ILoveHIStory;4230178 said:
A step into club sales of all-time top US sellers
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.
The increase of 71-75‘s awards from 29xPlatinum to 38xPlatinum has been debated a lot during the last few weeks. This album has been surrounded by controversy for much longer though. From 1990 to 2002, it shot from 12xPlatinum to 28xPlatinum while scanning 4,5 million units at retail as per Soundscan.
While it’s always good to be doubters, we shouldn’t automatically call for conspiracy as soon as something looks suspicious. When an album is audited, it’s natural to expect it to increase only by as much as it sold since its last upgrade. It may seem sensitive, but it isn’t. Every certification has its story. Chart rules evolve, audits aren’t always comprehensive nor they are necessarily up to date.
The most infamous case is the one of music clubs. We already went through them, pointing out precisely the case of the Eagles. Fact is, in 1994 all club sales, including free goods and initial subscription offers, were made eligible. This resulted into massive jumps in certifications for some albums.
Now that Discogs is bringing us a lot of information, we can exploit it. For nearly 25 years we had to take RIAA increases thanks to clubs for granted. What about challenging these boosts with proper data? Let’s check the share of club sales among Discogs’ owners for the 9 albums that sold over 20 million units in the US. Namely, Eagles‘ Greatest Hits 71-75 and Hotel California, Michael Jackson‘s Thriller, Led Zeppelin‘s IV, AC/DC‘s Back in Black, Hootie & the Blowfish‘s Cracked Rear View, Fleetwood Mac‘s Rumours, Shania Twain‘s Come On Over and Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon.
READ MORE HERE, and add your comment to confront MJD, or just ask some questions -
https://chartmasters.org/2018/09/a-step-into-club-sales-of-all-time-top-us-sellers/
I find funny how they try to find a way to justify what they call themselves "a massive jumps" from club music, the problem, it's the RIAA massive sales for the Eagles album don't work with the club musics numbers (see my previous comment), in fact, the most famous music club have just 1 millions copies and half, not 20 millions more albums.
Also, I don't like his word "conspiracy", it's like peoples who dare to ask question about RIAA numbers are irrational, look, we have the soundscan numbers, see the numbers by mjchris, see the various articles, I mean Billboard are conspirationist too for to point this problem about the Eagles sales ? the true is very easy, this numbers are just pure fantasy from RIAA and Warner Music, if the guy from this article from chartmaster is forced to justify these numbers, it's the proof there are a big problem no ?
And seriously...charmasters from the articles, it's so stupid, they try to make a ratio between BMG sales, with maybe...what ? collector owners, with ratio from...nowhere ? see from this article:
"Converting Discogs data into sales figures
First, we collect Discogs raw data. Second, we value it. Third, we exploit it. That latter step consists in using our ratios and apply them back to the raw values. That will convert owners into sales. Results are displayed below.
"Blue lines are deduced by multiplying Discogs owners with the conversion ratio we obtained earlier. Orange lines exploit RIAA and Soundscan data. The first line is the number of units certified as of the start of 1991 – simple assumptions are done from last pre-1991 award and monthly sales up to that year. The second line is the up to date Soundscan number. Please keep in mind that Thriller‘s Soundscan figure has been adjusted since the official number double counts the 2001 edition, inflating its tally by 1,1 million. Clubs sales are simply the gap between pre-Soundscan plus Soundscan sales and up to date estimates."
"Consistency with RIAA awards
We can point out a striking correlation between both methods. Greatest Hits 1971-1975 is indeed far and away the top selling album through music clubs, followed by IV and Back In Black. This table proves huge increases in RIAA certifications during the 90s of all these albums were completely legitimate. The two albums that have really big gaps are Thriller and Cracked Rear View, the two for which we know versions are missing on Discogs, so it’s again perfectly consistent.
One may argue we get these results because we calculated our conversion ratio with up to date sales, which themselves use RIAA’s jumps thanks to club sales. Even if we re-do all calculations assuming 0 club sales for every album, focusing on pre-1991 certifications and Soundscan data only, as per Discogs’ method Greatest Hits 1971-1975 still emerges as the top seller of the pack on clubs, followed by IV."
