Ringo Starr albums and songs sales
Arguably the least famous member of the Beatles, Ringo Starr still embarked into an extensive solo career that keeps going to this day. On January 10, 2025 his 21st studio album Look Up will be released.
Phil Collins aside, drummers rarely do wonders on their own. By the end of 1975 though, Starr had recorded 7 US top 10 hits, as many as John Lennon (4) and George Harrison (3) combined. We review the success of his career up to date.
Looking at the big picture: Ringo Starr
A childhood full of struggles… and music (1940-1960)
Sir Richard Starkey, stage name Ringo Starr, was born July 7, 1940 in Liverpool, England. He was off to a difficult start. A lone child to his parents, he saw his father leave the family when he was only three. He almost passed away aged 6 until he recovered from his coma, and by the time he was 15, he had spend a year in a children hospital and two more in a sanatorium due to various health issues.
There, he discovered drums, quickly becoming obsessed with them. His academic struggles led to his early withdrawal when he left the hospital. The teenager didn’t had that much success with employment attempts either.
While he was completing a machinist apprenticeship he obtained thanks to his new stepfather, he met with people as interested in music as him. From 1956 to 1960, he honed his skills and joined several bands, first skiffle music groups, then rock and roll bands.
The making of the Beatles (1960-1962)
By the end of this era, he was enrolled with the Hurricanes, one of the most reputed bands in the Liverpool area. The band got popular enough to perform several months’ residencies and tour in France and Germany.
They went to that latter country, in Hamburg, on October 1960. The Hurricanes were the leading performers, over another growing Liverpool band named The Beatles. This was the first time Ringo Starr met, and played, with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, and George Harrison. Tony Sheridan was also there. These meetings and shows led to countless bootlegs in later years.
Both Sheridan and the Beatles were keen on welcoming Starr, but he decided to continue with the Hurricanes until 1962. By August, the Beatles‘ then drummer Pete Best was fired as the rest of the band was dissatisfied with his drumming during their first recording sessions. Starr accepted the invitation to replace him. The Beatles‘ four-piece band as we know it was set.
Due to his popularity among their early fans, the departure of Best, and consequently the arrival of Starr, was poorly received. The band producer George Martin also introduced him cautiously in their very first sessions. Quickly though, Starr proved himself as the perfect fit for the band, and by the end of the year they were making some serious noise in the UK.
The Beatlemania and its cons (1963-1970)
When the Beatles exploded in the UK during 1963, and in February 1964 in the US, Starr was a kind of fan favorite. That was due to his playful nature, quirky personality, and humorous interviews. For example, the diva Cher started her career with the song Ringo, I Love You, perfectly illustrating the popularity enjoyed by the drummer. He also seemed the most comfortable in front of a camera, as shown on their movies A Hard Day’s Night and Help!.
Critics weren’t as positive. Back then, musicians were often rated by their solos, which used to be technique demonstrations. That was never the thing of Starr, nor the Beatles. They weren’t about virtuosity, they were about greatness, about pure, simple, raw enjoyment. And to set up a solid drums backbone to an implacable melody, Starr was second to none. He was fundamental part of their perfect chemistry.
The band always wanted to give a voice to every member. Starr, as the others, took the mic on some songs, albeit his contributions were usually limited to one song per album. His most famous rendition may be Yellow Submarine, along with With A Little Help From My Friends. He also wrote some tracks, including Abbey Road‘s Octopus’s Garden.
When McCartney and Lennon wanted to push the creativity further from mid-60s, the drums presence on their songs was sharply reduced. Starr felt isolated from his bandmates, barely contributing to some recording sessions. He married in 1965 to Maureen Cox, and had three children in 1965, 1967, 1970, surely giving him some perspective as well about his role as part of the group. Easy going by nature, tensions between the remaining members added to his frustration.
In late 1969, John Lennon announced to the remaining Beatles that he was leaving, Paul McCartney followed him, which effectively ended the active years of the band.
