Eternium

Well, duh. Album equivalents are designed to inflate streaming-era artists and Ariana is the first generation of stream queens. The thing that's most impressive to me is how much growth we've seen. Ariana Grande will surpass Taylor Swift and Madonna for the most units for a female artist within their first 20 years, too.

You know what, let me apologize for overestimating your intelligence. When you used the phrase "moving goal posts," I thought you knew what it meant. Here, let me help you: "Moving the goal post" means changing the criteria midway through an argument to try and give your argument an advantage. And now let's break this thread down even simpler for you. The topic is "TD surpasses BOMT in CSPC." When I responded, I directly refuted that claim by showing that actual album equivalents (i.e. money grossed) still heavily favors BOMT. That's when you got upset and tried to move the goal post by asking which era had more hits - an argument that has nothing to do with which era moved more overall album equivalents. I hope you learned something today, but I have incredibly little faith in you seeing as you don't understand a basic idiom. Nobody counted streaming out, however people are right to state that streaming is overly-inflated to make eras look much bigger now. Current album equivalent formulas triple-count streams and they do not properly differentiate between real streams and bots. If you're actually interested in the topic, you should look at South Korea's charts. They're also entirely revenue based however they focus only on actual money generated (whereas Billboard uses hypothetical money generated). You start to see interesting things like PLAVE hitting 5B streams on Melon, yet having less than a 10th of the chart points as NewJeans, a group with 1.8B streams on Melon, because PLAVE's streams are from bots and fandom streaming whereas NewJeans had hits with the general public. I'm sorry but the level of delusion is too much Katy Perry has 0 artistry and the first time she tried to make an artistic statement (her fourth album, Witness) it was a panned mess with no point-of-view and 0 artistry. She immediately tried to go back to her original Dr. Luke sound and has run it in to the ground. Yet she's still so dependent on Dr. Luke that she can't move on to new producers. Katy Perry hasn't been an A-lister since 2014, sis. Britney will forever be an A-lister and the defining artist of a generation, whereas Katy fell behind Taylor, Rihanna, Gaga, Adele and Ariana. And since you'd like to claim BOMT is forgotten: Daily Spotify Streams: BOMT - 909,418 Firework - 675,241 Roar - 571,220 Hot N Cold - 892,983 California Gurls - 644,890 Etc. Britney has literally recorded one song this decade and done 0 promo, yet somehow her "forgotten song" from 1998 is out streaming your fave's "classics" despite Katy having more than 10x the play listing and active singles currently.

Britney then Rihanna then Taylor. There's literally no other possible answer.

It's the vocal production, 100%. It gives me such second-gen production. It's rich AND layered. I think everyone is tired of the lack of strong choruses in K-Pop.

No - it's a method that formulates the money an era would have grossed with the standards of 2013. You realize an album equivalent is just $10, right? And 1,500 Spotify streams in 2013 was $10, right? And 10 digital single sales in 2013 were $10, right? The entire formula is just a simple way to try and figure out how much an album era grossed. The labels didn't create this. IFPI started it for converting physical singles to album sales (since labels were foregoing single releases to push album sales) in 2000. Literal music fans such as MJDangerous (the owner of ChartMasters), Timber, myself and other users were working on or openly discussing these formulas well before any chart company ever followed suit. It's literally an imperfect, fanmade metric to compare grosses between eras. And that's the tea. The album limped to 3M physical copies in the U.S. after two years of promotion. The singles were constantly discounted. That's not to say that Katy didn't have a huge era or that the promo didn't pay off, but she wasn't dominating effortlessly the way Britney did. "bOMT was releeased at the peak of album sales" No, that was the 1980s. But Teenage Dream WAS released at the peak of digital single sales, Youtube views and catalog Spotify streams. Yet it still couldn't gross anywhere near what BOMT did. Why do you think that is? But yes, I would agree that BOMT is a modern classic that changed the future of pop music whereas Teenage Dream was a testament to why you shouldn't rely on one pervert music producer for all of your music. Ironically, there wouldn't have been a Dr. Luke or Max Martin for Katy Perry to go record with If not for BOMT.

