poll Will Taylor Swift outsell Britney Spears in pure sales?

[brazil]

4 hours ago, byzantium said:

Wow, Taylor outselling Britney despite Britney peaking in the peak of the physical market and Taylor peaking when sales are dead. 
 

And then some of you will still argue that Britney’s peak was larger.  

Britney actually has hits get out of here. Local rodrigo stan!

[Popboi.]

If the gap is that small, yes, for sure.

[Pop_Data]

5 hours ago, =NEX= said:

As if Britney's new release will move the needle on her overall total

 

--

 

Yes. In a very short space of time. Why is this even a question 

Britney Spears statistically is still a bigger name than Taylor Swift anywhere on this planet despite the album sales from Taylor Swift. 

[EmailMySwift]

5 hours ago, Rebel Lion said:

Honey boo boo child, Britney didn't have the outlets Taylor has now. Taylor can reach a much wider audience than Britney ever did yet Britney was still able to outsell her. Make it make sense.

Britney released during the all-time peak of album sales. 

AND she released a genre of music (teen pop) that, on the heels of Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, sold more than any other. 

 

Not to mention the benefit of Club Sales at that time. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[spree]

5 hours ago, rihannasbe$tfrnd said:

No and her sales aren’t impressive. Streaming needs to be recalibrated because we don’t know how many times Becky Sue who bought X album played it on her cd player yet nowadays we have Karen Susan streaming Taylor’s album all day and they’re counting that as sales … 

they need to retroactively make every album pre-streaming count for 10x its points because of that point you just made.  It's apples and oranges.  Cassettes, too.  When your car or boombox ATE your cassette you know you played the album a lot.  But yet it only counts as 1.

[Cruel Summer]

3 minutes ago, spree said:

they need to retroactively make every album pre-streaming count for 10x its points because of that point you just made.  It's apples and oranges.  Cassettes, too.  When your car or boombox ATE your cassette you know you played the album a lot.  But yet it only counts as 1.

I mean, the premise of this thread is literally just pure actual sales only, but still - the “we can’t know how many times people played physical albums!” argument ignores one fundamental fact. When you’re streaming, it generates revenue. When you play a CD, it does not. That’s how we equate streams to a sale - purely, factually, we estimate how many streams generates the same revenue that a CD sale would. That’s it. Because of that, arbitrarily raising the value of old albums would just be lying about music consumption over time; it would actually recognize the realities of the changing industry less than the current consumption unit model. The only potentially acceptable solution would account for changing album prices and for inflation, but no industry source today accounts for that because it creates more complexity and it becomes less digestible to music fans.

 

To bring this back to the thread topic, let’s acknowledge that Britney’s pure sales were massive, and they were impressive even for the years that she peaked (a little-discussed factoid here is that Britney’s 1999 and 2000 are the #3 and #1 years for any woman in the Soundscan era, if I’m recalling correctly). Britney was a true force of nature. Does it not say something interesting that Taylor seems likely to eventually surpass her sales totals despite the fact that she’s currently peaking in the streaming era? Like, this is after you remove every single stream from the conversation. That’s pretty impressive! Britney’s pure sales are a benchmark for a good reason!

[spree]

7 minutes ago, Cruel Summer said:

I mean, the premise of this thread is literally just pure actual sales only, but still - the “we can’t know how many times people played physical albums!” argument ignores one fundamental fact. When you’re streaming, it generates revenue. When you play a CD, it does not. That’s how we equate streams to a sale - purely, factually, we estimate how many streams generates the same revenue that a CD sale would. That’s it. Because of that, arbitrarily raising the value of old albums would just be lying about music consumption over time; it would actually recognize the realities of the changing industry less than the current consumption unit model. The only potentially acceptable solution would account for changing album prices and for inflation, but no industry source today accounts for that because it creates more complexity and it becomes less digestible to music fans.

