There is always excitement around the release of an album. Fans are eagerly waiting to hear new music, media are curious about what will happen, and chart geeks can’t wait to see the first results come in from iTunes, Spotify, Hits Daily Double, and Billboard.
When Carrie Underwood became the season four winner of American Idol in May 2005, she still had to make it happen. The first winner Kelly Clarkson was smashing hard by then, but Ruben Studdard‘s sophomore effort was a bomb. Fantasia had done well with her debut record, as all of them, but without getting a true organic hit either. Underwood was going to quickly prove that she was more than a TV show short-lived star though.
During the last two decades, various DJs got their hey-days. During the last 4 years though, very few have been as hot as The Chainsmokers. Their success on streaming platforms is wild, come see it by yourself!
Edit 11/03/2018: Thanks for all players of the game! We congratulate Calvin who wins it with 1,637 points. His choice for the next CSPC article is Björk who’s going to be studied as soon as the current artist is completed, Paul McCartney.
The Eagles‘ Greatest Hits 1971-1975 sold 38 million copies in the US, making it the best selling album of all-time in the country. That’s a good story, at least good enough to make headlines of major American media for a pair of days. Many will simply think “wow!” when reading about it, charts followers’ reaction has been “How?” yet.
If you are lonesome tonight, you may have enough time to read the highly anticipated CSPC article of Elvis Presley… or you may not. His discography is so massive that at some point Chartmasters’ team though this work would never be completed. Now the challenge is on your side to go through all information available!
Charts-excluded budget releases, CDs issued thanks to loopholes, direct marketing series, albums from state-owned labels, etc… the number of Elvis Presley‘s records that remained out of the spotlight was huge. The revolution brought by Discogs means their sales to consumers can now be accurately gauged.
Through the years, the charts and sales community have been accessing more and more information. Areas of sales that remained black boxes for long are now kind of familiar, for example music clubs and sales in some Latin American and Asian markets. A couple of months ago, I presented a new way to accurately gauge success with the help of YouTube Insights, providing a method to put numbers based on factual information rather than wild guessing. Today, I’m happy to say that the wild guessing era is over. A massively powerful tool fills in every data hole that remained up to now. Here is how to move from subjective estimations to accurate systematic processes.
It’s hard to not forget about Elvis Presley’s EP sales. Not that they are weak, but this format disappeared so long ago that when talking about records sales we tend to think about singles and albums only. Introduced to the market in 1952 by his upcoming label, RCA, EPs were still struggling until the arrival of the legendary rocker.
If his album sales are subject to various utopic myths, Elvis Presley‘s singles sales aren’t a mystery at all. Fact is, he sold an insane number of them. More than anyone who debuted after him, that means more than the Beatles, among many others.