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Shania's U.S. album sales

Tommy · Guru

Ask Billboard: Britney Spears's Career Sales

By Gary Trust | March 24, 2015 11:05 AM EDT

BRITNEY SPEARS'S CAREER SALES

In anticipation of Britney Spears's ninth studio album (and yes, the possessive of "Britney Spears" is "Britney Spears's," as weird as that seems), do you think you could update the Nielsen Music totals for her albums and singles?

Thanks,

Caleb Bender
St. Louis, Missouri

Hi Caleb,

A rare Internet moment: attention to good grammar! That is much appreciated here.

And, yes, you are correct. Per Oxford Dictionary's (another correct usage of " 's" …) website, "With personal names that end in 's': add an apostrophe plus 's' when you would naturally pronounce an extra 's' if you said the word out loud: Dickens's novels provide a wonderful insight into Victorian England." So, because you would say what sounds like "Spears's album," not "Spears' album," the former is correct.

Now that we've started this "Ask Billboard" in the most entertaining way possible (no chewing gum, and there might be a quiz, too), let's get right to answering the question.

Here's an updated look at Spears's (…one more time!) best-selling albums in the U.S. and her top-selling downloads:

Albums: …Baby One More Time (1999), 10.6 million; Oops!...I Did It Again (2000), 9.2 million; Britney (2001), 4.4 million; In the Zone (2003), 3 million; Circus (2008), 1.7 million; Greatest Hits: My Prerogative (2004), 1.5 million; Blackout (2007), 1 million; Femme Fatale (2011), 788,000; Britney Jean (2013), 265,000; The Singles Collection (2009), 250,000.

With 33.1 million albums sold in the U.S., Spears is the 17th-best-selling album artist since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991. Among women, she's fourth, after Mariah Carey (54.6 million), Celine Dion (52.4 million) and Shania Twain (34.5 million). After Spears, Reba McEntire ranks fifth among women at 30.4 million albums sold.

And, here are Spears's (… I did it again) 10-best-selling downloads (and remembering that her career predates the dawn of the digital era by a few years): "Womanizer," 3.5 million; "Circus," 3.1 million; "Till the World Ends," 2.9 million; "3," 2.3 million; "Toxic," 2.2 million.

"Piece of Me," 1.9 million; "Gimme More," 1.81 million; "I Wanna Go," 1.77 million; "Hold It Against Me," 1.6 million; "If U Seek Amy," 1.3 million.

As for whether we'll get new Britney Spears music anytime soon? "I'm going to try to do my best to do an amazing album," she recently told Billboard. "But, it's not my full priority right now."

Read Billboard's March 21 issue cover story, by Andrew Hampp, for more on Spears's (I'm in the zone …) latest plans, headlined by her Las Vegas residency and its potential renewal through 2017.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6509510/ask-billboard-britney-spearss-career-sales

HumbleKevy · Senior Member

Tommy wrote: Ther
The past few years we've been reading Shania has sold 40.2 million albums in the U.S.. Within the past couple weeks I've seen a new number twice ... Only 34.5 million albums. Why the change?

There is no change, 34.5 are her accurate soundscan numbers in the States. But soundscan doesn't include music club sales and other outlets that can account for other sales. She is actually certified at 48 million in the states for shippped albums which means a lot of other sales have come from music club sales as I mentioned. Soundscan collects data from all types of retailers off and online. But they do not count all sales like music clubs and so on. Anyway the 41 million mentioned before was probably a mistake by some dumb person who doesn't research properly and picked up by others who don't do simple research. 34.5 million are her accurate soundscan numbers in the States.

peever · Senior Member

does the vegas show cd count as selling albums also

Tommy · Guru

peever wrote:
does the vegas show cd count as selling albums also

I would assume so since a Billboard article a couple weeks ago mentioned the Vegas CD sold 9,000 copies that week.

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Viva 'Las Vegas'! Shania Twain Vaults 31-2 on Top Country Albums

By Gary Trust | March 12, 2015 5:00 PM EDT

Shania Twain scores her highest rank in more than a decade on Billboard's Top Country Albums chart, as Shania: Still the One: Live From Las Vegas rockets 31-2 in its second chart week (9,000 sold, up 622 percent, according to Nielsen Music).

The set serves as a souvenir of her two-year residency at the Colosseum at Caesars Palace and features six of her seven Hot Country Songs No. 1s, all tallied in 1995-98. (Of her leaders, only the folky "No One Needs to Know" is absent from the album. It does include her 33rd and most recent Hot Country Songs hit, "Today Is Your Day," which reached No. 36 in 2011, as well as the de facto title cut, her 1998 No. 1 ballad "You're Still the One.")

Twain had last ranked as high as No. 2 on Top Country Albums with her previous entry, 2004's Greatest Hits, which held the No. 2 spot on the chart dated Feb. 19, 2005, after an 11-week fun at No. 1. Her smash 1997 album Come On Over is the second-best-selling set in the U.S. (15.6 million) since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991; it trails only Metallica's self-titled 1991 release (16.1 million).

Twain has sold more albums than any other female country artist in that period and is the fifth-best-selling country act overall, after Garth Brooks (70.4 million; the top sum among all artists); George Strait (45.8 million); Tim McGraw (42.4 million); and Alan Jackson (40.8 million). She's the 15th-best-selling album artist among all acts in Nielsen history.

Twain's chart action adds to her renewed profile. As previously reported, she'll hit the road for her first North American tour in more than 10 years when her 48-date Rock This Country Tour begins on June 5 in Seattle. It's scheduled to wrap on Aug. 23 in Fresno, Calif.

http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/chart-beat/6501948/shania-twain-top-country-albums