Albums from the 1990s

Previous Comments (newest first)

31 Oct 2012

charts

Fascinating work. Only thing I can't reconcile is absence of acts who make RIAA top ten in all time album sales (US & Canada). For example Garth Brooks is 3rd on that list behind Beatles and Elvis, Eagles are 5th, Pink Floyd 7th, Streishan 8th, George Straight 9th. Seems your calcs are too pop heavy, whereas RIAA measures sales regardless of genre. And I get your worldwide emphasis, still seems there is a need to differentiate between CD sales and popularity of pop singles thru airplay, sales, downloads etc.

Garth Brooks is already in the "most successful artists of the 1990s" list. He is rated as 16th.

You ask if our calculations are "pop" heavy, we would say that they are not, our goal is to reflect Worldwide success and Country Music has had little impact outside North America.

A French speaker might just as well complain that our focus is too much on songs in English. We would claim that the most successful songs of the last 100 years happen to have mostly been in English, because of the market available and the emphasis of the record companies. We list the songs with greatest success, and they happen to be in the English language, this reflects the world, its not because we have a bias against French lyrics.

Similarly the "Pop" genre has greater success round the world as a whole than Country Music, Disco, Reggae, J-Pop, Barbershop, Progressive or Skiffle. We would claim it's not that we have "pop heavy" calculations but just the way the world is (or rather was).

We would certainly be interested to explore the difference between album sales and "the popularity of pop singles". Outside the USA and the UK we don't think we have enough data to make a reasonable job of that. This tends to be an area where personal opinion (especially when loudly expressed by fans) overwhelms any attempt to take a more measured (and data based) approach.

12 Jun 2011

Of Course...

Commercial success does not indicate one act is better than another. Sites like Acclaimed Music- which compiles all sorts of best-of/critics features is a good outlet for that- and Madonna is the second-most acclaimed female acts, behind Aretha Franklin. Acts like Mimi Carey have not garnered very much in the ways of critical acclaim (on albums/singles lists, or artists ones).

For Madonna, the commercial success is just gravy atop her status as the most important and highly regarded female entertainer of the last 30 years.

1 Jan 2010

Mariah vs. Madonna

Up to this point Madonna is still more successful around the world than she isin the U.S., and Mariah is still somewhat more successful in the U.S. than she is around the world.

Madonna continuously keeps making top ten hits even number 1's around Europe, Latin America, Canada, Australia and Asia. It's easy to prove that Madonna has had at least 2 top tens from each one of her albums in the UK, Canada, Australia and many more countries.

She also has scored at least 1 top ten from every of her albums in the U.S. except for her Celebration (2009), You Can Dance (1987), Remixed and Revisited (2004) and GHV2 (2001) albums, all of them are compilation albums and the last three didn't even had new world wide single releases made. Even her three soundtracks were able to spawn at least 1 top 10 each one. Madonna also has the most number ones and top ten's in the United World Chart, 29 top ten's and out of those 15 are number 1's and there is still more number ones and top tens to come, because United World Chart week by week keeps posting past charts.

On the other hand Mariah only has 18 top tens and out of those only 2 are number 1's in the United World Chart. Madonna managed to make her latest single Celebration to peak at No. 6 in the United World Chart where Mariah's not latest single but latest moderate successful single Obsessed peaked at No. 14. This shows how much of an impact charting in the U.S. and in the rest of the world does. This is why I respect and honor the methodologies that they used for these "countdowns".

18 Dec 2009

lol, you dont know mariah carey? words from an idiot are not taken into consideration

You know I think that user comment was maybe not quite serious. Your life would be easier if you moderated your responses a bit.

I'm surprised, most people I have met in Malaysia have a sense of humour.

14 Dec 2009

Totally true! Madonna is the most successful artist of the 90`s. I love Celine Dion, REM, and Prince, Who is Mariah Carey?

11 Nov 2009

RE: mariah vs madonna

ok.. so with ur computation.. u actually weighed north america and europe equally... and in fact according to your reply they are not equal and also aside from europe and north america, there are also other large markets like Japan where 7 of mariah's 90s album amassed million/s of sales each... and all other female intl artist that follows sell less than half of Mariah's... mariah's singles are also very successful in Japan...

so i kinda doubt the quoted statement below..

