Britney Spears still has the highest commercial peak

[mnbcv 2]

Of the female pop stars of the late 1990s till today, Britney Spears easily had the biggest commercial peak outside of Adele, in terms of albums performance wise.   One of Beyonce's albums selling over 2 million within a few weeks doesn't give it the same peak as Oops! I did it again, for instance.  Artists such as Beyonce and Taylor Swift have had very weak competition compared to Britney Spears during the late 1990s/early 2000s.

 So if you're going to say that Swift or Beyonce compare favorably to Spears on the basis of releasing albums in a much weaker climate for albums sales then you also have to take in to account the substantially weaker competition for Taylor Swift and Beyonce.  Oops I did it again being released one week before the blockbuster Marshall Mathers LP with the release of another blockbuster album, Country Grammar by Nelly, soon after is not the type of competition typical for Taylor Swift or Beyonce.  In order for the commercial performance of Swift or Beyonce to be hands down more impressive than Britney Spears, they would have to dominate like Adele, who is hands down the most impressive female album seller of the new millennium.  And nobody is really in Adele's league.

Besides, Baby One More Time spent 50 consecutive weeks in the billboard top 10 (only 2 weeks fewer than Taylor Swift's 1989 with far more competition than Taylor Swift) and Oops I did it again spent 17 consecutive weeks in the top 3 ( 15 consecutive at number two with Nelly and Eminem keeping her from number 1).  Between Spears' first two albums, she has more weeks in the top 10 than Beyonce's entire discography.

http://chartmasters.org/2017/02/cspc-backstreet-boys-popularity-analysis/#comments

https://web.archive.org/web/20001011102858/http://www.billboard.com/daily/2000/0831_01.asp

The only thing Beyonce has Britney beat commercial wise is in tour performance, but the advent of social media is the primary reason Beyonce's peak appears to be lasting longer.

It is much better to compare within a certain era, rather than comparing different eras.  

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