 

To bring this back to the thread topic, let’s acknowledge that Britney’s pure sales were massive, and they were impressive even for the years that she peaked (a little-discussed factoid here is that Britney’s 1999 and 2000 are the #3 and #1 years for any woman in the Soundscan era, if I’m recalling correctly). Britney was a true force of nature. Does it not say something interesting that Taylor seems likely to eventually surpass her sales totals despite the fact that she’s currently peaking in the streaming era? Like, this is after you remove every single stream from the conversation. That’s pretty impressive! Britney’s pure sales are a benchmark for a good reason!

this isn't about revenue tho, it's about actual plays which would convert to today's streaming.  Take The Immaculate Collection, for example.  Sold 10M, is Diamond, and it's final total is 10M.  But if streaming were around in 1990, then the people who didn't buy the album and are just casually streaming the songs would contribute to its overall total as well.  You even have single sales today counting for album sales.  They are counted twice, in fact.  That makes no sense. So that total number would be MUCH more than what it is today.  Maybe it wouldn't have sold 10M, but I guarantee its grand total today would be much higher than 10M.

 

it's still apples and oranges.  It's not fair to Britney cuz today's format was not available in her time, and on top of that, single sales weren't counted towards her album sales.

[Cruel Summer]

21 minutes ago, spree said:

this isn't about revenue tho, it's about actual plays which would convert to today's streaming.  Take The Immaculate Collection, for example.  Sold 10M, is Diamond, and it's final total is 10M.  But if streaming were around in 1990, then the people who didn't buy the album and are just casually streaming the songs would contribute to its overall total as well.  You even have single sales today counting for album sales.  They are counted twice, in fact.  That makes no sense. So that total number would be MUCH more than what it is today.  Maybe it wouldn't have sold 10M, but I guarantee its grand total today would be much higher than 10M.

 

it's still apples and oranges.  It's not fair to Britney cuz today's format was not available in her time, and on top of that, single sales weren't counted towards her album sales.

 

Singles are only counted twice in any way if you’re adding up RIAA certifications or adding figures that already have streams included in both singles and albums (like when some labels promote a figure of “records” instead of albums/units), rather than just incorporating all consumption formats into one number in the first place. If you’re adding the separate parts together one time from their original forms, nothing is double counted. If you look at the broken down numbers in the OP, you’ll see that raw album sales alone are still close enough that Taylor will likely overtake Britney one day.

 

If streaming existed in 1990, then the sales would be less, and the market would likely look more like it does today. There’s no precedent to assume that an album that sold X copies in 1990 would move more than X units in the 2023 model. The biggest albums each year in the modern market are usually still not matching older albums, and it’s because streaming does not inherently inflate their numbers if counted correctly (that is, the way Billboard counts these things for the Billboard 200, for example).

 

We need to have some way to talk about today’s music and it’s popularity in relation to older music, and this is the only reasonable way to do that right now with the data that we have. Consumption units calculated with methods that are informed by revenue generated are, for better or for worse, all we currently have to construct a narrative that connects the history of music from the pure sales through streaming.

[spree]

yea but then you have half the Top 10 songs of all time belonging to the last 3 years because of streaming.  That makes no sense, either.  Is Stay bigger than Bohemian Rhapsody?

 

I agree that there needs to be a bridge between pre-streaming and streaming eras, just not sure how they got to those arbitrary numbers for the formula.  It's all non-serious anyways, just chart chat.  In reality, it all means nothing.   Janet Jackson got screwed over because of streaming, but she is absolutely a legend and pinnacle artist for 20 years. 

[Axelios]

5 hours ago, spree said:

they need to retroactively make every album pre-streaming count for 10x its points because of that point you just made.  It's apples and oranges.  Cassettes, too.  When your car or boombox ATE your cassette you know you played the album a lot.  But yet it only counts as 1.

You realize streams aren't counted as 1 stream = 1 sale right?

Your comment doesn't make any sense...

