base talk Madonna, Celine, Taylor - only female artists to move 200m+ album units?

[stevyy]

That methology makes it so, that people from the streaming era will all push down those from before. 

 

People are often mocking someone like Nicki Minaj, who is collecting 5-6-7 times as many streams per day than Madonna / Mariah <-outside of Xmas. 

 

Cardi B has sold almost as many records in the US as Mariah Carey with 1 album. Mariah stands at 154 million certified units. 

 

It's ridiculous. Getting to 100m US certs with 1 album was impossible at any point in time except the streaming era. 

[Cruel Summer]

5 minutes ago, stevyy said:

That methology makes it so, that people from the streaming era will all push down those from before. 

 

People are often mocking someone like Nicki Minaj, who is collecting 5-6-7 times as many streams per day than Madonna / Mariah <-outside of Xmas. 

 

Cardi B has sold almost as many records in the US as Mariah Carey with 1 album. Mariah stands at 154 million certified units. 

 

It's ridiculous. Getting to 100m US certs with 1 album was impossible at any point in time except the streaming era. 

“Records sold” is an entirely different thing that has always been a terrible metric and the album equivalent unit simply doesn’t have that problem. It’s also been pointed out repeatedly in this thread that there is no evidence that artists from the streaming era have begun to “push down” older artists in all time rankings.

[wowsignal14]

Mariah and someday Rihanna will get there too, so. 

[Jjang]

Jeez. 

 

I understand that we have the right to be skeptical about the methodology behind the album-equivalent unit because music consumption has changed so drastically and equating the action of deliberately going out in public to intentionally buy a full body of work with the action of consuming music passively through playlists or whatnot is somewhat arbitrary. At the end of the day, we can agree that it's difficult to compare physical sales-era artists with digital/streaming-era artists not only merely because of the way music consumption has changed but also the culture around it. The modern culture of accessibility has changed the way music units are accumulated. Nowadays an old song/album having exposure on TikTok for example can cause a whole revival for the album/artist in an instant manner - this could not be the case for older generation artists. For instance, if Madonna's Erotica had some kind of cultural revival in 1996, there was no way for people to instantly stream it and push it back to the forefront of the charts because the physical record has most likely already been cleaned off the record store shelves. 

 

But this is why we also have to consider relativity, because although the culture of consumption has changed drastically since Madonna's heyday, we can still observe that in the new era of consumption, no one is doing it like Taylor and no one is moving units as fast as her - and you can't take that away from her. Just like The Immaculate Collection was the best-selling greatest hits album by a solo artist ever, Taylor has the biggest back catalog streams out of anyone right now. 

 

ChartMasters is just here to paint the closest picture possible when it comes to an adjusted all-time list. You can disagree with it, but I don't understand why people hate it so passionately. 

[spree]

No one is taking anything away from Taylor, the issue is the deflection away from what the numbers would truly look like if streaming was around forever.

 

if The Immaculate Collection sold 10M, would it still be at 10M in 2023 if streaming was around in 1990? 33 years later?

 

absolutely not! 
 

it’s the complete dismissal of what could’ve happened (but let’s compare them anyways) that makes comparing artists from different generations a moot point. You can’t compare them objectively. 

[WildHeart]

44 minutes ago, spree said:

No one is taking anything away from Taylor, the issue is the deflection away from what the numbers would truly look like if streaming was around forever.

 

if The Immaculate Collection sold 10M, would it still be at 10M in 2023 if streaming was around in 1990? 33 years later?

 

absolutely not! 

If streaming was around forever, their pure sales wouldn't exist in the first place. What is not clicking? 

If people can listen albums without buying them, they most likely don't buy them. 

 

If The Immaculate Collection got released today or streaming existed in 1990, it wouldn't sell 20M pure albums. If Jagged Little Pill got released today or streaming existed in 1995, it wouldn't sell 30M pure album sales. They would only have streams and very little pure sales. 

[spree]

4 minutes ago, WildHeart said:

If streaming was around forever, their pure sales wouldn't exist in the first place. What is not clicking? 

If people can listen albums without buying them, they most likely don't buy them. 

 

If The Immaculate Collection got released today or streaming existed in 1990, it wouldn't sell 20M pure albums. If Jagged Little Pill got released today or streaming existed in 1995, it wouldn't sell 30M pure album sales. They would only have streams and very little pure sales. 

and what's not clicking for you?  You act as tho TIC came out 6 months ago.

