What are album equivalents and how do they equal album sales?

1st Official Post

    Pure sales are the true album sales, be it digital or physical.


    Album equivalent sales also convert song downloads and song streams to album sales. The RIAA (US) uses the following conversion for certification

    US_album_equivalent_unit.png

    • Official Post

    It's basically because you can buy songs individually and also because streaming.


    iirc it breaks down as 1500 song streams are equal to 10 song downloads are equal to 1 album equivalent sale.


    So let's use Lovesick Girls for example. If 10 people purchase and download the song Lovesick Girls and no other songs from The Album, then that still counts as 1 album equivalent of The Album for tracking purposes.


    It's also worth noting that when they started using album equivalent units the charts stopped describing things as "the best selling albums" and instead now use "the most popular albums" in their descriptors.

    ifpi and billboard introduce equivalent sales because when download era started in 2000s . Album sales became dead format


    And artist lile Rihanna sold like 250 million downloads but just 35 million albums. Katy perry sold 137 million downloads but only 15 million albums. Adele is perfect example of balancing both with 60 million albums and 100 million downloads . A download which costed 1 dollar

    Madonna sold 200 million albums at 10 dollar price



    Also before download era, physical singles existed and they costed 3 or 4 dollars. Selling 100 million physical singles = 300 million downloads. Madonna sold like 75 million physical singles. So obvious physical singles sold less than downloads


    So saying Rihanna sold more than Madonna celine Mariah was wrong


    So billboard came with sps. Equivalent


    By thay Rihanna equivalents stand at 100 million , so no more inflation


    Sps and EAS is what industry use


    Taylor's swift EAS was mentioned 110 million some days back by her label


    Where downloads and streams are converted to equivalent album sales to compare different era


    Streaming era artist dont have cheap downloads to add units anymore so they cant inflate nor they have physical albums


    So for usa its like 1 album =10 downloads = some 1000 streams


    And it gets even wider in countries where downloads and streams are more cheap. Ifpi converted that 40 or 50 million selling chinese song of 2020 and put it at number 7 this year. So they downweighted chinese sales because they cost way less


    Sps most consumed album this year was based on equivalents this year


    So EAS is right format to compare different eras

    Physical Sales will always be the measure for Album Sales however Americans know they have sh*t Physical Sales so want to use Digital Equivalent of 10 Song Downloads = 1 Digital Album.


    It's BS because there is no Physical Album that just has 1 song but whatever

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