53 minutes ago, Spiceboy said:

Wasn't that estimate last year or am I making that up? If so is that 97,000 copies equivalent in a year, seems ridiculously high!? Plus suggests should be over a million next year if so.

How many times you had it on loop 🤭

1 hour ago, 777666jason said:

How many times you had it on loop 🤭

A fair few tbf… but purely from listening to it, them, girls aloud and Sugababes owe me shares for the amount of time I spend listening to them! 🤣

The 803,000 estimate is from Friday 3rd January 2025 - but I think it making it to 900,000 now means that the 803k guess back then was likely an underestimate! It's hard to say for sure. There were some brief moments over the past year which caused sales to increase. The release of the Yoto card (which appears to have sold steadily) as well as moments including Victoria singing Viva Forever, and the Brooklyn drama. Nevertheless, 97k in 84 weeks would mean around 1,155 sales per week on average and that seems too high to me.

If we go by the last officially known total, which was 726,670 on 11th November 2022... then it's sold 173,330 in the past 196 weeks (that's with considering Greatest Hits to be on exactly 900,000 sales, because we don't know the accurate total). That results in 884 sales per week on average, which seems more likely! If 884 sales per week continued, it would make it to 1,000,000 sales in October 2028.

Hopefully it could be sooner than that. Who knows if they'll do a reunion before then (I'm deluded x), or maybe there'll be a 20th anniversary release for it that bumps up the sales?

Anyway, I'm very pleased that it's finally 3xPlatinum! It's kind of crazy to realise that it's taken almost 19 years to achieve this. I feel like a Spice Girls Greatest Hits sounds like an album which should already be a million seller!

Greatest Hits certification history is:

16/11/2007 - Gold (100k+) - This was based on shipments; this certification happened just 4 days after release, indicating that more than 100,000 copies were distributed to stores. Its first week sales were 75,787, so if back then certifications were based on sales rather than shipments, then it would have been a silver certification at first.

25/01/2008 - Platinum (300k+) - Certifications didn't become automatic achievements based on sales figures until 2013 - so back then it was based on shipments, and the record label had to apply for the award. In terms of sales, it actually exceeded 300,000 by 23rd December 2007!

21/06/2019 - 2xPlatinum (600k+) - We had to wait 11 and a half years to see it become a multi-Platinum album! Certifications had now been automatic and based on actual sales, for many years. With a reunion announced in November 2018, followed by an increase in availability of the CD in HMV, and the tour happening over May/June 2019 - this gave the album quite the considerable boost over those months. I assume had none of that happened, then the album would have taken quite a bit longer to reach this certification level. Greatest Hits reached 600k just 6 days after the conclusion of the tour, and two weeks in advance of its first time release on vinyl as a Picture Disc.

14/08/2026 - 3xPlatinum (900k+) - While not quite as long to wait for a new certification, it's still been quite a long time - just over 7 years (or to be precise, 373 weeks). As we know, Spice Girls activities have been very few and far between in the 2020s, which has resulted in Greatest Hits spending a mere 5 weeks in the Top 200 charts of the 2020s so far (that's 346 potential weeks in the chart!). Despite its lack of presence, it quietly adds sales in the background. Its average sales between the two certification updates = 804 sales per week - not much under the 884 average sales between Nov '22 and Aug '26. So it's quite consistent!

If it continued to sell at that pace, then 4xPlat (1.2m) would happen in 2033. That's dependent on what its streaming levels continue to be, and of course a reunion would speed things up!

(It's been a while since I wrote such a long chart-based essay )

2 hours ago, -Jay- said:

The 803,000 estimate is from Friday 3rd January 2025 - but I think it making it to 900,000 now means that the 803k guess back then was likely an underestimate! It's hard to say for sure. There were some brief moments over the past year which caused sales to increase. The release of the Yoto card (which appears to have sold steadily) as well as moments including Victoria singing Viva Forever, and the Brooklyn drama. Nevertheless, 97k in 84 weeks would mean around 1,155 sales per week on average and that seems too high to me.

If we go by the last officially known total, which was 726,670 on 11th November 2022... then it's sold 173,330 in the past 196 weeks (that's with considering Greatest Hits to be on exactly 900,000 sales, because we don't know the accurate total). That results in 884 sales per week on average, which seems more likely! If 884 sales per week continued, it would make it to 1,000,000 sales in October 2028.

Hopefully it could be sooner than that. Who knows if they'll do a reunion before then (I'm deluded x), or maybe there'll be a 20th anniversary release for it that bumps up the sales?

Anyway, I'm very pleased that it's finally 3xPlatinum! It's kind of crazy to realise that it's taken almost 19 years to achieve this. I feel like a Spice Girls Greatest Hits sounds like an album which should already be a million seller!

Greatest Hits certification history is:

16/11/2007 - Gold (100k+) - This was based on shipments; this certification happened just 4 days after release, indicating that more than 100,000 copies were distributed to stores. Its first week sales were 75,787, so if back then certifications were based on sales rather than shipments, then it would have been a silver certification at first.

25/01/2008 - Platinum (300k+) - Certifications didn't become automatic achievements based on sales figures until 2013 - so back then it was based on shipments, and the record label had to apply for the award. In terms of sales, it actually exceeded 300,000 by 23rd December 2007!