You want to talk about moving goal posts? LMFAO. You have shown 0 critical thinking skills in this entire argument and here we can see the moment I clocked you while staying ON-TOPIC and actually addressing the thread's claim about album equivalents: And here we can see YOU moving goal posts to the number of singles released because you're upset that the criteria of the thread didn't work out the way you wanted it to. Now please stop hiding behind Teenage Dream. It's getting embarrassing, sis.

You're adding Nielsen SoundScan numbers (7.7M) and Sony BMG (1.27M). You're missing Columbia House numbers and the fact that Nielsen SoundScan was not fully comprehensive until the mid-2000s and missed major retailers like Tower Records. By that same token, you can argue that Adele had a much easier time because she had way smaller competition whereas Whitney had to go up against Celine, Shania, Mariah, Britney, Alanis and Madonna. A lot of mid-2010s eras had a weird pause in their certifications because RIAA used a methodology in the 2010s to inflate YouTube views in certification numbers, but then they reverted to a 150:1 formula from 100:1. They also had some super weird discrepancies over streaming such as Bad Romance and Baby, which were both heavily overcertified: https://www.reddit.com/r/popheads/s/4oL0SyXTtV Sony BMG units were not free That's like saying Sam's Club or Costco give you free groceries. You had to pay an upfront membership and then you got "discounted" prices on records. The entire business model (read: scam) was that they'd give out hit albums months after the eras were over and you'd only be able to bundle them with literal garbage choices that the record label had overshipped and wanted to unload on you. You really think the record industry would give out totally free albums for hit artists in the 90s when album sales were where labels actually made their money?

Christina at least has one fan still standing in 2026. Maroon 5 has nothing.

Ella beating down on Kristi, too. What a beautiful sight Country stars are always secret liberals and we love to see it.

Sorry you're neither literate nor logical enough to follow an on-topic conversation. But please, let me know how that's my fault. Your argument is "more hits." So by your own criteria, "I'm The Problem" by Morgan Wallen is the biggest era in history in the U.S. because it has more hits than everything else. Either stand by your logic or quit with your weak-ass trolling. Because I actually know what I'm talking about and you don't? Like you're claiming Britney owes her career to JIVE but JIVE was her biggest enemy - it was an indie label that didn't invest in Britney and tried to stop all of her most memorable moments. Like her's Tricky Stewart talking about how they tried to force Britney to dump Toxic for a Tricky Stewart song, which ultimately lead to him writing Umbrella. Notably, JIVE made Britney sing an R. Kelly song and she was fighting against its release as a single. JIVE hired NSYNC thanks to Britney's profits and absolutely sank them. They literally dropped 9M from NSA to Celebrity because JIVE famously rushed it and cut funding to the era. I'm sorry but your fave was relevant for 6 years and her latest release bombed harder than any Britney single ever. I can't take you seriously. The formula was created by IFPI in 2000 and it's incredibly outdated. It's just putting the albums money grossed into units of $10 based on 2013's economy. So when you're saying an album moved 8.3M album equivalents, you're actually just saying an album would have grossed $83M in 2013. The numbers are famously stuck in 2013's economy because Billboard was almost 15 years late. We used to have smarter trolls or girls capable of basic chart analysis. I see why nobody wants to come here anymore.

It's so funny to see people who think JIVE could puppeteer a popstar. Y'all let the weird misogyny of the 90s rot your brains. Need I remind you that JIVE had both the BSB and NSYNC and literally sank them? Britney would never have had BOMT, Toxic, her Rolling Stones shoots, etc. if she listened to JIVE. Y'all want to give them credit for women's accomplishments but the only time they had another successful female pop artist, we saw them facilitate Aaliyah's child marriage to R. Kelly. They were not good people and they were not capable of artistically puppeteering a recording artist.

"how dare you bring up album equivalents in a thread about album equivalents!!!11111!!!" Like do you not comprehend the topic of this thread at all? So according to your argument, Morgan Wallen's "I'm The Problem" is the biggest era of all-time in the U.S. because it has more hits than any album ever (16 YE chart entries)? Is that the argument you're trying to pivot to now that you failed the thread topic?