 

The Immaculate Collection came out at the zenith peak of Madonna's career.  You don't think the total consumption units (pure sales, streaming, single downloads) would eventually total more than 10M units "sold"?  This is 33 years ago.  Think of all the billions and billions of streams it would have since it's the highest selling greatest hits album by a female of all time.  

 

pure sales exist today.  Look at Nikki Minaj or Morgan Wallen.  You don't think Madonna had a rabid fanbase that would go crazy and buy everything like Taylor currently has? 

[WildHeart]

10 minutes ago, spree said:

The Immaculate Collection came out at the zenith peak of Madonna's career.  You don't think the total consumption units (pure sales, streaming, single downloads) would eventually total more than 10M units "sold"?

The Immaculate Collection sold 28M pure album sales. 

Equivalent of that is roughly 25-30B streams on Spotify. 

For reference, highest streamed album on Spotify has "only" 15B streams. 

 

12 minutes ago, spree said:

pure sales exist today.  Look at Nikki Minaj or Morgan Wallen. 

Even Morgan, arguably the biggest male artist in the US is struggling to sell 1M pure sales. Nicki sold 90k, she will be lucky to sell 300k in the long run. 

 

 

This is how 10th most consumed album of each decade looks like according to Chartmasters

 

1960s - 29.7M 

1970s - 43M

1980s - 38.2M

1990s - 34.7M 

2000s - 24.8M

2010s - 22.6M

[spree]

Yea the highest streamed album only has 15B cuz streaming itself is only 8 years old. 
 

The Immaculate Collection is 33 years old.  
 

You don’t seem to grasp the scope of 33 Years.  You mention Morgan barely scraping 1M. Well yea, it just came out last year.  Not 33 years ago. 

[stevyy]

1 hour ago, spree said:

Yea the highest streamed album only has 15B cuz streaming itself is only 8 years old. 
 

The Immaculate Collection is 33 years old.  
 

You don’t seem to grasp the scope of 33 Years.  You mention Morgan barely scraping 1M. Well yea, it just came out last year.  Not 33 years ago. 

scalp him. 

 

What the TayTay community also doesn't understand is that those acts from before the streaming age were pioneers and originals. Literally, the biggest acts of all times were competing with each other and inventing / developing the music industry along the way. 

 

[FightDragonsWithMe]

Legends are meant to be surpassed get over it  Taylor's going to be #1 in everything 

[family.guy123]

16 hours ago, Raspberries said:

This thread  Thinking that the music industry and charts shouldn't adapt for the trends and advancement in the way media is consumed 

 

It's a good thing this isn't a TV forum. The Britney stans would be stuck arguing live viewership instead of streaming/+7 day numbers  

Does Nielsen incorporate streaming into their traditional television viewership numbers?  Based on my 30 seconds of research, it looks like they created a separate weekly list for those figures. 
 

Does the box office (an actual revenue based chart) manipulate Netflix streaming numbers into a formula and include them as box office receipts? Of course they don’t, that would be ridiculous. 
 

Again, it’s y’all who are obsessed with the idea of a physical album unit. Let it go. Times change. 

[family.guy123]

21 hours ago, Feanor said:

The way equivalent album sales had been a thing back in 2012 already and are by now the main metric of measuring multi-format music success as dictated by Billboard, IFPI, Luminate etc., yet people on ATRL of all places still either refuse to accept it or still don't get how to works…

Your argument is to blindly follow publications that this website regularly calls out for being fraudulent, unprofessional, and inaccurate? 
 

Can you come up with your own rational for combining streams and physical/digital. Use logic, not “billboard says so!”

[stevyy]

There are only 10 physical era acts (non Xmas) who belong to the 100 biggest streamed artists by daily streams. 

 

In this climate, their careers stopped gaining any substantial "sales"... while those streaming acts collect tens of millions of "sales" per annual now?

 

Another thing which interrupted the continuity of the charts... are those regularly occuring rules changes. We have not talked about that either. 

 

The rules never changed as much and as quickly as they are now. 

 

 

 

[byzantium]

25 minutes ago, family.guy123 said:

Does Nielsen incorporate streaming into their traditional television viewership numbers?  Based on my 30 seconds of research, it looks like they created a separate weekly list for those figures. 
 

Does the box office (an actual revenue based chart) manipulate Netflix streaming numbers into a formula and include them as box office receipts? Of course they don’t, that would be ridiculous. 
 

