With access to music more readily available than ever, fans everywhere are able to listen to the most popular artists; in turn making it significantly more difficult to determine who the most popular artist is now. It used to be as simple as looking at album sales, but now we must consider other factors like tours, ticket sales, song downloads, and social media fan bases. Pop divas in particular have some of the most passionate fan bases, but who should actually be crowned as the most popular in music?
Using data compiled by ticket reseller Ticketbis, we’ve compared a couple of metrics (percent of ticket sales, average ticket price, and Twitter followers) for ten of the most popular music divas: Beyoncé, Madonna, Lady Gaga, Taylor Swift, Katy Perry, Rihanna, Christina Aguilera, Pink, Miley Cyrus, and Lana Del Ray.
Compiling ticket sales volume from Ticketbis, Lady Gaga ranks first with 23.81% of ticket sales from this diva list for her performances (note: no data was compiled for Aguilera nor Pink). Beyoncé is the only other diva at higher than 20% (20.01%) of ticket sales, with Madonna (19.15%) and Rihanna (15.50%) ranking third and fourth, respectively. No other diva has above 10% of the distribution, but Katy Perry is closest with 9.88%.
Alongside volume of ticket sales is the average ticket price. Taylor Swift ranks first in average ticket price by a large margin, at $381.79. The second highest average ticket belongs to Beyoncé at $215.85, followed by Madonna ($175.92), Miley Cyrus ($155.96), and Lady Gaga ($150.97). Again, neither Aguilera nor Pink had ticket sales data for this particular metric.
When it comes to album sales and song downloads, Beyoncé's self-titled album was the most purchased release of 2013 and Taylor Swift's 1989 has been the biggest success of 2014.
One of the newest and easiest ways to measure fan popularity is by social media following. Looking at the divas’ official Twitter accounts, Ticketbis found out that the most followed are also the youngest divas. Katy Perry (age 30) has the most Twitter follows with 60.4M, followed by Taylor Swift (age 25 – 47.2M), Lady Gaga (age 28 – 42.8M), and Rihanna (age 26 – 38.1M). The oldest diva on the list, Madonna, is the only one not to have over 1 million Twitter followers (484,000). It is important to note that some of these numbers may be inflated by fake Twitter accounts.
It takes a number of different metrics to really identify who the most popular pop music diva is. Overall, the older, more traditional divas like Madonna and Beyoncé lead the number of albums and tours, whereas the younger, newer divas to break-through the scene (Taylor Swift, Lady Gaga) lead in ticket demand and social followers.
We’ll leave it up to you fans to determine the most important metrics to determine your most popular pop diva!
