Download Singles Sales – Part 2

Nimrod (1997) – 885,000 equivalent albums

Nice Guys Finish Last – 100,000
Hitchin’ a Ride – 150,000
Good Riddance (Time of Your Life) – 5,300,000
Remaining tracks – 350,000

Warning (2000) – 135,000 equivalent albums

Warning – 100,000
Waiting – 100,000
Minority – 400,000
Macy’s Day Parade – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 200,000

American Idiot (2004) – 2,655,000 equivalent albums

American Idiot – 3,600,000
Jesus of Suburbia – 700,000
Holiday – 3,000,000
Boulevard of Broken Dreams – 4,800,000
Wake Me Up When September Ends – 3,800,000
Remaining tracks – 1,800,000

21st Century Breakdown (2009) – 1,260,000 equivalent albums

Know Your Enemy – 1,900,000
21 Guns – 4,500,000
Remaining tracks – 2,000,000

The interesting thing about these albums is that they came out in fundamentally distinct eras, in spite of following each other in Green Day‘s release history. Both Nimrod and Warning came out before legal downloads arrived. The former still holds the monster track Good Riddance which has over 5 million sales thanks to its strong catalog appeal.

American Idiot was succeeding at the very start of the digital boom. In fact, Boulevard of Broken Dreams was #1 in the first ever Hot Digital Songs as published in January 2005 by Billboard. Roughly 30,000 units were enough to dominate the ranking at the time. Other big hits from American Idiot have racked up millions of sales in this format over the last 13 years. The four main ones are all in the 3-5 million range, building a huge total of more than 17 million sales for the album.

21st Century Breakdown came out during a time when a #1 US hit was routinely moving over 200,000 units per week, not even accounting for ringtones. The situation was similar in most countries where digital sales were getting bigger and bigger too. The environment helped the hit 21 Guns  in achieving over 4 million units sold Worldwide. Adding to this, the cumulative tally of the album’s songs top 8 million, despite being overall much less successful than its predecessor.