How many Spotify streams should an album reach to be considered a success?

[MALAMENTE]

When all the non-singles get around 100m streams. Talking in overall streams is not a good measure. 

[Cain]

2 minutes ago, Trent W said:

For a niche genre it’s a lot. A rapper, dj or band doing that with no hits or radio is insane.

 

For a pop star with label and radio support maybe 2 billion. 

But then are they a mainstream act like you said? For a popular act I’d say 2B atleast

[JohnWayneHolland]

If every track from the album has AT LEAST 500M streams then it is a success, otherwise it's a flop

[EnigmaticAndroid]

21 minutes ago, Freakshowvato said:

Some of these standards are way too high for most artists. Y'all maybe mean like a smash album from the most successful artist at the present time

 

But just a hit or successful album, I'd say 1 billion after one year is pretty good 

 

I agree it depends on context though, if a single is HUGELY successful and close to 1 billion on its own, then increase it by another half a billion to 1 billion lol

 

 

This 

[Gagacharts]

46 minutes ago, Tusk said:

Album tracks reaching 85-100,000 streams.

 

Just having singles have a lot streams is not a metric for a hit album 

I agree with this. You can always have some successfull (payolad) singles but if the album tracks have like 10M streams, the interest in the album itself is pretty low.

 

I would say an album with many tracks above 50M streams is a success. If it has many tracks reaching 100M+ it´s a smash (like: Sour, Midnights).

[Trent W]

1 minute ago, Cain said:

But then are they a mainstream act like you said? For a popular act I’d say 2B atleast

 

I think there’s different levels, what you mean is probably stars like Doja and Dua which yes 2-3 billion is the minimum at the very least to have a successful era by their standards.

 

Mainstream and A-list is not the same.

 

 

[Totami Legend]

Considering nowadays they usually push only 1 single (who needs at least 1 billion to be called a global hit) I would say 2 billions is a great goal.

[fememeist]

100m-1b+ for an indie artist

and 1b+ for a mainstream artist

[simmnfierzig]

23 minutes ago, JohnWayneHolland said:

If every track from the album has AT LEAST 500M streams then it is a success, otherwise it's a flop

Pretty sure that makes 0 successful albums ever

[BrokenMachine]

Anything below 1B is a flop for a mainstream act. Above that mark it can be considered a success, unless 80% comes from only one song 

[WildHeart]

After few years, 

3B - Success 

6B - Huge success

9B - Massive Smash 

[Distantconstellation]

If one single makes up like 75% of the albums streams then I dont consider that album a success because people are only streaming one song and don't really care about the rest of the album

[Bears01]

The varying answers in here 

[babyforlife]

5B+ = huge smash 

3B = success 

1B - 2B = underperformed 

below 1B = flopped

 

 

 

 

 

[stevyy]

Pre digital era: 1958 - 2002

 

1 billion = smash

500m - successful

 

digital era: 2003 - 2013

 

2 billion = smash

1 billion - successful

 

Streaming era: 2014 - present

 

3 billion = smash

2 billion - successful
 

[brenda-walsh]

2B is standard, baseline success

[GreatestLoveofAll]

i think 2 billion is a fair benchmark.

[Machete]

An album released today to be considered a success needs 3B minimum. Smash territory is +7B.

 

2B is too low when there's tons of "albums" that are unknown and carried by a single hit with +1B streams.

[Stuart]

13B

[Mystic Boy]

2B is definitely a success

3B Big success

5B Smash

 

[Holiest Dreams]

I think looking at the breakdown of streams per track is way more accurate than just saying “well this album has X amount of streams so it’s bigger!”

 

Thing is, using streaming to determine albums’ success is a very nuanced discussion, even though I think streaming is a great thing that’s allowed us to more accurately judge popularity. But, for instance, let’s take two hypothetical albums, both with 15 tracks: 

 

Album A: overall 5 billion streams, evenly spread out amongst the 15 tracks 

 

Album B: overall 6 billion streams, one track has 3 billion and then the other 14 has 3 billion spread out amongst them

 

Album B is technically bigger, but is it really bigger as an album? It’s not like the singles shouldn’t count, of course, but there needs to be some rules put in place for chart companies to more accurately track if an album is consumed as a whole vs. just one track propping it up. Because, in that case, you just have a massively successful single and your album isn’t really that big. This used to be common in the sales era, but now just one song can be equal to a bunch of album units when no one’s really listening  to the album. It’s probably the biggest downfall of the streaming era - we have so much more transparency with numbers, but haven’t developed a good enough methodology to reflect that into accurately tracking singles vs albums.

 

Anyway, a bit of a tangent, but overall - it depends on the artist, release year, and what the breakdown of streams looks like. You can’t really just say that X amount of streams automatically equals this or that. 

[zzmyth]

In all honesty... Having a 3B album isn't much when non singles have moved less than 500M streams. 

 

I'd say that having 3 songs above 500M and having moved +2B is a bigger album than an album that moved 2B but has just a +1B hit. 

 

Nowadays I'd say that a hit album is above 2B. A smash album is above 4B. And a huge album is anything above 5B.

 

Then it all depends on when it was released... How many songs... How many of them song where singles... 

 

I mean some albums nowadays are a greatest hits collection... And the album itself moved nothing. 

[Delirious]

14 hours ago, fememeist said:

100m-1b+ for an indie artist

and 1b+ for a mainstream artist

Tea

[DonnieDarko]

15 hours ago, vale9001 said:

 

90S and 80s 1-1.5B

 

for album released before the 80s 1B streams is already a big achviement

There is one important factor that seems to be ignored here - when the album was released on Spotify. It plays a huge role. There are acts that had smash albums in the 90’s like Ace Of Base (they sold 10M copies in the US alone and over 30M ww of their album The Sign) and yet the album barely has around 700M streams because it was put on Spotify in the 2010’s.

[Orsay]

the key is how long it takes them to cross 1b, 2b etc

 

i'm seeing 2b but Chromatica did that and still isn't considered a hit album... also this convo is restricted to Spotify which obviously doesn't tell the whole story in the first place, even if it is the biggest global streaming service