An unexpected solo success (1970-1975)
When the news of the Beatles breakup made headlines, all eyes were set on Lennon and McCartney, wondering who was going to do best as a solo artist. Odds were obviously against Starr.
In the long run, he was not able to compete with them. For the first half of the 70s though, his string of hits was impressive. After the album of classics covers Sentimental Journey and the country effort Beaucoups of Blues, both mostly unsuccessful, his chances of making it big were close to zero. His former bandmates were still enjoying his contributions on their own solo project, like George Harrison on All Things Must Pass.
In 1971, Starr‘s non-album single It Don’t Come Easy, co-written with Harrison, went to #4 in both the US and the UK. A year later, Back Off Boogaloo, another song written from them gave Starr a new top 10 hit in the US.
In 1973, the drummer released his first proper pop album, Ringo. The project was a surprise hit, going as high as #2 in the US and #7 in the UK. Its singles did even better as both Photograph and You’re Sixteen went to #1 in the US. Oh My My peaked at 5, giving the album a trio of top 5 hits, something very rare at the time. A cover of Only You (1974, #6) and No No Song (1975, #3) completed a US top 10 hits string of 7 songs spread over 4 years.
Downward spiral …and his All-Starr band (1976-now)
Off to a fantastic start, the solo career of Starr started to fade away in the second half of the 70s. After No No Song, he never touched the top 10 single chart again. A Dose of Rock ‘n’ Roll was his best performer at #26. His last Hot 100 entry came in 1981 with Wrack My Brain peaking at #38.
Struggling with alcohol addictions along with his second wife Barbara Bach (married in 1980), his career was in a nowhere land until a detox in late 1988. After that, Starr rebuild his career through touring. He introduced the concept of Ringo Starr & His All-Starr Band, teaming with several musicians that got very successful careers themselves, singing songs from their respective catalogs. Every new tour had a new set of artists surrounding the former Beatles.
Enjoying his new sober life, after the success of the initial tour in 1989 he repeated this formula several times until his last tour in 2022. In the meantime, he resumed at recording, publishing 11 studio albums from 1992’s Time Takes Time to 2019’s What’s My Name.
A new studio album, titled Look Up, has been announced for January 10, 2025. Now 84, the once fragile child continues to pursue his love for music.
ChartMasters’ method: the CSPC
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC) in order to relevantly gauge the act’s results. It will not only bring you sales information for all albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will really determine the act’s popularity.
If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, below is a nice and short video of explaining the concept. I recommend watching it before reading on and to the sales figures. You’ll get the idea in just two minutes.
And if you want to know the full method as well as formulas, you can read the full introduction article.
Now let’s get into the artist’s detailed sales figures!
Ringo Starr album sales
Updated studio album sales & comments
While they weren’t popular music albums in first place, both Sentimental Journey and Beaucoups of Blues topped half a million in sales up to date.
The big hit is obviously Ringo, with sales past 3 million copies. This is an impressive number by 1973 standards. With a good traction as well was Goodnight Vienna, at 1.5 million. Of course, numbers went down from there. Ringo’s Rotogravure couldn’t hit a million although it wasn’t too far away. Then sales figures drop below 300,000 units starting with Ringo the 4th.
Stop and Smell the Roses was an uptick, climbing to 450,000 sales. While figures remained mostly in 6 digits until 2003’s Ringo Rama, recent efforts have been moving about 50,000 units apiece.
Overall, these studio albums add for almost 9 million albums sold.
Want to compare the act’s albums with others?
Ringo Starr songs sales
Below, we list down results from the artist through physical sales, digital sales and streaming.
Please be aware that when the artist is regarded as the lead act, they are rewarded with 100% of these units. However, featured acts share a 50% piece of the total.
Physical singles
Ringo Starr has 3 songs often credited as million sellers, It Don’t Come Easy, Photograph and You’re Sixteen. In fact, these are his RIAA Gold awards. They refer to US sales only though. They were all fairly big globally, each cracking 2 million worldwide.