Let's work on those literacy skills, babe. I mentioned that YDM(C) helped push 24M album sales, which is a verifiable fact. BOMT, Sometimes, YDM(C) The Stop Remix, BTMYH and FTBOMBH were used as promotional tools and they pushed 24M album sales. Notably, YDM(C) and Sometimes did not get physical singles in the U.S. to push album sales (YDMC eventually got a 12-inch vinyl). Not everyone can sell 24M copies of an album. And she did that without polluting the oceans with variants or scamming people with $3.99 digitally-signed digital copies.

So you can neither do the math nor read? Is that what you're trying to tell me? Teenage Dream has more singles than BOMT, but BOMT was a much bigger hit globally. Even at its highest, Teenage Dream could never score a hit like BOMT nor make Perry as big as Britney. Teenage Dream's streaming stats look good in retrospect because it acts as a posthumous compilation album for Katy Perry's career. Its track listing contains all but four of Perry's hits throughout her career. Even with all of the help from streaming, playlisting, fake YouTube views, discounted single sales and a re-rerelease, Katy has never come close to grossing what Britney's BOMT did. Now maybe stop trying to set Katheryn up and go focus on your own fave.

Teenage Dream: The Complete Confection 7.2M album sales = $72M (average $10) 300k physical singles = $900k or $0.9M (average $3) 66M digital singles = $66M (average $1) Total without streaming: $138.9M or 13.89M album equivalents ...Baby One More Time (not adjusted for inflation) 24.3M album sales = $243M (average $10) 10M physical singles = $30M (average $3) 3M digital singles = $3M (average $1) Total without streaming (not adjusted for inflation): $276M or 27.6M album equivalents Are you really trying to claim that Teenage Dream made over $140M in streaming? That's the equivalent of more than 46 BILLION streams on Spotify. Across her entire career she doesn't even have a total of 30B streams. I highly doubt that even you are delusional enough to think TD:TCC made $140M in streams.

There actually wasn't a ton of stuff in the works for aespa when LSM was at SM. Part of the reason that they have such an underwhelming amount of content is because they were scrambling to put stuff together after pivoting away from White Fox. The materials and plans that were set aside for SM's fourth gen group went to both NewJeans and Hearts2Hearts. Their vault is incredibly underwhelming, which is why LSF and IVE have more content than them already despite fewer years of activity.

BLACKHOLE is the worst title track of the year. Can't wait for LCK to annihilate her. Yeah, there's already a huge rash of inappropriate content generated with idols' images in AI. I think it should be illegal for anyone under the age of 21 to be used in AI at all. LSM is even wanting to create AI idol rooms so you can pretend you're on Bubble with your idol whenever. It's just ******* gross when the girls are like 13. At least with Naevis she was based on the vocals of four-consenting adults and her movement was structured on consenting dancers making her a V-performer. Now he wants to move to generative AI using the images of children which is a recipe for disaster and should be ILLEGAL. A Grammy is a useful piece of garbage and I'm sure the Big 4 were scared of looking desperate for validation. But at the same time, it would have been SOOO nice to finally see Aespa on an awards show stage. They're big enough here to pull a larger crowd than Tate McRae at Lollapalooza. It's time to let them hit an awards show stage.

FTBOMBH was released in one country as a single and ended up somehow being huge in Asia and the 8th best-selling physical single in the U.S. that decade, the only country it was released in. I know you're 12, but claiming YDM(C) wasn't a global smash just because people bought the album instead of the CD single is laughable. It managed to not only push 24M album sales, something only six other female artists have ever achieved, but it STILL went on to hit the top 10 in every single country except Australia (#12) and Spain (#14). It went top 10 here in the U.S. and it didn't even get a real single release - it was limited to just 12" inch vinyl. If the charts included consumption in the 90s the way they do now, Sometimes, FTBOMBH and YDMC would have been #1 hits in the U.S. You realize these songs were getting 600-853k "streams" daily here in the U.S. just from TRL, right? And they were being played on MTV/VH1, etc., non-stop so they were easily clearing 1M+ impressions daily, which is more than enough to be #1 on US Spotify in 2026. The 90s charts were all flooded with radio payola from Sony and Universal but if we were to go back in time and reconstruct them with the same impression models we have now, BSB, NSYNC, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Shakira, etc. would all more than double their weeks at #1 here in America. You are the prime reason I mentioned Billboard changing their methodology to make it seem like every hit in 2026 is the biggest of all-time to impress small minded chart stans. Imagine thinking Taylor has the "biggest peak of all-time" when we saw her in the sales era and she couldn't clear 10M physical copies even with photo cards. It doesn't matter how the industry recognizes an artist - you pay for those awards and that recognition. It matters how you impact the music scene and the general public. Britney's debut laid the groundwork for Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Christina Aguilera, Mandy Moore, the entire K-pop industry (thank you BoA, DBSK and Girls' Generation), Avril Lavigne, Hilary Duff, Miley Cyrus, Selena Gomez, etc. The only pop artists with comparable impact are Whitney, Mariah, Madonna, Aretha, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand and Cher. I hope living vicariously through your financial abuser's achievements help you finally find the key to becoming less hateful and miserable on online forums

