These Epic Rock Rock Albums Were Big Back in the Day, But How Popular are They When It Comes to Streaming?

The best guess anyone has about Nirvana’s Nevermind album is that it’s sold around 30 million copies worldwide. The Ramones’ debut and Never Mind the Bollocks from the Sex Pistols are considered among the of the Ur-records of punk. But how are they managing in today’s digital world? Is anyone streaming songs from these records?

For comparison, consider that a #1 streaming song in Canada racks up about 3 million listens a week. That’s one single song. Meanwhile, Drake’s material has been streamed 4.8 billion times in 2016 alone. Here’s the aggregate number of streams for all the songs on these classic records.

• Sonic Youth, Evol (1986): 409,000 streams to date
• The Stooges, Funhouse (1970): 2,560,000
• The Clash, The Clash (1977): 13,509,000
• Sex Pistols, Never Mind the Bollocks (1977): 17,132,000
• The Ramones, The Ramones (1976): 21,689,000
• Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures (1979): 27,041,000
• Green Day, Dookie (1994): 137,571,000
• Blink-182, Enemy of the State (1999): 181,308,000
• Nirvana, Nevermind, 365,731,000

The full list can be found at Forbes here.