Physical Singles Sales
If they never had a true big selling physical single, Fleetwood Mac still sold a nice total of 26 million units. During their early years, the industry was following an other model as today with singles and albums being fully distinct releases. Thus, none of their first nine albums enjoyed sales of singles while all their first hits end up into the Orphan Album category.
Interestingly, while their pure album sales display huge differences between each album, it is not at all the case with their physical singles. Each of their five LPs from 1975 Fleetwood Mac to 1987 Tango In The Night averaged about 4 million units sold from their singles.
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Fleetwood Mac (1975) – 810,000 equivalent albums
Over My Head – 700,000
Rhiannon – 900,000
Say You Love Me – 900,000
Landslide – 200,000
Rumours (1977) – 1,770,000 equivalent albums
Go Your Own Way – 1,300,000
Don’t Stop – 1,600,000
Dreams – 2,100,000
You Make Loving Fun – 900,000
Tusk (1979) – 1,320,000 equivalent albums
Tusk – 1,900,000
Sara – 1,500,000
Think About Me – 800,000
Sisters Of The Moon – 200,000
Mirage (1982) – 1,012,500 equivalent albums
Hold Me – 1,700,000
Gypsy – 900,000
Love In Store – 500,000
Oh Diane – 250,000
Can’t Go Back – 25,000
Tango In The Night (1987) – 1,455,000 equivalent albums
Big Love – 1,300,000
Seven Wonders – 700,000
Little Lies – 1,600,000
Family Man – 200,000
Everywhere – 1,000,000
Isn’t It Midnight – 50,000
Behind The Mask (1990) – 135,000 equivalent albums
Save Me – 400,000
In The Back Of My Mind – 50,000
Say You Will (2003) – 24,000 equivalent albums
Peacekeeper – 80,000
Orphan Album – 1,290,000 equivalent albums
Black Magic Woman – 50,000
Need Your Love So Bad – 200,000
Albatross – 1,200,000
Man Of The World – 400,000
Oh Well – 1,400,000
The Green Manalashi – 300,000
Fireflies – 200,000
As Long As You Follow – 300,000
Love Shines – 50,000
Remaining Singles – 200,000
My first time on this site. Not arguing, just curious. How is it most lists I view online have Rumours at 50M copies, and this list is well under 40M?
Hi Mike! Welcome 🙂 It’s the whole purpose of this website, to fix the countless inflated claims that we keep reading everywhere. Thriller at 104m, Rumours, Back In Black and Bat Out Of Hell at 50m, Millennium at 40m, Elvis and the Beatles at 1b, Jackson at 750m, ABBA at 350m, etc, etc, these are only a few immensively inflated claims that keep floating around. This is mostly due to lack of understanding from media. Labels use to report figures in a (naturally) favorable way, adding all records from an era together for example (albums and singles), or converting album… Read more »
Because none of those lists have actually dissected Rumours sales, to see if it actually could have sold 50m, they just regurgitate record company press releases, which are always overstated, either due to their wording being misleading or using dubious and undehanded counting methods.
Hi MJD,
Guardians of the Galaxy has propelled Chains to popularity and the volume 2 mix tape album is still selling great. Just wondering how u going to credit it to Fleetwood? Like if e album sells 500k, how much album eq u gg to credit to them?
Hi Jeff!
Compilations / Soundtrack that aren’t related to one specific artist do not count towards their tally. Elseway, all ‘Now’ compilations among others would need to be considered too. The Chain will benefit from this exposure to increase its downloads and streams while the band best of packages are doing well right now thanks to the movie, so Fleetwood Mac are gaining still within’ their own catalog.
I was wondering where you got some of this sales data. Some albums, like Fleetwood Mac (1968), Penguin, Heroes are Hard to Find, Fleetwood Mac (1975), Tusk, and Mirage seem to have higher sales than expected. You list Heroes at 1,000,000 units in the US, yet it hasn’t received a certification.
Hi Sinny! As you must know certifications aren’t automatic. This is even more true for Fleetwood Mac with the messy changes of label along the years. If I would stop myself at RIAA numbers, then all studies would be useless, we would go by RIAA massively flawed all-time lists. Using your example, Heroes performed way bigger than Mistery to Me during their respective promotional campaigns, peaking at #34 against #67. This latter album went Gold as early as in 1976. In 1975 Heroes re-entered charts on the back of Fleetwood Mac album success. There is no doubt it crossed half… Read more »
Hi Guillaume!