"So no, sorry even if the scores are adjusted according to the size of themarket Mariah doesn't beat Madonna. We've tried a variety of different ways to look at the data and they all result in Madonna being above Mariah. Your intuition was just plain wrong. Of course this tells us that Madonna was more successful round the world in the 1990s, it does not prove that her music was in any way better."

No you're wrong we didn't weigh them equally, Europe got a weight of 9.01 and North America got 15.14 (based on the sales numbers).

So lets look at Japan. In Japan Madonna had 28 hit songs in the 1990s and Mariah had 25. Mariah's hits were slightly higher in the charts so her total score was 22.47 while Madonna's was 21.67. In other words Madonna scored 96% of Mariah's score. Now, in fact the sales of "International" music in Japan is only about 10% of the market, so Japan's factor should be 0.643, but lets be generous to Mariah and pretend that all $6.43B was "International" music.

If we add these results into the mix we get:

Madonna: 0.94*15.14 + 1*9.01 + 0.96*6.43 = 29.41 Mariah: 1*15.14 + 0.53*9.01 + 1*6.43 = 26.34

...and Madonna *still* beats Mariah.

It is possible that Mariah's albums outsold Madonna's in Japan in the 1990s. We have no reliable data that supports that, but it is possible. If the low percentage of "International" music is taken into account then Madonna could have sold absolutly nothing in Japan in the 1990s and her global total would still beat Mariah.

It doesn't matter how much you "doubt the quoted statement", it remains true even with the scores weighed by sales and with Japan included. Mariah was beaten by Madonna in the 1990s. As we said, we tried a variety of ways of looking at the data and Madonna wins every time.

The problem is that you clearly don't appreciate just how much more popular Madonna was in Europe in the 1990s.

Speaking personally (SH) I don't understand *why* she was so popular, her 1990s material doesn't sound good to me. But that's exactly the point, on this site no-one gets to vote the data determines the outcome, personal opinion doesn't have any influence. If the data didn't sometimes tell us something that is against initial expectation then we wouldn't have created the site.

16 Oct 2009

Mariah v Madonna in the 1990s

This site treats all the charts in the world equally... thats why, they comeup with Madonna no.1 and Mariah no.2.. if they would give higher regard to bigger markets like USA... Mariah wud take the top spot easily...

Your first comment is exactly right, all the charts are weighed equally in the standard calculation. If only the North American charts were counted Mariah would be the number 1, but of course that would hardly give us a reasonable view of the world's music.

You are also correct that the number of chart entries does over emphasise the European nations since each one of them contributes more entries than can be justified by their share of the world music market. This is a side effect of the fact that each European country has people who want to publish their particular national chart, while there is less incentive for the inhabitants of, for example, Wyoming to publish their own weekly state chart for the 1990s.

However those two facts don't necessarily mean that Mariah would take the top slot in any properly weighed summary, and certainly not "easily".

Since we have data immediately available for the success of songs in North America and Europe let's try a quick test with that. In North America Mariah Carey's total score for the 1990s was 84.75, Madonna's was 79.97 of course the absolute values are meaningless, but the relative difference gives us a measure of their performance, Madonna has 94% of Mariah's score.

In Europe Mariah Carey's total score for the 1990s was 90.35, Madonna's was 169.88 Mariah has 53% of Madonna's score.

According to the IFPI the biggest 10 music markets in 1999 were: USA $14.25B, Japan $6.43B, UK $2.91B, Germany $2.83B, France $1.98B, Canada $0.88B, Brazil $0.67B, Australia $0.66B, Spain $0.64B, Italy $0.64B Which gives North America $15.14B and Europe $9.01B (we'll ignore the smaller countries that would bring the Europe total to more than $14B).

If we give the top artist 1 and the lower one a proportional score and then scale by the number of billion dollars in each region Mariah gets 1*15.14 + 0.53*9.01 => 19.93 and Madonna gets 0.94*15.14 + 1*9.01 => 23.29

So no, sorry even if the scores are adjusted according to the size of the market Mariah doesn't beat Madonna. We've tried a variety of different ways to look at the data and they all result in Madonna being above Mariah. Your intuition was just plain wrong.

Of course this tells us that Madonna was more successful round the world in the 1990s, it does not prove that her music was in any way better.