Dua Lipa albums and songs sales
We tend to consider that today’s music scene is all about urban artists, but pop singer Dua Lipa came out of nowhere to superstardom in a mere 3 years.
If at first only her songs were recognized by the general public, she is now a household name. Is she selling well though?
Dua Lipa is a British singer born in London in 1995. After signing with Warner Bros in 2015, she quickly started to drop singles to radio stations.
Be The One was her breakthrough, hitting #1 in Belgium in early 2016. It was the first of many hits to come.
Among them are songs like New Rules, One Kiss, Don’t Start Now, Levitating, or Cold Heart. She currently stands at 12 UK Top 10 smashes.
Historically, female pop hit makers have been North American artists, we can mention Madonna, Jennifer Lopez, Rihanna, Katy Perry and Ariana Grande to name a few.
Can Dua Lipa reverse this trend and become the first pure pop female from the UK to dominate global charts?
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 Dua Lipa‘s albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will also determine their true popularity.
If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, below is a nice and short video of explanations. I fully recommend watching it before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the numbers directly.
The Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC)
There are two ways to understand this revolutionary concept. The first is the Scribe video posted below. If you are unaware of the CSPC method, you will get the full idea within just a few minutes.
If you are a mathematical person, and 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 sales figures in detail in order to apply this concept and define the act’s true popularity!
Dua Lipa Album Sales
Original Album Sales – Comments
Expectedly, Dua Lipa pure album sales are not huge. It’s the norm for the large majority of artists who debuted after the collapse of pure sales.
The fact that she also sells less in the US isn’t helping, but overall she is really gaining traction in this format.
Once you consider that her debut peaked at #44 inside the sales chart with only 2 weeks top 100 in the US, its sales are quite good.
It means the album has got strong legs. In fact, it is still selling steadily new copies week after week.
On its side Future Nostalgia caught up in spite of a much worse market as well as a release during the first European lockdown. It has now moved ahead at 670,000 units.
Combined, these two albums sold 1.27 million units, having moved over a million in 2021.
Dua Lipa songs sales
Below, we list down results from the artist through physical sales, digital sales and streaming.
Please be aware that when the artist is regarded as the lead act, he is rewarded with 100% of these units, while featured acts share among them a 50% piece of the totals.
Physical Singles
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between albums and digital singles.
Obviously, physical singles have been a collector item for many years.
Sales in this format are marginal, but the fact that Dua Lipa has multiple releases there is a positive sign of a building fanbase.
Digital Songs
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1.5 ratio between albums and digital singles.
With a career barycenter around 2019, even downloads were mostly dead during Dua Lipa‘s era.
For example, One Kiss was the most successful song of 2018 in the UK, yet it sold only 244,000 copies for the year.
Add to that smaller success in the US in her first years and a South Korean market which switched to streaming lately, you get no truly big seller for the singer from London.
Most if not all of her singles have been hits through, so they still combine for interesting volumes.
New Rules is the top seller at 1.6 million, with One Kiss cracking a million too.
Countless of singles came out during a 3 years span, with all of them entering the deluxe version of Dua Lipa.
There, IDGAF, Scared to Be Lonely, and Be The One are over half a million sales. No Lie, Blow Your Mind, Hotter Than Hell and Electricity are over 200,000 apiece.
In the meantime, the market continues to go down, with 2022 units reaching ridiculously low amounts.
Don’t Start Now was possibly her largest global hit up to that point, but this context limited it at 825,000 units sold so far.
Then both Levitating and Cold Heart felt just as big if not bigger, yet they combine for only 1.35 million.
A pair of singles stand around 250,000 each from Future Nostalgia, they are Physical and Break My Heart.
Her career total is in 8 digits at over 10.3 million sales in digital formats.
Streaming
Streaming is made up of audio and video streams. Our CSPC methodology includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. To factor in the growing impact of multiple Asian countries where these platforms aren’t always the go-to site for music streaming, more sources have been added.