Again, it’s y’all who are obsessed with the idea of a physical album unit. Let it go. Times change. 

1) Nelson does incorporate streaming viewership

2) the box office is a revenue chart so it does not matter.  By this logic streaming would be considered since it makes revenue.

The issue with this whole discussion is people arguing that it is impossible for any future artist to be as massive as prior artists.  This would be like saying Michael Jackson can never be as big as Elvis because he did not sell as many vinyl records.  Or Mariah Carey could never be as big as Donna Summers because she did not sell as many cassette tapes. The argument flip in the present by saying Modonna can never be as big as Dua Lipa because she has a fraction of the streams.  It’s just dumb to be obtuse and not factor in the context of the market. 

[Raspberries]

35 minutes ago, family.guy123 said:

Does Nielsen incorporate streaming into their traditional television viewership numbers?  Based on my 30 seconds of research, it looks like they created a separate weekly list for those figures. 
 

Does the box office (an actual revenue based chart) manipulate Netflix streaming numbers into a formula and include them as box office receipts? Of course they don’t, that would be ridiculous. 
 

Again, it’s y’all who are obsessed with the idea of a physical album unit. Let it go. Times change. 

Live +7 day ratings are literally live viewership and then people watching it on streaming platforms  May want to research a little harder next time 

[family.guy123]

17 minutes ago, Raspberries said:

Live +7 day ratings are literally live viewership and then people watching it on streaming platforms  May want to research a little harder next time 

Sorry, I’m just at work. Could you please link me to where these +7 day ratings are posted? I’d love to learn more about this. TV has changed so much since I used to pay attention to Nielsen ratings 

[family.guy123]

27 minutes ago, byzantium said:

1) Nelson does incorporate streaming viewership

2) the box office is a revenue chart so it does not matter.  By this logic streaming would be considered since it makes revenue.

The issue with this whole discussion is people arguing that it is impossible for any future artist to be as massive as prior artists.  This would be like saying Michael Jackson can never be as big as Elvis because he did not sell as many vinyl records.  Or Mariah Carey could never be as big as Donna Summers because she did not sell as many cassette tapes. The argument flip in the present by saying Modonna can never be as big as Dua Lipa because she has a fraction of the streams.  It’s just dumb to be obtuse and not factor in the context of the market. 

Another issue is users assuming that people who hold opinions like the ones I do, are doing so because we believe “it’s impossible for any future artist to be as massive as prior artists”. In other words, you’re saying I’m looking at the units Cardic B accumulated with one album, think they’re too high, and therefore have a problem with the formula. No. I’m looking right at the logic of the methodology and am calling it dumb, illogical, and not productive in comparing different eras of the industry . (I would put forward that cassettes, vinyl, cd, digital albums all have similar characteristics that lend themselves to comparison. I would argue that streaming an album shares very few of these same characteristics and are thus impossible to be accurately reflected as an album “unit”. Feel free to disagree)

 

I agree completely with your last two sentences. Drawing a conclusion on Madonna and Dua’s popularity by comparing two completely different methods of consuming music would result in a faulty conclusion. So why does Billboard (and the users in this thread) insist on doing so? 
 

I’m the one who’s not factoring in the context of the market? Music streaming has completely shifted the industry, yet charts like Billboard would have you believe that people are consuming albums in the same way they did back when internet didn’t even exist. They’re not.

[Finkypop]

Taylor is the biggest artist of all time and I can’t wait for when she surpasses Madonna. The fumes will be legendary 

[byzantium]

26 minutes ago, family.guy123 said:

Another issue is users assuming that people who hold opinions like the ones I do, are doing so because we believe “it’s impossible for any future artist to be as massive as prior artists”. In other words, you’re saying I’m looking at the units Cardic B accumulated with one album, think they’re too high, and therefore have a problem with the formula. No. I’m looking right at the logic of the methodology and am calling it dumb, illogical, and not productive in comparing different eras of the industry . (I would put forward that cassettes, vinyl, cd, digital albums all have similar characteristics that lend themselves to comparison. I would argue that streaming an album shares very few of these same characteristics and are thus impossible to be accurately reflected as an album “unit”. Feel free to disagree)

 

I agree completely with your last two sentences. Drawing a conclusion on Madonna and Dua’s popularity by comparing two completely different methods of consuming music would result in a faulty conclusion. So why does Billboard (and the users in this thread) insist on doing so? 
 

