TALE OF THE TAPE: DUELING DIVAS EDITION
How Top Solo Female Artists Have Fared at Retail
With Capitol’s Katy Perry selling 287k in her debut week—and several blockbuster Q4 releases still in the pipeline—now seems an opportune time to take a look at Katy’s diva peers. By which we mean solo female artists whose album releases in the past few years bowed with 200k or more—and also those who grew that first-week number into astronomical cumulative sales.
For giant first-week sales, the gold, er, platinum standard of recent times is Big Machine’s
Taylor Swift, whose Red debuted with 1.2m way back in 2012 and has moved a mighty 3.8m to date.
Lady Gaga, whose 2011 Interscope set Born This Way bowed with 1.1m, gets an asterisk in the record book thanks to a 99-cent price point (see below); it’s sold 2.3m so far. In any case, Gaga’s forthcoming ARTPOP is likely to place her in the upper tier regardless of its suggested list—the current first-week forecast is 375k.
XL/Columbia’s Adele also put out a pretty successful record in 2011. It was called 21, and in March 2011 it had an impressive 353k bow. It’s had a decent run since, as we recall, selling … wait, we had it here somewhere … ah, right: 10.8 million freaking records. So although she’s only the fourth-highest-selling in terms of recent debuts by a solo female, Adele sets the diamond standard for long-run sales in the diva games.
Perry’s prior release, 2010’s Teenage Dream, bowed with 192k but has gone to do about 2.8m. Her first-week number for PRISM puts her squarely in the pack of solo female superstars, alongside such fierce competitors as Interscope’s Madonna, RCA’s P!nk and Miley Cyrus, Columbia’s Beyonce, Def Jam/IDJ’s Rihanna, YM/CM/Republic’s Nicki Minaj and 19/Arista Nashville’s Carrie Underwood.
Let’s take a look at these divas’ figures. Um, their sales figures, of course.
ARTIST STREET DEBUT RTD
TAYLOR SWIFT 9/12 1.2m 3.8m
LADY GAGA 5/11 1.1m* 2.3m
MADONNA 4/12 359k 553k
ADELE 3/11 353k 10.8m
BEYONCE 7/11 313k 1.3m
KATY PERRY 10/13 287k --
P!NK 9/12 280k 1.8m
MILEY CYRUS 10/13 270k 386k
C. UNDERWOOD 5/12 267k 1.5m
NICKI MINAJ 4/12 253k 869k
RIHANNA 9/12 237k 1.1m
*Sold for 99 cents at Amazon on Tuesday and Thursday of release week.
http://www.hitsdailydouble.com/news/....cgi?news09593