21/06/2019 - 2xPlatinum (600k+) - We had to wait 11 and a half years to see it become a multi-Platinum album! Certifications had now been automatic and based on actual sales, for many years. With a reunion announced in November 2018, followed by an increase in availability of the CD in HMV, and the tour happening over May/June 2019 - this gave the album quite the considerable boost over those months. I assume had none of that happened, then the album would have taken quite a bit longer to reach this certification level. Greatest Hits reached 600k just 6 days after the conclusion of the tour, and two weeks in advance of its first time release on vinyl as a Picture Disc.

14/08/2026 - 3xPlatinum (900k+) - While not quite as long to wait for a new certification, it's still been quite a long time - just over 7 years (or to be precise, 373 weeks). As we know, Spice Girls activities have been very few and far between in the 2020s, which has resulted in Greatest Hits spending a mere 5 weeks in the Top 200 charts of the 2020s so far (that's 346 potential weeks in the chart!). Despite its lack of presence, it quietly adds sales in the background. Its average sales between the two certification updates = 804 sales per week - not much under the 884 average sales between Nov '22 and Aug '26. So it's quite consistent!

If it continued to sell at that pace, then 4xPlat (1.2m) would happen in 2033. That's dependent on what its streaming levels continue to be, and of course a reunion would speed things up!

(It's been a while since I wrote such a long chart-based essay )

We love to read you chart / sales based chart essays!!! Roll on 4x platinum and it becoming a million seller in 2028!

I'd be interested to know how it steams in comparison to The Sound of Girls Aloud and Overloaded: The Singles Collection. I'm guessing better since neither of them have had further certifications despite being on higher sales than The Greatest Hits in 2007 (TSOGA was 4x platinum and O:TSC 2x platinum I believe?) Wondering how long it could take them two to get to 5x and 3x platinum respectively. - Off topic thoughts lol.

2 minutes ago, Spiceboy said:

I'd be interested to know how it steams in comparison to The Sound of Girls Aloud and Overloaded: The Singles Collection.

Probably not very well as Steam is a digital gaming platform 🤭

Just now, 777666jason said:

Probably not very well as Steam is a digital gaming platform 🤭

Oh zip it you lol 😂

58 minutes ago, Spiceboy said:

I'd be interested to know how it steams in comparison to The Sound of Girls Aloud and Overloaded: The Singles Collection. I'm guessing better since neither of them have had further certifications despite being on higher sales than The Greatest Hits in 2007 (TSOGA was 4x platinum and O:TSC 2x platinum I believe?) Wondering how long it could take them two to get to 5x and 3x platinum respectively. - Off topic thoughts lol.

Overloaded: The Singles Collection is seemingly selling at a very slow pace in recent years!

560,896 - 27th January 2008
620,481 - 28th December 2008
650,839 - 21st June 2009 (last known total)

- It was certified 2xPlatinum/600,000 in July 2013, when certifications became automatic.
- I estimate that it would have crossed over 600k sales towards the end of 2008, perhaps just in advance of the Christmas sales market.
- As of this week it still hasn't reached 3xPlatinum/900,000.

It's interesting that Overloaded sold over 600k within 2 years of its release, while it took Spice Girls' Greatest Hits 12 years to reach that target. Yet fast forward to now, and Spice Girls GH is 3xPlatinum while Sugababes haven't yet managed that. I am rather surprised that Overloaded still hasn't made it to 900k, after 12 years of streaming counting towards sales. I wonder if it's getting close though? I wish we had a more recent total for it than 2009.

The Sound of Girls Aloud - The Greatest Hits also sells quite slowly, not helped by Ten being their dominant compilation on streaming.

1,123,924 - 31st January 2010

1,200,000 - 22nd March 2013 (reported by Billboard - possibly a rounded up/down figure? Or maybe it really had just crossed over 1.2m around that time)
1,233,745 - 2nd August 2019

1,259,383 - 10th September 2021

1,283,157 - 23rd June 2023

1,290,000 - 23rd November 2023 (reported by OCC - again, possibly a rounded up/down figure)

- It was certified 4xPlatinum/1.2m in July 2013, when certifications became automatic.

Despite The Sound of Girls Aloud being removed from download sites and streaming platforms (which if I remember rightly was around the time of Ten's release), evidently the OCC is still allocating some streaming units to TSOGA, even though more goes towards Ten.

If TSOGA is continuing to add sales to its total on a weekly basis at the same pace as between those 2021 and 2023 updates, there's a potential that it has exceeded 1,325,000 by now (or possibly more if it got a boost during the 2024 reunion).

Regarding 5xPlatinum/1.5m - there is a chance it could get there eventually, but based on the above sales pace, it would be on course to do that in September 2039! A lot could change between now and then of course. Perhaps the OCC database is inconsistent with how many streaming sales goes towards TSOGA each week. I think it's safe to say that we're unllikely to see a new certification for it any time soon though.

Interestingly if Spice Girls' Greatest Hits continued to sell at its current pace, it would reach 5xPlat/1.5m in August 2039, a month before Girls Aloud!


In conclusion, Spice Girls definitely sell better with their Greatest Hits than Girls Aloud and Sugababes do with theirs!