I get that all across the bord in terms of consumption, but you have Rumours/Thriller/21 alone in that time, not to mention others, idk how that doesn’t skew the argument at all. This era doesn’t have albums like those

I only listed those three cause they did crazy ass numbers within their first two years specifically. 21 went diamond in less than two years. Thriller was doing damn near a million a week at one point in 1983

So maybe what I’m saying is a different thing than the level of consumption overall, which IS bigger across the board. That’s fair

But I just showed you, streaming can have a MUCH bigger amount of listeners but it just counts less.

50 million people streaming can count less than 500k sales.

On a short term basis like weekly or the first few years streaming units will never be able to reach the same peaks but that has to do with how an equivalent unit is measured not because less people are listening.

No they are not man

Only 11 of the 50 highest selling albums are 2025 releases

…Because albums accumulate repeated listening for years and years. So now albums can sell and chart forever.

Hence albums are bigger than ever. Longer shelf life and reaching way more of the population.

50 million people can listen to an album with 10 songs and that only counts as 500 million streams = 333k albums.
500k people can buy an album and that counts as = 500k albums.

Do you really think more people are listening to albums than before? Back in the day, we just couldn’t track how many people were listening to a project.

500K sales doesn’t mean only 500K people heard the album. In the same way that an album getting 50M streams does not mean that 50M individual people listened to an album. You’re interpreting the data wrong.

Do you seriously believe that 250 million people on Earth listened to the Taylor album on Spotify alone yesterday? Or was that number much smaller, and instead is comprised of millions of people who played the album more than once?

I promise you that more people heard Thriller during its opening week than the amount of people that heard The Tortured Poets Department during its opening week

You are severely misinterpreting the data

50x more people can listen to an album now but it wouldn’t count 50x as much.

And back then, someone could’ve spun Thriller 100 times on its opening day, but it wouldn’t have counted as 99 extra sales.

Thriller debuted #11 first week… and you’re suggesting it was heard more that week than an album with over 1 billion streams in a week?…

No, it wasn’t. And that’s okay. Thriller became a staple classic overtime and overall is more known. However it was not more heard first week.

I stand corrected on the first week, but the album quickly began to move units with ease and was selling a million units a week worldwide for the first year of its release. It reached 37M units sold within two years, I don’t think you realize how insane that is. Also, back in 1982, first week sales didn’t mean anywhere near as much as they mean now.

Sure, TTPD did 1B streams in one week but that does not mean 1B people heard the album

It had sold 32M units worldwide by the end of 1983. Reached 48M by the end of the 1980s. No modern day album is coming anywhere close to these figures.

Streaming inflates numbers because it equates repeat listens to additional streams. Imagine how much higher the 1980s total would have been for Thriller if was more sales every single time someone played the album

Culture is just way more fragmented than it used to be.

The Tortured Poets Department is the fastest/highest-selling album of the 2020s and I’m sure so many people on this website could not hum a single tune from it.

You could not say that about any uber-successful album from the 80s to the mid-2010s.

The idea of the the album as a staple of culture is just not as monolithic as it used to be

1 sale already counts as the equivalent of anywhere from 1,250-3,750 streams…
99.9% of people do not ever listen to an album they buy that many times.

When you have millions of fans, these numbers add up very, very quickly.

The streaming totals seem bigger on paper but I promise you they are not indicative of the album format being more popular now.

Morgan Wallen’s album has been #1 basically since it released in May. How many songs do you know from it?

havent been really reading the posts like that but taylor swift nor anybody will ever be mj. this is a yearly conversation i swear

you're fighting a useless battle. if stats don't work in his favor, he'll just move the goal post or resort to anecdotes. the stats say music consumption has increased by a ton

I never said his popularity wasn’t valid you just jumped to conclusions

I’m referencing the fact that culture is way more fragmented nowadays than it was in the 90s and 00s and 10s, and that the most popular things are not necessarily the things that are capturing the zeitgeist in a way that commands the attention of both the ultra music fan as well as the average everyday person.

In 2010, everyone knew a song from Recovery.

In 2011 & 2012, EVERYONE knew the songs from 21.
In 2013, EVERYONE knew the singles from The 20/20 Experience.

Fast forward twelve years later, do you really believe that EVERYONE knows a song or two from I’m the Problem?

It’s not inherently a negative thing. I’m just pointing out that culture is a lot more different now than it was before the streaming era

He’s arguing against basic logic

1 person buys an album for themselves, it counts as 1 sale.

100 people listen to an album once, it doesn’t even count as 1 sale.

Obviously the second example is a bigger population reach but it’s counted as less on paper.