CSPC: Pink Floyd Popularity Analysis
Remaining Long Format – Part 3 – Live Albums
Pink Floyd has never been regarded as a best of band. They are absolutely a strong live act though. Both Delicate Sound of Thunder and Pulse are impressive sellers in the Live album category. Those figures do not account for VHS / DVD sales that will be listed separately.
Once again, the big 3 takes over the largest part of sales from those packages. The last live album Is There Anybody Out There? has lower sales, but 100% of them come from The Wall album which boosts it in a big way. From those live sets alone the 1979 LP records nearly 6 million sales.
Just out of interest, after Queen, Michael Jackson and The Beatles, are Pink Floyd the biggest selling album artist (all types) in Europe?
Yes, just above Madonna, who obviously sold much more singles.
I wonder how much Abba and U2 are separated from this top 5
ABBA would be #6 with around 70m albums sold (Pink Floyd sold 82m), U2 sold maybe 67m, less than the Stones.
According to Chartmasters – sales in Europe:
Queen – 97,259,000
MJ – 90,730,000
The Beatles – 86,230,000
Pink Floyd – 80,780,000
Madonna – 79,330,000
Rolling Stones – ~70m
Elvis – 58,445,000
Elton John – 53,790,000
U2 – unclear (not in the analysis)
Rod Stewart – 52,348,500
AC/DC – 50,810,000
I think you missed some artists, like Phil Collins (61 m), or 2016 researched Abba and Celine Dion, whose exact Europe totals I can’t discover here, as well as those of the Rolling Stones
Céline Dion sold over 60m albums in Europe, the Stones around 69m. Dan’s list is missing a bunch of acts indeed (Dire Straits, Johnny Hallyday…etc.) and I’ve no idea why he put U2 beneath Elton John…
Thanks! Missed Johnny Halliday myself…
Robbie Williams low 50ms also.
Has the album ‘Wish You Were Here’ lost about a million or so EAS recently?
Pink Floyd are the one of two artists to have two 50+ million albums each. The another one is Michael Jackson.