And as we speak about global sales, Back Off Boogaloo and Only You are also million sellers, with Oh My My almost there as well. His last US Top 10 hit No No Song sold 800,000 physical copies. Starr career total stands on 14 million physical singles. Not bad for the drummer!
Digital songs
Both It Don’t Come Easy and Photograph are almost equally strong, around half a million digital sales each. No No Song has been holding in popularity better than most of the remaining 70s hits, coming in as the 3rd largest digital seller. You’re Sixteen is close behind. With numbers going below 100,000 units, the other songs are mostly forgotten nowadays.
Streaming
Streaming is made up of both audio and video streams. Our CSPC methodology includes both formats to better reflect the real popularity of each track.
The main source of data for each avenue is Spotify and YouTube, respectively. To factor in the growing impact of multiple Asian countries where these platforms aren’t always the go-to site for music streaming, more sources have been added.
In order to account for their real popularity in each relevant country, the below sources have been used along with the mentioned ratios that reflect the market share of each area.
Audio Streams
– South Korea: Genie streams * 2.20 (consistent with Gaon streaming numbers)
– Japan: AWA streams * 100 / 4 (AWA has 4% of the Japanese streaming market)
– Arabic world: Anghami streams
– Sub-Saharan Africa: Boomplay + Audiomack streams
– Elsewhere: Spotify streams * Spotify market shares based on artists’ market distribution
Video Streams
– China* : QQ video streams * 50 if the song is available for audio stream, QQ video streams * 5 elseway (scale built based on known figures for several major artists)
– Elsewhere : Youtube views increased by 10% to account for various local platforms
*since Chinese streaming platforms are mostly video streaming platforms, their streams are weighted on par with YouTube streams.
Audio Stream value – 1,500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream value – 6,750 views equal 1 album unit
Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = ( Spotify * ArtistRatio + Genie * 2.20 + AWA * 100 / 4 + Anghami + Boomplay + Audiomack ) / 1500 + ( QQ views* 50(or 5) + YouTube * 1.1 ) / 6750
Top hits
On streaming platforms, Photograph has a slight lead over It Don’t Come Easy. This situation is true on both Spotify and YouTube, with near 50 million streams and over 20 million views for the leader. While these numbers are not record breaking, they are certainly relevant enough to show that there are fans still listenning to Starr as of now.
You’re Sixteen comes next, with about half the numbers of the top 2. From No No Song, it gets more complicated as numbers drop below 10,000 units.
Full catalog breakdown
If you are familiar with the artist’s catalog and want to check details of each and every song, you can access to all of them right here.
Keep yourself up to date
Our website provides you a fantastic tool which fetches updated Spotify streams as you request them, use it to watch these results grow day after day!
Ringo Starr compilations sales
It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era – studio album, physical singles, downloads, streams – to get the full picture of an album’s popularity.
However, older releases generate sales over various live, music videos and compilation albums. And all those packaging-only records do not create value. They exploit the value originating from the parent studio album with each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued, they downgrade catalog sales of the original LP.
Thus, to accurately gauge the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. Here is how we do that.
Assigning compilation sales to original studio albums
How do you understand this table? For example, if we check the Blast From Your Past line, these figures mean it sold 1,250,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included in this package add for 152,492 equivalent album sales from streams across all formats.
The second part (on the right of the table) shows how many equivalent streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents in the overall package.
Therefore, the streaming figures convey that songs from Ringo equate to 86% of Blast From Your Past‘ tracklist attractiveness. Meaning, it generated 1,076,000 of its 1,250,000 album sales and so on for the other records.
Raw compilations sales
On top of his studio albums and physical singles, Ringo Starr also sold his share of compilation records and live releases. The most relevant of them is the aforementioned Blast From Your Past, a 1975 best of album which perfectly sums up the success of his first half decade as a solo artist. It sold 1.25 million copies.