In order to account for their real popularity in each relevant country, the below sources have been used along with the mentioned ratios that reflect the market share of each area.
Audio Streams
– South Korea: Genie streams * 2.20 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan: AWA streams * 68 / 4 (AWA has 4% of the Japanese streaming market, and 32% are already considered through Spotify’s extrapolation)
– Arabic world: Anghami streams
– Sub-Saharan Africa: Boomplay + Audiomack streams
– Elsewhere: Spotify streams * 649 / 406 (649 million subscribers of global platforms like Spotify, Apple Music, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Deezer, etc. against 406 million from Spotify itself) + Genie streams * 2.20 (uses Genie rather than Spotify to extrapolate markets like Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam)
Video Streams
– China* : QQ video streams * 50 if the song is available for audio stream, QQ video streams * 5 elseway (scale built based on known figures for several major artists)
– Elsewhere : Youtube views increased by 10% to account for various local platforms
*since Chinese streaming platforms are mostly video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted on par with YouTube streams.
Audio Stream value – 1,500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 6,750 views equal 1 album unit
Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * 649/406 + Genie * 2.20 * 2 + AWA * 68 / 4 + Anghami + Boomplay + Audiomack ) / 1500 + ( QQ views* 50(or 5) + YouTube * 1.1 ) / 6750
Top Hits
With only two albums issued so far, Dua Lipa manages the incredible feat of reaching 1 billion streams on Spotify with 6 different songs.
Don’t Start Now leads on both Spotify (1.98 billion), Genie (53 million) and AWA (11 million). In the former, it recently moved ahead of New Rules which used to be #1. The track amassed 2.61 million EAS to date.
Speaking about New Rules, it’s a solid runner up with 2.57 million EAS, with an especially impressive total on YouTube (3.43 billion).
Levitating is growing fast, now up to the 3rd spot, with soon the highest score from Spotify (1.94 billion). This trio of songs belong to the very biggest league of hits, with over 7 million EAS from streams among them.
One Kiss, IDGAF, Scared to Be Lonely, Break My Heart and Cold Heart are the remaining songs with sales in excess of 1 million EAS. The last one remains recent and seems poised to climb up the ladder in the future.
As many as 7 songs, almost 8, register more than half a million EAS from streams. On top of singles from her self-titled debut, both 2020 songs Break My Heart and Physical are up there.
Both No Lie and Prisoner have their total halved due to their featuring status.
In terms of albums, Dua Lipa scores a stunning 12.4 million EAS. It’s the most streamed female album of all-time.
Future Nostalgia has now got time to reach this magnitude of streams as well, posting 10.48 million EAS. Both are among the most successful streaming albums of all-time.
Full catalog breakdown
If you are familiar with the artist’s catalog and want to check details of each and every song, you can access to all of them right here.
Keep yourself up to date
Our website provides you a fantastic tool which fetchs updated Spotify streams as you request them, use it to watch these results grow day after day!
Dua Lipa compilations sales
In this day and age, less and less compilations or music videos are released, especially when someone is as early in her career as Dua Lipa.
She has 3 releases with from 1,500 to 10,000 sales, they are 2017 EPs The Only EP and Live Acoustic along with 2020 remix album Club Future Nostalgia.
Total Album (all types) Sales per Country
Please note country-specific numbers may miss sales of a few minor releases, although totals are complete.
Dua Lipa Career CSPC Results
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each Dua Lipa album achieved? Well, at this point we only need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
Albums CSPC results
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)
See where the artist ranks among remaining singers
Of course, pure sales are not enormous. These days are over, and more for pop stars who rely on general public appeal rather than fandom.
It takes off nothing from the amazing success of both Dua Lipa albums. Combined, they hit 25.5 million, with the second far from being done.
The debut album posts 14 million sales, one of the most successful albums in recent years.
Future Nostalgia is on its way to get there as well, now up to 11.5 million.