Conclusion from their methodology, 1 millions (BMG) to 12 millions albums from nowhere for music clubs, worst that with the other article, and lol about Soundscan "inflation" for Thriller; seriously Soundscan now is the problem with Thriller ? I don't see how they have reach this conclusion about Soundscan for Thriller (they don't really explain that), but no problem with the Eagles GH... so dumb, later:
"The BMG all-time Top 100 list
A second notable conclusion is that 2003’s list of top selling albums of the BMG Music Club must be taken with a pinch of salt. While figures for all albums inside the list are consistent with remaining data and make sense, it seems to miss various albums."
So BMG should be taken with a pich of salt, but not RIAA and they reach this conclusion with the numbers from...BMG ? Seriously ?
and later they complain about RIAA, but justify their numbers, by more no sense:
"Eagles’ recent RIAA certifications
Obviously, figures listed in this article do not explain the recent certifications of the Eagles. Their Greatest Hits went from 29xPlatinum to 38xPlatinum while Hotel California jumped from 16xPlatinum to 26xPlatinum. We also need to add Cracked Rear View there. It rocketed from 16xPlatinum to 21xPlatinum back in May despite very low catalog sales, download sales, and streaming points since its last award. It scanned less than 10,4 million while it came out during the Soundscan era. This album, just like both Eagles‘ albums, has been upgraded by the label Rhino.
Many discussed sales of Eagles‘ records since their last certifications. While it’s a part of the story, there is much more. If we focus on Greatest Hits 1971-1975, it scanned roughly 1,2 million units since 2006. Its singles were downloaded under 6 million times while they registered an estimated 400 million audio and video streams in the US. In total, that’s just over 2 million SPS, good enough to move up to 31xPlatinum. While this is absolutely massive, that is well short of 38xPlatinum.
If not for newly achieved sales, upgraded units must come from previously unaccounted for copies or from a change in certifications’ rules. As far as older sales not audited until recently are concerned, they are quite doubtful. It’s not completely unconceivable that Eagles‘ albums had some millions not certified until 2018. It’s truly unlikely, giving how many audits they were subject to, Discogs’ data, patterns of remaining Asylum’s awards, former Billboard charts, yearly catalog sales, Warner annual reports, etc. everything suggests their previous certifications were comprehensive, but still it is not completely impossible. That being said, how can we explain the case of Cracked Rear View? It’s a 1994 album that was certified and updated regularly from day one. Suddenly identifying 5 million sales doesn’t make sense. It’s all the more suspicious to expect Rhino to have found 7/8 million previously uncertified units of Eagles‘ albums that were sold during the Soundscan era."
and they are not happy when RIAA and Warner Music don't justify these numbers, but hey, the most important things, charmasters are not into the conspiracy:
"Overall it’s somehow disappointing. A standard copy / paste, there’s nothing we already didn’t knew, and that still doesn’t tell us where these millions came from. It does confirm at least that RIAA rules haven’t change during the last year, implying that all extra sales are supposedly units that haven’t been previously accounted for. I answered back to the email, mentioning it still doesn’t clarify the huge inconsistency with former certifications but got no further answer. We can’t blame the RIAA for this unsatisfactory email, they have no right to publish receipts of labels. That would break their relationship of trust with them.
Warner Music Group’s contact was the only one in the loop to avoid comments, while the label is the only actor that can really put some light on this case. We are left with many questions but no good answer.
Although we are still not convinced by these awards, I would like to make it very clear that all conspiracy theories are plain absurd. Through the years, many suspicious certifications popped up and time gave us clarifications that proved they were legitimate. There is no reason to expect otherwise for these new ones. Even if in the long run they happen to be deemed incorrect, that can barely due to a human error during the process from a Rhino employee. In any case, it is key to understand how they were obtained in order to consider them as proper facts from now on."
Conclusion from charmaster by me "we have tried to justify horrible numbers by weird calculation, with the most generous conversion from our own method, we still can't find a way to justify these crazy sales from RIAA, but hey, at least we are not conspirationist !!!"
It's very funny again how they call Billboard by extension "conspirationist", Billboard, for the record, who prefer to work with Soundscan for their charts:
https://www.billboard.com/articles/...iller-approaches-eagles-all-time-sales-record