Nowadays, the 250,000 plus seller Photograph: The Very Best Of Ringo from 2007 is the primary choice among his compilations. On top of that, his live output branded after the Ringo Starr & the All-Starr Band concept has topped half a million sales in total.
Re-assigned compilation sales – Results & comments
Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album’s success: the amount of compilation sales across all versions that were generated. Due to the dependency of sales of the original studio albums on these releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.
To clarify that, we take the Raw compilation sales results and assign the numbers to the related original studio albums, as described in the first section Assigning compilation sales to original studio albums.
Home for 3 of his biggest hits, Ringo is logically the album which generated the most sales of compilations and live albums. Please note that these numbers do not equate to 100% of his long format sales, as some of these have been achieved thanks to Beatles songs. In this case, sales are directly assigned to the band totals.
Bonus: Total album (all types) sales per country
Please note country-specific numbers may miss sales of a few minor releases, although totals are complete.
Ringo Starr: career results (CSPC)
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each album achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
Albums results (CSPC)
In the following results table, all categories display figures in equivalent album sales. If different, pure sales are listed between parentheses.
As a reminder:
- Studio Album: sales of the original album
- Other Releases: sales of compilations generated thanks to the album
- Physical Singles: sales of physical singles from the album (ratio 3/10)
- Download Singles: sales of digital singles from the album (ratio 1,5/10)
- Streaming: equivalent album sales of all the album tracks (ratio 1/1500 for Audio stream and 1/6750 for Video stream)
Artist career totals
See where the artist ranks among remaining singers
Of course, many of these numbers are unimpressive. As we are used to study all-time top sellers, we rarely see albums with less than 100,000 sales once everything is considered. Ringo Starr has plenty of these.
He also has a 7.5 million seller though. Ringo does perform incredibly well. Even its streaming count tops 100,000 units, which is pretty decent. To put things into perspective, among 1973 releases Ringo sold more than classic albums like David Bowie‘s Aladdin Sane and Neil Diamond‘s Jonathan Livingston Seagull.
Goodnight Vienna is a good seller too, with no less than 3 million sales. Ringo’s Rotogravure closes the list of million sellers. Over half a million are Sentimental Journey, Beaucoups of Blues, and Stop and Smell the Roses.
All things considered, Starr reaches nearly 16 million equivalent album sales, quite something for a drummer who’s not a proper songwriter.
Singles results (CSPC)
The list is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each song. Therefore, these figures are not merged units of singles formats. Instead, the list includes weighted sales of the song’s physical single, download, ringtone and streaming as well as its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.
Want to compare the act’s songs with other top hits?
Discography results (ASR)
Thanks to our new ASR (Artist Success Rating) concept, we know that sales represent 0.17 million times the purchase of entire discography. Coupled with total sales, it translates into an ASR score of 7. The ranking of all artists studied so far is available too at this link.Records & achievements
- At 7,555,000 EAS, Ringo belongs to the 20 most successful albums from 1973.
- From 1971 to 1975, Starr scored a streak of 7 consecutive top 10 singles in the US.
Dynamic Spotify key performance indicators
Ringo Starr
Current followers count: 980,360 900,000 followers have been reached on 05/06/23 800,000 followers have been reached on 08/03/22 700,000 followers have been reached on 10/04/21 600,000 followers have been reached on 12/30/20 >> Daily breakdown
Ringo Starr is #3520 among the most followed artists of all-time >> Visit our Top 5,000 most followed artists ranking
Current streams count: 186,016,797 100,000,000 streams have been reached on 03/07/22 >> Daily breakdown
Ringo Starr is #6356 among the most streamed artists of all-time Popularity Rating: /100 >> Visit our Top 1,000 most streamed artists ranking >> Visit our Top 20 highest rated artists ranking
Current monthly listeners: 655,492 (Trend: 35,582) Global chart position: N/A The artist top 50 cities come from 14 distinct countries >> Global impact breakdown
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Discogs.
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