The total to date of Dua Lipa is at 27.53 million equivalent album sales. She still has a lot of work to do to join the all-time top performers or even of the last 15 years, but she has undoubtedly a very successful career in the making.
Singles CSPC results
The list is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each song. Therefore, these figures are not merged units of singles formats. Instead, it includes weighted sales of the song’s physical single, download, ringtone and streaming as well as its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
1. 2017 – Dua Lipa – New Rules [Dua Lipa] – 2,930,000
2. 2019 – Dua Lipa – Don’t Start Now [Future Nostalgia] – 2,900,000
3. 2020 – Dua Lipa ft. DaBaby – Levitating [Future Nostalgia] – 2,610,000
4. 2018 – Calvin Harris & Dua Lipa – One Kiss [Dua Lipa] – 2,040,000
5. 2017 – Dua Lipa – IDGAF [Dua Lipa] – 1,830,000
6. 2017 – Martin Garrix & Dua Lipa – Scared to Be Lonely [Dua Lipa] – 1,630,000
If you feel inspired by this list, we just created this CSPC Dua Lipa playlist on Spotify!
Discography results
Thanks to our new ASR (Artist Success Rating) concept, we know that her sales represent 15,05 million times the purchase of her discography. Coupled with her total sales, it translates into an ASR score of 115.
The ranking of all artists studied so far is available too at this link.
Records & Achievements
- At 13,978,000 EAS, Dua Lipa is the 2nd most successful album from 2017.
- At 12,387,000 EAS from streams, Dua Lipa is the 3rd most streamed album of all-time, 1st among female albums.
- At 10,480,000 EAS from streams, Future Nostalgia is the most streamed album from 2020, 3rd of all-time among female albums.
- Levitating is the longest running female song ever inside the US Hot 100 chart (77 weeks) and its top 10 (41 weeks).
- At 6, Dua Lipa has the most songs with over 1 billion streams on Spotify among females.
NB: EAS means Equivalent Album Sales.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs, Billboard.
You may be interested in…
… Dua Lipa‘s streaming masters analysis
… checking out the upcoming artists or even voting for them!
… best-selling artists, albums, and singles
We have created amazing cross-artists tops. Click to see all CSPC and raw sales results compiled so far!
… similar artists
To put Dua Lipa‘s figures into perspective, click to reach career breakdowns of pop star divas:
Please see my detailed response to your magnificent profile in Sinatra just posted on that post in comments and please respond to my questions when you have a second. Your work if I have any impact at all ( and w/o it)will be the definitive profile on him and endure for decades and more, absolutely superb ( though it may have some missing pieces). Also I see Madonna sells 500 albums in week one of a cd release and personally buys enough to falsely chart then drops off after a week. As you say unless she passes her sales are… Read more »
Hey,
It’s a very great article. Miss lipa is absolutely smashing right now. But i wonder how many streams does her songs have in USA?
It seems as if Dua’s streams excluding Spotify are a bit inflated as an earlier commenter noted… Every platform that is NOT dependent on playlisting (her lifeline as she has the three longest running songs ever on Spotify’s Today’s Top Hits as well as some of the highest playlisting audience peaks for any artist ever) she underperforms significantly in such as AM where FN and her debut is nowhere to be present in the top 200.
Hi Ethan!
As mentioned to Matt, the numbers aren’t inflated, it’s a bad understanding of how the Apple Music album ranking works.
Just a quick check tells us that Cold Heart and Levitating have 153 million and 134 million on demand audio streams in the US by week 20 in 2022. In that same period, US Spotify charts reveal they got 70 million and 48 million streams, respectively.
It means they are getting 41% of their US streams on Spotify.
