Best selling artists, albums and singles of all-time

It has been over 2 years since I introduced to you the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept, nicknamed CSPC, in March 2016. This revolutionary concept enables to define accurately the most successful artists ever. During this timeframe I, with the precious help of Hernan Lopez and Anthony Blanchard, studied nearly 100 artists, 1,000 albums plus countless singles and stand-alone tracks worth a gigantic 8,5 billion equivalent album sales combined!

Many of you praised the effort and the ongoing results which really makes us feel great about the website. One recurrent negative feedback though has been the difficulty to navigate the blog. One unique, cross-artist source of data was needed. While I can advise you to use the search function at the top-right, which works really well, an article grouping together the main data is definitely a positive improvement. So, here it is, please say hi to the Data Collector!

This article lists various rankings, with more added frequently, please see the summary on page 2. Top selling singles / albums / artists, per format, per year, per artist type, etc… everything is possible!

Thanks to this Data Collector it isn’t necessary anymore to repeat the comprehensive rankings at the end of each article. It will solve an issue by removing some pages and letting you reach always the same final pages for all acts – CSPC totals, the artist’s singles ranking and their records & achievements. This article will be kept updated which will also prevent us from having lists updated at different moments here and there.

Anthony will handle the updates of this thread from now on and try to answer your questions the best he can. We won’t be answering to lists requests on comments though as it will be impossible to maintain them. Instead, when you request something, and if it is relevant for many people, we will add a page to the article with the said list.

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ABJ

nvm realized its a 1997 release my bad

ABJ

wouldnt the titanic soundtrack be the #1 album of 1998 with like 30 million units at the very least?

Denysanatol

What happens with total EAS of Neil Young and Elton John on Top Artists list ? Why it stands at 99 and 222 millions resp.

matt

its been like 6 months and My Dear Melancholy is still on the 2020 list instead of the 2018 one.

esin

Can you update Black album numbers remastered version boost the sales

esin

Metallica has sold more than 150 million albums worldwide. 75 million in United States

aska

Most of their sales would be in America.

esin

They sold 1 million albums in Turkey.

Jsak

Page 18: CSPC Metallica Ranking: 19
Page 19: ASR Metallica Ranking: 34
What will be their real value? I would say too much difference.

Jsak

ASR Page 20 not 19.

Mikko

Why is Finland singled out from the countries under consideration?
I am talking about physical sales now.
Finland does not belong to Russia nor to Scandinavia. It does not “correlate” with any country. Instead Scandinavia could be viewed as one group i.e the countries Sweden, Norway and Denmark (Iceland too).Just like latin america oŕ asia.

Mikko

I light up a bit of scandinavian music taste NORWAY, albums charts 1967-2013, points method. 1. Bruce Springsteen 1896 p. 2. Abba 1806p. 3. Rolling Stones 1554 p. 4. Paul Simon 1501 p. 5. Elton John 1460 p. 6. Beatles 1442 p. 7. Bob Dylan 1310 p…….15. Dire Straits 859 p. …..22. Deep Purple 757 p. ….24. Michael Jackson 755 p. …25. Eric Clapton 705 p….27. Queen 700 p….30. Madonna 681 p…..33. Whitney Houston 619 p…..35. U2 605 p….36. Celine Dion 600 p. ….39. Led Zeppelin 573 p. NOTE: Beatles, Stones and Dylan also had success before 1967. As is… Read more »

Al

Hi Mikko!
Finland is listed since it’s an easy market to estimate due to a lot of transparent figures. Wether it’s part of Scandinavia doesn’t really matter as what does well there is very similar to Scandinavia.
As for Scandinavian figures, sales in Norway and Denmark are obviously included in European numbers too. And like with for Russia, Poland etc are adjustments made when a release sells more there than the formula suggests.

Mikko

That’s exactly what i’ve brought up, that music taste in Finland is different from the Scandinavian countries. Scandinavians prefer songwriters. In Norway Springsteen has 1896 points and Queen 700 points. Almost 3 times more. In Finland Queen has sold very well, Greatest hits is best selling foreign album, >150 000 pure copies sold.
In Scandinavia Queen’s popularity is average. Check Norway list above, no number 1 album. In Sweden Queen has 1 number one album, none In Denmark.
I’m finnish myself.

Jsak

Garth Brooks if we talk about success it is too high on page 20, outside of North America Albano and Romina are better known…

zjoaoo

Wish that 30 could join on the 500 best selling albums club