His brand right now is Mumford, which he dislikes.  GGG has a Mumford feel, as well.  Will he be able to switch to a more Rice/Lang vibe which he seems to prefer in his sophomore effort?  (As far as PDs – and how much power do they have – the selection of who gets played appears to be out of their hands now and beyond the understanding of the great unwashed.)

Hazehel: The claim was first made in July when she sold a bit over 13 million in the US, although I think it is within the realm of possibility that she had sold around 2 million outside of US from 4 albums (well, maybe).  

Yeah I went back and checked, and the 1st PR saying that came out at the end of July 2012. Carrie’s rounded US album sales as of 7/25: 13.262 million. So technically that meant they were claiming 1.738+ million worldwide. Now that Carrie’s at 14 million sold US which would theoretically mean 15.738+ million worldwide, they haven’t changed that claim to “nearly 16 million.” Maybe they will, who knows? My guess is we don’t start seeing a 16 million number in a Carrie PR until much later this year, and not before BA gets to 1.5 million in US sales (maybe even higher). 

Like I mentioned both Some Hearts and Carnival Ride are undercertified in Canada (Carnival Ride isn’t even certified platinum though it sold well in excess of the required certification number and Some Hearts has sold well over 300k copies in Canada).  All of Carrie’s albums have sold in excess of their certification levels in Canada. Her sales in Australia and the UK over 4 albums are at around 100k in each territory based on numbers that leaked (likely a little higher in Australia, a little lower in the UK – we might get an update on that when Carrie returns to the UK in March). Going beyond that requires deep diving into territories that I’m too lazy to do ;) 

I personally feel confident about around 900/950k worldwide over 4 territories and then after that I don’t know. 1.7+ million sounds kind of steep to me tbh. 

Taylor: I going to have to trust that RCA knows what they are talking about here. They probably know about sales in places where the albums sold, but it wasn’t enough for it to be certified or in countries that don’t bother with certifications.

It wasn’t RCA doing Carrie’s PR, it’s Arista Nashville. You don’t have to trust Arista Nashville if you can’t find the numbers to back it up :) There’s a reason I personally never gone around talking about Carrie’s 15+ million worldwide sales. I usually stick to US numbers because we have access to the most updated and verifiable sales here.

Taylor: If Adam’s numbers are bogus, then we have to start considering every press release and all worldwide numbers from all the labels of every artist as questionable.

I do consider them all of them questionable tbh *shrugs* It’s a good thing I’m not invested in exact worldwide sales totals because it would be pretty frustrating if I were. I mean, it’d be nice to have reliable sources in all markets and for total worldwide sales but it is what it is. 

(In Adam’s case it’s probably the label counting TEA sales so it’s not completely bogus. It’s just not an indication of album unit sales because like springboard2 and Hazehel have explained, the numbers between his PRs don’t add up in a plausible way.)