I’m the one who’s not factoring in the context of the market? Music streaming has completely shifted the industry, yet charts like Billboard would have you believe that people are consuming albums in the same way they did back when internet didn’t even exist. They’re not.

So you just have an issue with Bilboard, the RIAA, IFPI and most chart organizations.  That’s fine, but don’t act like it is strange for individuals to not have issue with industry norm.  

[Shaner69]

5 hours ago, WildHeart said:

If streaming was around forever, their pure sales wouldn't exist in the first place. What is not clicking? 

If people can listen albums without buying them, they most likely don't buy them. 

 

If The Immaculate Collection got released today or streaming existed in 1990, it wouldn't sell 20M pure albums. If Jagged Little Pill got released today or streaming existed in 1995, it wouldn't sell 30M pure album sales. They would only have streams and very little pure sales. 

This is a dumb post. If someone buys an album there is no possible way of tracking how many times it's listened too. 

 

The whole point is streaming was not available at that time. You can only assume numbers. It's certainly unfair with the current system to major artists of the past. 

[WildHeart]

5 hours ago, spree said:

Yea the highest streamed album only has 15B cuz streaming itself is only 8 years old. 
 

The Immaculate Collection is 33 years old.  

And in those 8 years, there have been only 2 albums with +20M units. 

There is nothing suggesting that albums will reach +50B streams in the long run, they slow down after some time. 

Even Divide, second biggest streaming era album is already down to 4M daily. 

 

5 hours ago, spree said:

You mention Morgan barely scraping 1M. Well yea, it just came out last year.  Not 33 years ago. 

It is already down to 3k weekly. Even if it keeps selling 3k weekly for 10 years (which won't happen since it is already down to 3k weekly as a few months old album), that means only 1.5M pure sales. Albums used to sell 30M. 

 

3 hours ago, stevyy said:

People are often mocking someone like Nicki Minaj, who is collecting 5-6-7 times as many streams per day than Madonna / Mariah <-outside of Xmas. 

 

Cardi B has sold almost as many records in the US as Mariah Carey with 1 album. Mariah stands at 154 million certified units. 

 

It's ridiculous. Getting to 100m US certs with 1 album was impossible at any point in time except the streaming era. 

You don't know what you are talking about. 

You are talking about record sales (album sales + single sales) which has nothing to do with Chartmasters' (or Bilboard and IFPI) formula. 

 

In Chartmasters' All Time Chart 

#158 Nicki Minaj - 31.8M 

#173 Cardi B - 25.1M 

 

24 minutes ago, Shaner69 said:

The whole point is streaming was not available at that time. You can only assume numbers.

And you are also assuming numbers when you claim that past generation artists would sell more during the streaming era when there is nothing indicating that. 

 

26 minutes ago, Shaner69 said:

It's certainly unfair with the current system to major artists of the past. 

Definitely not considering there are only 2 streaming artists competing againsts 98 pre-streaming artists so far. 

If anything, it is unfair to new artists. 

[Klein]

8 minutes ago, WildHeart said:

Definitely not considering there are only 2 streaming artists competing againsts 98 pre-streaming artists so far. 

If anything, it is unfair to new artists. 

They're just saying it's unfair because Taylor is moving up the ranks. 

 

It's always "it's so much easier for streaming artists" when in fact, they are nowhere near these heights of the pure sales artists. 

 

Only Taylor and Drake have a shot at reaching the top 10 biggest artists of all time (and it's not even that likely for Drake). For me, if you want to argue that it's unfair that they can do that, it just means the methodology used is wrong. It's wild to me to think no new artist could or should ever reach the level of success of the legends before them. 

[Lille]

People complaining about streaming when music club "sales" account for half of 80s/90s artists' units.

 

Go to bed abuelita!

[Kasix]

I find it so funny that swifties here are still arguing with dinosaur acts’ fans as if there is ever changing their minds to see streams as sales 
 

Just copy and paste this: 

 

1500 streams = 10 bucks in royalties which is the price of a cd so it is counted as a sale as far as the entire music industry from billboard, RIAA and nielsen to chartmaster and IFPI is concerned. If you can’t Get over it then it’s on you, all these industry outlets will proclaim Taylor to have outsold Madonna when it happens regardless of your feelings. 
 

 

Edited December 19, 2023 by Kasix