CSPC: Elvis Presley Popularity Analysis
If you are lonesome tonight, you may have enough time to read the highly anticipated CSPC article of Elvis Presley… or you may not. His discography is so massive that at some point Chartmasters’ team though this work would never be completed. Now the challenge is on your side to go through all information available!
During the last few weeks, we already started to dig into his results. We used YouTube Insights to define his popularity all over the world, we understood the structure of his discography, we have put some order among all myths related to his sales, we clarified the RIAA coverage of his albums before setting up his album results in the US, we broke down both his global physical singles and EP sales, and we highlighted various strong sources of hidden sales. After doing all that, only one step remained: publish final results. Here they are. More than ever, I can only advice you to use the summary available on page 3.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge his results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Presley‘ albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.
Awesome job ! Never read anything so precise and impressive about the record sales. I can’t imagine the amount of work it represents… Congratulations to the Charts Masters team !
To compare precisely the sales of the “Big 3”, could you give us the total purely sales of The Beatles and MJ, as you’ve done it (below) for Elvis ?
Cheers !
I knew he cant beat Michael Jackson, though I am quite surprise he managed to beat Madonna by such a large amount. Elvis at his peak is not nearly as big as The Beatles, although his large amount of albums release managed to make the gap much less smaller. Anyway, he is the first real big huge global icon. You and your team did a great job and this is a great tribute to a great legend. Well done.
It’s not a value judgement.
I disagree. I think the ASR shows he wasn’t as big. He is not as successful as Queen let alone MJ and Beatles.
His heyday of singles and EP era of the 50s and early 60s when you factor in the smaller market he was bigger than anyone ever has been.
I agree with Donald. I wouldn’t even say Jackson topped Elvis, to be honest 11 million at this level is nothing, under 4% of their sales, that’s a virtual tie.
We can’t say his peak wasn’t that big either. As stated in page 130, his year 1957 is the 3rd most valuable in the history of the music industry, beaten only by the Eagles’ 1976 year and Jackson’s 1982. Also, in the Elvis vs Beatles debate, it’s worth noting that the Top 3 songs of Elvis all crush the #1 song of the Beatles!
Wow! You deserve some kind of medal for this astonishing work on what’s one of the (if not the) world’s largest catalog for a single artist.
The king’s appeal is totally unprecedented for his era! What comes as a surprise is his rather weak sales in Latin America (with the exception of Brazil) even though there was a strong Argentinian market at the time.
Also there’s a typo on page 112 regarding Swedish sales.
And a big thanks for doing this!! 🙂
Thanks Al 😉
The typo is fixed! Elvis was big in both Brazil and Chile but fairly weaker elsewhere. It must be said that totals per country include only a few albums for both Argentina and Mexico, he sold about 800,000 and 900,000 on them, respectively, plus 800,000 from remaining Latin American countries.
Is the total for Mexico only 370,000 albums ?, it looks very low.
Hi Tom!
As I said in my previous answer to Dan, totals involve only albums for which there is an estimate / a calculation. Many albums had no version explicitely released in Mexico / Argentina so the figure remains blank. In that case, sales are adjusted through South America remaining sales cell. There is 1,914,000 Latin American sales unallocated for in remaining individual markets. There is 500k+ sales from them that come from each Mexico and Argentina, and the rest is mostly from Chile, then a bit from Venezuela, Uruguay, Colombia, etc.
I didn’t see that message, thanks for the answer 🙂
For the Moody Blue album did you include it’s sales from Norway ( it was very successful here recieving a diamond award for 100,000 sold )..
Hi Tom!
Yes I did, Moody Blue was insanely successful in Norway. As a general trend, I increased default calculations for Europe in order to account for his strong popularity in Scandinavia. Usually, it is extrapolated from remaining continental Europe (when there is no info) while here I used on purpose the UK to extrapolate sales there since he was just as massive in both places, the UK and Scandinavia.
So he sold an estimated 420 million records combined purely?
First of all – major thank you for the analysis!