This delusional ass take by a girl stanning playlisted streams. Teenage Dream and 1989, the peak eras of both Taylor Swift and Katy Perry, were created by both running to Max Martin and trying to recreate Britney's impact around that time. TD sold poorly for its time and barely pulled 3M album sales. Even Taylor's weak global peak, 1989, pulled 7M album sales in the U.S. Katy was good for digital sales, but barely made any money even at her peak. Album equivalents are based on how much an album grossed. BOMT sold over 24.3M copies. That's $18.39 each in 2015 dollars per RIAA, or $446.877M grossed. Just in pure sales, BOMT alone moved 44.6877M album equivalents. Like do you all even know what album equivalents even are? They're triple counting streams from TD:TCC and it STILL doesn't compare. That's the thing. Billboard is based on selling "record-breaking stats" every day because it gets idiots to click on their website. Everytime they inflate stats to say an album set a new "greatest of all-time" record, they get a new huge article. It's the reason their rules have allowed for the "biggest hit of all-time" to change four times this decade and biggest BB200 album artist TWICE. It's no different from CM, which counts digital sales at 10:1.5 (instead of 10:1) and triples streams. Teenage Dream exists, much like 1989, because the girls wanted to emulate what Britney and Max did in 1998. I know you're 12, but imagine thinking YDMC, BTMYH, FTBOMBH and Sometimes weren't massive global smashes. Katy did well in digital sales, but her global numbers were weak, she struggled as a super star and she never escaped Gaga's shadow at her peak. Like Britney was the biggest thing on the Internet bar none, something no other artist has been able to replicate since Imagine Encore flopping so bad that you had to start hiding behind a Katy Perry album with more hits than every Taylor album ever. It's bad, huh?

Sorry but Chappell Roan was one of the fiercest "Free Palestine" pop girlies from the start. She could fart on a track and still get $100 from me.

Didn't your fave literally just get a "hit" with IKI,IKY by using the fraudulent country Pandora and Amazon streaming playlists? And can you post her Spotify streams pre- and post- Republic's involvement? The call is coming from inside the house, babe. Doesn't Billie Eilish have the most commercially successful first ten years since Britney herself?

Idk if you all have seen videos, but it was such a weird experience. She literally looked stunning and was killing the dancing and the moves, but then you'd look in her face and it was clear she was about to pass out. I think the fans sometimes take for granted just how amazing and hardworking our idols are. Like look at my sweet baby trying her best for us: NMIXX actually did well and all American dates officially sold out. Box scores have stopped counting restricted views and late release tickets against artists, which is a good thing. With 10/24 shows reported, NMIXX have a 100% sellout rate and $4.348M grossed. It's disappointing to see their album sales dwindle, but their touring is booming and JYP is going to squander that. I wouldn't even bother worrying about them. All boy groups start off as forgettable and then they get some kind of fanbase in the third year. They have a much easier time than girl groups.

Just want to let you know that she was beautiful tonight and so friendly. She signed my album

I think he's just using them to re-establish connections. I expect the girl group will do mediocre physicals but the boys will start being profitable in the next two years. And when it's time, LSM will start a Korean chapter and use it to launch his real groups. Just your daily reminder that I was there (and Sunny waved to me) Actually, girl group touring is on the rise!

People always use kids as a fan demographic as some kind of drag but that's good for longevity. I know so many people that have stanned their faves since childhood. I'm glad you had a good time Hopefully you told Chaewon that we need more ad-libs from her, please!