Bruce Springsteen :: Charts & Sales History

[ThunderRoad]

Thanks to arab:

Hot Digital Songs; (15/12/2012):

1 160 SPRINGSTEEN*BRUCE SANTA CLAUS IS COMIN' TO TOWN 11,054 135 4,701 470,804

[thebigham]

12/22 Billboard charts:

478,532 - WRECKING BALL -SPRINGSTEEN*BRUCE

[abdon]

great almost there!! thanks 4 the update

[borderwolf]

Probably already posted:

Austria
Bruce Springsteen
Wrecking Ball
14-03-2012
Gold

[borderwolf]

Probably already posted:

Austria
Bruce Springsteen
Wrecking Ball
14-03-2012
Gold

And in Switzerland too

http://swisscharts.com/awards.asp

[borderwolf]

Australia
2012

Bruce Springsteen
The Complete Video Anthology 1978-2000
3x PLATINUM dvd

[ThunderRoad]

From Mediatraffic.de

United World Chart; Albums Countdown 2012:

#16 Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball - 1.6 million copies.

http://www.mediatraffic.de/year-end-albums.htm

[tryffel]

From Mediatraffic.de

United World Chart; Albums Countdown 2012:

#16 Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball - 1.6 million copies.

http://www.mediatraffic.de/year-end-albums.htm

Far form Magic numbers i guess, but that should be around the same as Working on a dream?

[ThunderRoad]

From Mediatraffic.de

United World Chart; Albums Countdown 2012:

#16 Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball - 1.6 million copies.

http://www.mediatraffic.de/year-end-albums.htm

Far form Magic numbers i guess, but that should be around the same as Working on a dream?

Mediatraffic's 2007 Y.E. Chart:

#24 Bruce Springsteen - Magic - 1.915.000 copies.

Mediatraffic's 2009 Y.E. Chart:

#28 Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream - 1.6 million copies.

[tryffel]

Yes, but Magic was realesed late in the year, it sold a lot more then tha in totals

[borderwolf]

Soundscan 2012

Final list

46 COL SPRINGSTEEN*BRUCE WRECKING BALL 490,171

[borderwolf]

(thanks Nugs)
UK Year End Charts: Albums

Pos - LW - YTD - Artist - Title - Total - New - Hst

47 - 46 - 205,600 - Bruce Springsteen - Wrecking Ball - 205,600 - 17/03/12 - 1

[borderwolf]

Spain

Week 22/2012

Pos. Info Sem. Ante Pos. Max. Sem. Lista Artista Título Sello Ventas Sem. act. %dif. Ventas Sem. Ant. V. acum. en listas PROMUSICAE Cert.

6 5 1 13 BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN WRECKING BALL SONY MUSIC 794 -17 951 36594 **



81 V E 0 1 43 BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN THE PROMISE SONY MUSIC 95 29473 *


89 V E 0 77 5 BRUCE
SPRINGSTEEN
THE COLLECTION
1973-1984 SONY MUSIC 89 3981

[borderwolf]

Italy
http://worldwidealbums.blogspot.it/2013 ... 12-in.html

ARTIST, title, estimation 2012, total estimation


BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN    Wrecking Ball    72590    72590

[ThunderRoad]

Thanks To ferrero:

Top Catalog Albums; (26/01/2013):

1 COL 114 SPRINGSTEEN*BRUCE GREATEST HITS 1,538 25 1,234 4,417,648

[borderwolf]

ITunes songs

Streets of Philadelphia
#142 Estonia
#201 South Africa
#216 Netherlands
#272 Czech Republic
#353 Poland
#371 Switzerland

I'm On Fire
#178 Netherlands

The River
#202 Norway

Dancing In the Dark
#313 Bolivia
#364 South Africa

Tougher Than the Rest
#319 Denmark

Secret Garden
#161 Estonia

The Wrestler
#216 Bahrain

Radio Nowhere
#225 Ireland

[borderwolf]

ITunes albums

Bruce Springsteen: Greatest Hits
#42 Spain
#46 Ireland
#59 South Africa
#70 Greece
#86 Portugal
#89 Lithuania
#91 India
#94 Sweden
#95 Finland
#109 Norway
#119 Slovakia
#124 Qatar
#130 France
#130 Israel
#146 Czech Republic
#151 Switzerland
#153 Italy
#201 Austria
#214 Canada
#219 Australia
#224 Denmark
#253 Bulgaria
#263 Guatemala
#266 United States
#269 Belgium
#269 Netherlands
#278 Brazil
#279 Hungary
#317 Luxembourg
#337 Slovenia
#361 Chile
#376 Poland

Wrecking Ball
#103 Sweden
#107 Ireland
#143 Norway
#182 Finland
#213 Slovenia
#220 Spain
#222 Austria
#231 Luxembourg
#235 Czech Republic
#251 Portugal
#289 Egypt
#293 Netherlands
#368 Denmark
#375 Estonia

Born In the U.S.A.
#42 Lebanon
#152 Belgium
#157 Netherlands
#158 Kenya
#222 Bolivia
#323 Sweden
#326 Luxembourg
#345 Spain
#358 Austria
#362 Egypt
#362 Norway