[Aethereal]

17 hours ago, Rico Shameless v2 said:

Taylor will have like 18 studio albums by the time she does. So I guess she will.

Quote

 

American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has released 10 original studio albums, three re-recorded studio albums, five extended plays, and four live albums.

 

 

Quote

 

American singer Britney Spears has released nine studio albums, eight compilation albums, nine box sets, three extended plays (EPs), 50 singles (including two as a featured artist), 11 promotional singles, two charity singles, and has made three guest appearances. 

 

Britney's 2 compilation albums have sold +7M. You can remove Taylor's re-recordings and Britney's compilation the gap would be the same.  

 

How many pure album sales will Britney's next studio album sell to change the gap? 

[Saint James]

so i think we can agree that chartmasters is an unreliable source and Taylor will outsell Britney in pure.

[EmailMySwift]

18 hours ago, Rico Shameless v2 said:

Taylor will have like 18 studio albums by the time she does. So I guess she will.

Britney could release 18 more studio albums and Taylor would still outsell her. 

[UnusualBoy]

Maybe? I've learned to not underestimate Taylor.

[Johnny Jacobs]

Considering she has almost double the albums i don't see y not soon

[Filpo]

I don't think sales datas from the history of commercial music can really be compared with the streaming era and its "sales".

 

Just because big companies like Billboard still do that doesn't mean it makes sense. We're talking about apples and oranges.

 

But of course, pushing a narrative in which new artists break every possibile record is very convenient.

 

 

 

 

[Ms. Togekiss]

Judging by Britney Jean and Glory, Britney could release 10 more albums and the needle won’t move much, whereas Taylor is still selling tons of albums. It won’t be too long before she outsells

[Aethereal]

1 hour ago, Filpo said:

I don't think sales datas from the history of commercial music can really be compared with the streaming era and its "sales".

 

Just because big companies like Billboard still do that doesn't mean it makes sense. We're talking about apples and oranges.

 

But of course, pushing a narrative in which new artists break every possibile record is very convenient.

 

 

 

 

 

There is one big fat "PURE SALES"  written in the tittle. 

And the pure sales market during the Taylor's reign is far worse than that of Britney and that makes Taylor's pure sales numbers more impressive than Britney's even if she has one extra album or not. 

 

Taylor has flown way past Britney if count streaming units. 

 

1 hour ago, Johnny Jacobs said:

Considering she has almost double the albums i don't see y not soon

She has one extra studio album. As for the rerecordings' Britney has high sales from compilations which have sold more than Taylor's rerecording so far. 

Edited September 14, 2023 by Aristotle

[Cruel Summer]

14 hours ago, spree said:

yea but then you have half the Top 10 songs of all time belonging to the last 3 years because of streaming.  That makes no sense, either.  Is Stay bigger than Bohemian Rhapsody?

 

I agree that there needs to be a bridge between pre-streaming and streaming eras, just not sure how they got to those arbitrary numbers for the formula.  It's all non-serious anyways, just chart chat.  In reality, it all means nothing.   Janet Jackson got screwed over because of streaming, but she is absolutely a legend and pinnacle artist for 20 years. 

Singles largely move more units these days not just because of streaming, but because the ways we interact with music have changed significantly. Insofar as that, maybe Stay is “bigger” than Bohemian Rhapsody commercially. It might not be bigger in terms of cultural capital and impact, but then numbers could never really quantify those things anyway.

 

The numbers involved in these formulas are not actually arbitrary - that’s where that revenue that I was talking about comes into play. Take this thread for example. This thread is about pure sales only, no streams to speak of, and it also uses a formula. Specifically, the OP uses the TEA - or “track-equivalent album” - formula, which is founded upon the assumption that ten sales of individual album tracks through a digital retailer roughly equates to one sale of a single album (through any retailer). It’s not always perfectly correct, but it’s an accurate assumption when we’re talking about large sums of sales across various artists, releases, platforms, retailers. This is why you sometimes see total units give a different multiplier for pure sales of singles that are released as physical CDs; they often cost more, so it takes less of them to make the same amount of money (or generate the same revenue) as an album.