But the truth is that Apple Music main market is US and she is not even in the top 10 of most streamed female artist this year, that’s a big sign of how weak she is on Apple Music (in relative terms with Spotify)
Hi Jorge! Levitating is #10 on Apple’s global chart for the year, nearly as good as on Spotify. There have been no “most streamed female artist” list published by Apple Music. I don’t know where this myth of Dua Lipa being especially weak there came out, but it seems to be at best a weak argument from some haters. Not to mention that both YouTube Music and Amazon Music are favorable platforms for her, and it’s the sum of it all that matters, not if an artist has done slightly below average in one platform in one country! The real… Read more »
The way Dua has tricked your formula including her features in her albums (playlists) and turning in her own songs.
The digital sales are really good for this years
She’s adding Prisoner into her album despite being just a featured artist, and it eventually causing Miley’s Plastic Heart dropping hard on album chart is so stupid. And Billboard allows this kind of chart manipulation is an insult especially for the lead artists themselves.
Yes, but they let her so is their fault. Her debut album is specially funny with all that featuring is like a compilation album. At the end it is a chart manipulation and I think she doesn’t need but anyways
right! adding EVERY single feature that you’re on to your album is not a normal practice… I wonder why Chartmasters doesn’t realize this and deweight the excessive amount of features she adds to her “albums”. Her debut would only be at 8.45M if we solely count the original issue and not the fraudulent additions from other artists, in a similar league to albums like Reputation and Don’t Smile At Me.
Hi again Ethan!
Actually, from her debut, there are only 1 track where she is regarded as a featured act, that is No Lie. This track is already downweighted, it accounts for 517,000 EAS from streams rather than 1.03 million.
The same happens for Prisoner on FN.
there’s a glitch in the physical singles column it shows negative data
DUA has joined Adele, swift, Katy with 2 best selling female albums of release year among female artists debuting in 21st century and first from streaming era. She can really endup as 2nd biggest British female solo globally , if her third album smashes on hype of FN , as cold heart is huge global hit because of her. She makes global hits year after year. Fn making back to back ifpi list in 2 years in row. But leaving managment can be tricky. Hopefully she plays her cards right! And release huge album again.
I feel like biggest female album is kinda arbitrary. Because there’s only like 6 big female artists at a time so some years are much more competitive than others.
Biggest album overall seems better.
2010-DW&H
2011-21
2012-Red
2013-Frozen
2014-X
2015-25
2016-Views
2017-Divide
2018-BB&B
2019-WWAFA
2020-FN
2021-Sour
2022-Bad bunny
was wondering if when Dua’s sales are updated are songs she added to future nostalgia such a prisoner, where she is just a featured artist, going to be included in the albums total like with one kiss and her debut. Because she does clearly add them to make her albums seem bigger when they weren’t originally intended to be there, however they are still on the album so and relatively of the same era.
Amazing she has best selling debut album than swift, ariana, katy. It gonna be exchanged between billie and her for long. No wonder they keep screaming payola. Like artists are suppose to promote music.
Wonder will she be able to take over 19 in future. ? Although gap is still there and 19 gonna get boost soon.
I’m still mad at how inflated her outside-spotify streams are.
Future Nostalgia is currently out of the top 200 on US Apple Music according to Kworb. But on Spotify it’s at #7 on their Global Weekly Chart and #14 on their USA Weekly Chart.
It’s just kinda hard to believe that the album has 6.75B on Spotify and over 3.3B on non-asian audio streaming platforms.
it’s because of how playlisting based spotify is, i bet FN total streams are Lower on Apple than albums like Positions and folklore
Chartmasters numbers matched with ifpi for 2020 when they updated at start of year ( ifpi missed 2019 units too ). So it is near to actual numbers.
I’m talking about Dua Lipa’s numbers in specific.
Hi Matt! I already mentioned it in the past, the AM album chart is pointless. They only include streams from the specific version, while an album like FN has tons already, and ignore altogether streams that do not come from itself, which is like the immense majority of streams. If the same method was applied on Spotify, the album would be charting very, very low too. Also, US Apple Music is far from being the be-all of remaining platforms nowadays, and AM in the US is used by a specific user base, which streams a lot of urban music. The… Read more »