Secondly, i was pretty close, estimating him at around 320m EAS.
“At 26,585,000 pure album sales, Elvis Presley is the 3rd highest seller of all-time in the UK.”
Any chance to get a top 10, or at least a top 5?
Hi Dan!
Precise numbers only for acts studied so far:
01 The Beatles 33,140,000
02 Queen 26,695,000
03 Elvis Presley 26,585,000
04 Michael Jackson 26,275,000
05 Madonna 22,980,000
— Rod Stewart & Robbie Williams —
08 ABBA 19,645,000
09 David Bowie 19,045,000
10 U2 18,575,000
11 Elton John 18,170,000
12 Rolling Stones 17,405,000
13 Oasis 17,205,000
14 Pink Floyd 16,390,000
— Phil Collins & Frank Sinatra & Cliff Richard 15+ million each —
what about Dire Straits and George Michael?
They come just behind, George Michael / Wham! are at 14,835 million while Dire Straits stand at 14,15 million.
This was such a fun afternoon going over the Elvis article………….I cannot wait for Rod Stewart…………Thank you for all your hard work……….and to theWHOLE team too! Iimagine the only artists that would be even close to this much work would be Older artists like Frank Sinatra or Bing Crosby. Am I right?
Hi,
Thank you and congratulations for this article, and all the others about Elvis, because this must have been a lot lot of work! 132 pages, best score 😂
This is very interesting to know that he’s behind Beatles and, indeed, he never sold 1 billion records!
Do you think he can surpasses Jackson? Does Elvis’ catalog sold more than Jackson’s one?
Hi Gonzalex! We already used long lists with no assignment details to avoid more pages, and ‘remaining albums’ folders to avoid adding 500+ more albums that would have push the article to 300+ pages using the usual norms! Elvis sells more albums in countries were he is the biggest on a yearly basis (mainly US / UK), then Jackson tops him in most remaining markets. In total they must be fairly close. The latter takes the lead in terms of EAS thanks to bigger streaming results. That being said, their sales will have the usual occasional boosts from time to… Read more »
Gets to show how big the Beatles were. They are miles ahead of everyone. Still very surprised Queen are so high on ASR. They are more successful than Elvis. Well done to completing his analysis. That was awful lot of work.
Indeed Jake! I really think that the billion sales myths ultimately downgrade achievements of Elvis / Beatles. We end up thinking “oh, so they haven’t sold anywhere near to 1 billion”, while in reality their results are absolutely insane. If Beatles’ EAS were sold at an average of $12 (can be higher), we are looking at a gross of $5 billion from music records alone. It’s people, like you and me, giving $5 billion only to listen to their music. You can get 243,000 cars at $20k a piece with that much money. Sales of Madonna are already super impressive,… Read more »
It also helps show that despite being the biggest market, the US isn’t the be-all, end-all.
Hi , While his CSPC Units 312.3 M
Can you tell us how many his Records Sold?
Thank you ! For Great Work!
Hi Zack!
He sold over 405 million physical records: 244,5 million albums, 135,2 million singles, 15,9 million EPs, and 9,6 million music videos. Many of his albums had multiple discs, I haven’t all multi-discs explicitely identified, but the ones I have had for 59 million more discs which pushes his totals of units sold to 464 million if we decide to go that way. Then, he also sold over 35 million downloads / ringtones.
So he sold Aprox. 500 million records?
And about Beattles and Michael? I Think these three are in another level.
Hi KantClark!
The Beatles sold 333 million albums, 116 million singles, 5,6 million music videos, some EPs, and 35 million downloads. A total of over 490 million, without extra discs. With them, they reach 600 million.
Michael Jackson sold 235 million albums, 79 million singles, 32 million music videos, and 80 million downloads. That’s a total of 426 million, which reaches 460 million with extra discs.
what about madonna? is she above mj and the queen or close?
Is that Elvis christmas album the most successful holiday album ever?
Hands down 😉
149+ million on orphan… It stands to reason being as he came from the singles era.