, a bit low but i think they had a pretty good resurgence in these last 3 years, new GH album sales and Wannabe figures literally exploded taking it near the 460 million mark, while many others singles jumped too: Stop reached 70 million mark and… Read more »
The streaming numbers indicate that for the younger generation, the Spice Girls are very much a one-hit wonder. “Wannabe” is the song that lasted. The rest of the streaming numbers are quite poor compared to say the Backstreet boys, who also have one enormous hit (I want it that way) but then several other songs above 200 M or 100 M plays.
Sorry but i absolutely don’t agree! A One hit wonder will never sell 700,000 tickets IN A HEARTBEAT like they did last summer, c’mon. The super youngsters maybe just know Wannabe, that’s true, but i can absolutely bet they can recognize they’re just absolutely big and if they don’t know other songs it’s just cause they belong to a different generation and aren’t particularly interested in hearing them. I know Beatles, titles of the song (cause i’m very passionate about music) but i don’t listen to them and i bet LOADS of youngsters will recognize some songs because they’re still… Read more »
I think “Spice” has already reached 30 million CSPS, this needs an update đ„
Dude…
https://pro-musicabr.org.br/home/certificados/?busca_artista=Spice+Girls&tmidia=1
Why I only see multiple gold certifications instead of platinum?
Put the mouse in the gold discs and you’ll read (in portuguese): Platinum, double platinum, etc . This new PMB website is terrible.
Before 1xP=50k, it was 1xP=75k in Indonesia,right?I saw it on Billboard. I wonder when it changed to 1xP=50k.And When Korea changed 1xP=100k to 1xP=60k, Thailand changed 1xP=50k to 1xP=40k.