 

And this isn’t even new - this isn’t a streaming era idea. It’s just become more popular in the streaming era because it creates a universal mathematical language that allows us to talk across decades, that accounts for the ongoing fundamental transformation in how people engage with music. IFPI has actually been using the concept of an “album-equivalent unit,” basically the same thing that this very thread discusses, since 1994, equating three physical single sales to an album sale. The OP even uses the same ratio. That was four years before Britney even released her debut single; the concept is older than her entire career.

[family.guy123]

Surely they haven’t sold 240 million digital sales combined since Billboard implemented TEA in 2014?

 

The complete my album feature already took care of that issue and converted those song sales to album sales where applicable. Why are you doing that again?

[playwithme]

Wow, Britney’s sales are so impressive. Truly pop royalty. 

[leyaris11]

The fact that Britney still a blueprint in music industry get people talking, seething and competing with recent acts which said the most about her. 

[Cruel Summer]

4 minutes ago, family.guy123 said:

Surely they haven’t sold 240 million digital sales combined since Billboard implemented TEA in 2014?

 

The complete my album feature already took care of that issue and converted those song sales to album sales where applicable. Why are you doing that again?

The OP seems to be retroactively applying the TEA formula to their entire careers.

Complete My Album actually removes digital song sales from the song’s total. If someone is reported as having sold 50,000,000 digital songs, for example, that’s actually just sales that are independent of albums completed by that feature. This is why some songs in the past dropped off the digital songs charts completely during album release weeks. You also have to actually manually go and redeem the completed album to process that sale and essentially revert those song sales in exchange, and not everyone actually does that. TuneCore, a music distribution platform for artists, explains it this way:

 

”For accounting purposes, the CMA album will be accounted for as a sale of a full album, and the previously purchased track is considered a return (this will show in your monthly sales report as a negative sale).”

[family.guy123]

1 minute ago, Cruel Summer said:

The OP seems to be retroactively applying the TEA formula to their entire careers.

Complete My Album actually removes digital song sales from the song’s total. If someone is reported as having sold 50,000,000 digital songs, for example, that’s actually just sales that are independent of albums completed by that feature. This is why some songs in the past dropped off the digital songs charts completely during album release weeks. You also have to actually manually go and redeem the completed album to process that sale and essentially revert those song sales in exchange, and not everyone actually does that. TuneCore, a music distribution platform for artists, explains it this way:

 

”For accounting purposes, the CMA album will be accounted for as a sale of a full album, and the previously purchased track is considered a return (this will show in your monthly sales report as a negative sale).”

I know how CMA works. It correctly converted track sales to album units once a consumer purchased all the songs of the album.

 

The way OP is doing it is saying that 10 purchases of SIO or BOMT is an album sale. Doesn’t make sense. I’m sure they’ll also still go around claiming “162m and 83m singles sold” which is double counting towards albums and sales. It’s also completely ignoring the fact that not all albums have 10 tracks. 

 

 

 

 

 

[Cruel Summer]

9 minutes ago, family.guy123 said:

I know how CMA works. It correctly converted track sales to album units once a consumer purchased all the songs of the album.

 

The way OP is doing it is saying that 10 purchases of SIO or BOMT is an album sale. Doesn’t make sense. I’m sure they’ll also still go around claiming “162m and 83m singles sold” which is double counting towards albums and sales. It’s also completely ignoring the fact that not all albums have 10 tracks. 

Well, what’s wrong with that? They’re not double counting anything in the OP, they explicitly convert to TEA units, and the industry standard way to handle things like 10 separate, non-CMA sales of SIO is to equivocate it to a single sale of 1989 based on broad price averages - hence a track equivalent album.