Can you please post the detail per country for Fleetwood Mac’s Greatest Hits?
Thank you very much in advance!
Tony
Hi Anthony!
Sure, the breakdown below:
America
– US – 10,200,000
– Canada – 1,100,000
Asia
– Japan – 225,000
Oceania
– Australia – 825,000
– New Zealand – 175,000
Europe – 4,970,000
– UK – 1,875,000
– France – 300,000
– Germany – 925,000
– Italy – 225,000
– Spain – 250,000
– Sweden – 150,000
– Netherland – 325,000
– Switzerland – 75,000
– Austria – 30,000
World – 19,300,000
This is fantastic and very accurate. Can this be done for Stevie Nicks please?
Hello James!
Yes, this can also be done for Stevie Nicks. There is various artists already in the pipe so it may take some time though!
Not as well known as Abba or The Police? Lol!!!!!! Be real!!!
Hello Teresa, Sadly this is a fact pretty undeniable. In English-speaking countries, Fleetwood Mac is the most popular of the three bands but all are just as well known as everybody know them. In other areas yet, Fleetwood Mac are not even close. As an example, I’m from France, while everyone know ABBA or Police it is highly unlikely that 10% of the population know Fleetwood Mac, the real number is likely from 1% to 5% of awareness among the general public. This situation is the same in most European countries – almost all except German-based language countries like Germany… Read more »
Highly unlikely? Well, what is your study based on? Lol! I’m not putting down Abba or The Police but cmon? I don’t even know the names of the people in Abba! I bet all these countries have heard of let’s say for instance, STEVIE NICKS? Just saying. Then they would of course associate her with the band Fleetwood Mac.
Errr I’m also from France and most people definately don’t know who Fleetwood Mac are, let alone Stevie Nicks. Everybody knows Abba and The Police though.
Teresa, On your next trip to a non-English speaking country, just feel free to ask who “Fleetwood Mac” are, most people won’t be able to answer you. I posted this analysis in Chartsinfrance website, that is the main charts-related music forum of the country, and most comments were how impressive their sales are considering they never heard about this group. This is France, one of the top 5 markets in the World. Just think about Asian or Latin American countries. Obviously Stevie Nicks is completely unknown in most countries of the world. As an example, her last album 24 Karat… Read more »
OK Thank You 😁
I am from Argentina. ABBA was super massive here. My mother was a big fan in the 70s (she bought some albums)… If I ask her about Fleedwood Mac… she would say: “What is that?”
MJD is completely right about that.
Hi dear MJD !!!
Your articles and your detailed analysis are always fantastic, even for Fleetwood Mac, really compliments, I visit your site every day to see if there are new artists analyzed, I hope you analyze as soon as the Fab Four (The Beatles), I’m a big fan of the four legendary musicians from Liverpool !!!
Hello Anthony!
The ones The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley are definitely in the pipe. Giving their importance yet, I’m building their statistics over a long period, studying everything as deeply as possible. The Liverpool band will likely be the first to come out from those mega selling artists yet!
Hi dear MJD !!! Thank you for answering me. I also believe that The Beatles are still the first artists to have sold more records than all, in fact, in your old website that was “fan of music” you show in your graph that six albums of The Beatles were present in the top 100 best-selling albums of all time. Albums that were present The Beatles 1, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Abbey Road, 1962-1966 (The Red Album), 1967-1970 (The Blue Album), The Beatles (White Album). I hope that by the end of October you realize CSPC analysis of… Read more »
Nice work again MJD! Quite a big number for a band who is often considered a one-album wonder!
By the way, MJD, you made a slight (probably irrelevant) mistakes on page 20. Firstly, the release year for Tango in the Night says 1977, but it should be 1987. Moreover, on Orphan albums, those singles add up to 4,3m, so the album equivalent should be 1,29m, 60K less than what you’ve typed.
Looking forward for your next post!
Hi Raffi!
The typo of the year is fixed, on the Orphan Album calculation I have put 1,23 million, missing the “Remaining Singles” 200,000 units from the cum, now fixed!
Your help is highly appreciated Raffi, it is very welcome to have someone enabling me to always correct all typos in such a detailed way that may stay here and there.
Thanks again!