Why can some artists sell heaps of albums while other can't? For example Florida (a singles artists) is good at selling singles but can't sell enough albums to save his life while while Adele who is an album artist can sell 20+ million copies and Taylor Swift can sell 1 million copies of her albums in 1 week. Katy Perry and Rihanna are other examples. They sell millions of singles but why can't they open with 300k plus on their first week? Teenage Dream had 6 singles plus a re release (which contained 2 top 3 singles) but couldn't manage to sell what half of 21 sold. Is this because sales depend on what genre of music you make? Or is it something else like how big your fanbase is, how seriously people take you as an artist, etc.

Singles is like your song gets AirPlay & people like the song so they buy it.

Albums mean people are checking for you the artist.

I've been following the charts for several years and what I deduced is that singles artists are artists who can produce several catchy songs that the GP likes, but are not really interested in them enough to make them check out the artists' albums. So the problem with singles artists is that they produce catchy music, not interesting music.

Album artists usually have several radio-friendly songs on their album and have the rest of the album filled with songs that are either too slow, too long or too wordy for radio to play. Radio usually wants quick lil' catchy songs with little to no substance that people can bop to, songs that the GP can just enjoy without having any substance/idea that demands the audience to think about. Most of the times radio just wants enjoyable, light music and most of albums artists' music doesn't fit that description.

Singles artist = an artist whose singles sales don't match up to their album sales.

Albums artist = someone who doesn't NEED hit singles to sell albums.

Usually it comes down to what kind of an artist you choose to be. Do you please radio, or do you please your album buying base? Some artists can do both, others can't.

And I think Taylor is the perfect example of an album artist trying to make it as a single artist. WANEGBT, IKYWT and 22 did well and people know them, but most of her good songs aren't radio friendly at all. That's why I think she sells more albums then single, her best work are on the album, not on the radio.

Personally I prefer album artists, but singles artists are fun too.