Physical Singles Sales

Unlike most big historical bands like Pink Floyd or Led Zeppelin, the Bee Gees also sold a good share of physical singles. No doubt they extensively used the favorable background of the 70s solid singles market but, just how high have their sales climbed?

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.

Bee Gees’ 1st (1967) – 684,000 equivalent albums

Holiday – 670,000
New York Mining Disaster 1941 – 840,000
To Love Somebody – 770,000

Horizontal (1968) – 1,863,000 equivalent albums

World – 1,270,000
Massachusetts – 3,350,000
Words – 1,590,000

Idea (1968) – 1,269,000 equivalent albums

I Started a Joke – 1,520,000
I’ve Gotta Get a Message to You – 2,100,000
Jumbo – 600,000
Let There Be Love – 10,000

Massachusetts is largely regarded as the huge hit of the early days of the Bee Gees – it indeed was with a heavy 3,35 million units sold, in spite of a relatively low half a million sold in the US. Other songs were far from being weak as well, as they all sold at least 600,000 copies, except Let There Be Love which was released in the Netherlands only.

So many sizeable hits from each album conclude with equivalent album sales as high or even higher than their original album sales. An example is Horizontal which sold 1,2 million pure albums while its singles sales equal to 1,86 million albums.

Combined, those singles sold 12,7 million units – within a single year!