Magic
#108 Sweden
#157 Norway
#253 Ireland
#265 Finland
#338 Botswana
#357 Spain

Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Greatest Hits
#106 Lithuania
#149 Malta
#266 Norway
#341 Sweden
#376 Ireland

The Promise
#325 Sweden

Bruce Springsteen: The Collection - Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. / The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle / Darkness On the Edge of Town
#155 Lebanon

[thebigham]

I tweeted:

@springsteen Your album Wrecking Ball has sold 490,171 in the USA. Ask your label to certify it #Gold with the #RIAA. RIAA sales: 64.5xp

[borderwolf]

France
sales 2012
according

http://infodisc.fr/Ventes_Album12.php

98 Wrecking Ball Bruce Springsteen 53 800

[Edu]

This post is about one particular Springsteen RIAA album certification that has always been a bit puzzling to me.
I'm talking about "The River"'s five-times-platinum (5xP) certification back in 2003. This one:


In order to understand the problem we must take a look at this Springsteen's album RIAA certification timeline:


Probably almost everyone looks at this sucession of certs and thinks that there is nothing strange or out of the normal with it...but there is indeed. You should remind yourself that "The River" is a double-album in its CD and LP format, but just a single-cassette and single-8-track-tape album.

The number of records in each possible format for "The River" doesn't really mattered for its 2xPlatinum certification in 1990. At that time (1990) RIAA had no specific rules for double (or more disks) albums certifications. That only started in 1992 for triple or more disks and later in 1997 for double-disks albums too.

So in August 1990 we can be 100% sure that RIAA and Columbia certified a minimum of two million "The River" albums shipped.
This was in 1990 and then in 1991 Soundscan started to trackdown records sales in the USA.
And how many copies of "The River" Soundscan says that this album sold (almost all copies in the 2xCD configuration) since 1991?

Soundscan says...just well under 400k by the end of 2005! (367k to be more precise).

To feed this amount of public demand I think it's more reasonable to assume that Columbia, between 1991 and 2005, only needed to have shipped somewhere between 500k and 750k copies to the USA market. And assuming 750k as the higher upper limit i'm already taking care of the remaing months in 1990 after the 2xP cert in August of this year.

It's now easy to see that it's simply impossible that "The River" could have shipped five-million by 2003...
If this last assumption is true (no way this album shipped 5m by 2003) then how we can we interpret the 1994 and the 2003 certifications?

In 1994 there was still no special rules for the certification of double-disks albums, only for three-or-more-disks albums.
So this triple-platinum in 1994 it was really for three million copies shipped of "The River".

Then in 1997 a new RIAA rule was created which allowed double-disks albums released before 1982 to have all the records in each format to be counted in the certification process, independently of the time lenght of the album in question.
It was this rule which permitted Pink Floyd's "The Wall" to jump from 11xP to 22xP in just a few months.

And Columbia, Springsteen's label, did't waste any time in taking advantage of that rule to re-certify all the double-disks albums in their catalog, at least the ones which had already enough shipments to deserve higher platinum level:


But...there is no "The River" in that list!
It should be there as a 6xP album after the 1994 3-million certification right? But the fact is that it wasn't...

Two of albums in the above list were certified, just like "the River", in 1990:


And for all this to get even more mysterious, just look to the previous certification of Bob Dylan's "Greatest Hits Vol.2",
before the 5xP one in 1997:


If you look again to the top of this post you will see that the 3xP (triple-platinum) for "The River" was just one month earlier than the above for Bob Dylan...
Neverless Dylan's "GH Vol.2" was upgraded in 1997 for 5xPlatinum but "The River" was not. Why?

Why was not "The River" updated in 1997 after RIAA have allowed that pre-1982 double-albums could be re-certified under the 1992 rule? (by counting every disk of each configuration as contributingi to the total amount of records certified).

Why was also not updated in 1999 or 2000 when several Springsteen albums got new awards:


Why, if "The River" did really shipped 3-million copies by 1994, was never certified as 6xP?
It was not necessary to ship one more single copy, just to use the new 1997 rule to double the 3xP award from 1994 to get a 6xP...
Columbia did it with Santana, Willie Nelson, Pink Floyd, Billy Joel and Bob Dylan. Why not with "The River"?
They did it with Springsteen's own "Live 1975-85"!

Well, that 1999 award for "Live 1975-85" also has its mysteries..but that is for another post!
*****
So we have to explain:

"The River" certified as 2xP for 2-million albums shipped in 1990 and then 3xP for 3-million shipped in 1994. Not difficult.
"The River", despite having sold under 400k between 1991 and 2005,
was certified, under new 1997 rules for double-albums, as 5xP only in 2003 and NOT 6xP.
What does that 5xP mean? 5-million? 2.5-million because it's a double-album in some configurations?
Or even more strange, the same 3-million as viewed under a new RIAA rule??

One last piece of the puzzle...
just see what albums Columbia also certified in the same month that "The River" went 5xP:

All double albums in their original release!
Could it be a coincidence?

NEXT: a possible answer?