This is a classic mistake. Billboard and some awards for example claiming Michael Jackson sold 750 million albums or Thillers' 104 million copies sold. And this is obviously impossible. Britney is far far away from 150 million albums sold.

I don’t think billboard which is the go to source would do a “mistake” concerning sales when their whole objective is to report the sales in an accurate matter. This is the go to source in America. If they are mistaken then the whole system and charting positions are compromised.

Billboard whole objective is to state sales in the US, even then they dont do the job of tracking US sales. They used Nielsen data to determine weekly rankings. From RIAA and Nielsen data it is safe to say that Britney sold 30-40 million albums in the US alone, its impossible to believe her sales elsewhere reached a cumulative of 110-120 million albums. Billboard does not track sales or do rankings on album sales worldwide. So Billboard is not a reliable organization when it comes to global non us sales. If you add up all her updated certification tallies it doesnt add up. I have also checked ur link. Nowhere in ur link states that she sold 150 million albums. Ive also google some other pages, some source says she sold 100 million RECORDS and some says she sold 150 million RECORDS. But Ive never encountered any source which says she sold 150 million ALBUMS. If we are talking about 150 million RECORDS then Chartmasters figure are correct, in fact according to their figure shr sold 176 million records = 76 million albums + 18 million physical singles + 82 million downloads. Which is again, above the general believe that she sold only 150 million records.

Exactly Michael!

As I explained many times, Billboard are reporters, they are not a source. Their accuracy entirely relies on who they are citing. When they mention RIAA awards or Soundscan sales, they are as accurate as the RIAA or Soundscan (meaning 100% correct for what it stands for). When they report something a label told to them, they are as accurate as the label is (accurate more often than not). If they report something coming from a manager, chances are the claim will be false.

Then, just because something appears inside the Billboard doesn't mean it's a Billboard claim. In fact, a huge part of their articles are written by freelance writers and they are tagged as such, although nobody seems to bother looking at who's writing an article before using it as a valid source!

Pretty sure Whitney sold more during the Bodyguard era. Plus, the 21 million album sales u mentioned is just US sales. Not including global sales. In which she could have sold probably like 35 million in just 2 years.

RIAA is clearly not true reflection of her sales. It look like her team does not want to apply for certifications any more.
Like Toxic is still Gold, TTWE has no certification.

Also now all britney's album have over 200m plays on spotify. What about apple music, tidal, etc.? I know this data is hard to get, but clearly her sales are more than what is stated.
Also it appears her Album sales in BMG were not counted

I don’t understand why from BOMT to Blackout there are 2x more countries reported than your reports for other artists (?????)

Like, for Rihanna

You say that Good Girl Gone Bad (a monster seller) has sold only 150k copies in the rest of the world based on your estimations, you are saying that a flop album like Blackout sold more in those other countries (not reported on Rihanna’s article)? LOL

Do you know that for Asia, Europe and Latin America, the complete results of all countries are shown, just that the main ones are the only ones visible, right? These applies for all artists even though you cannot see all markets. I don’t know why this article is the exception but well.

Blackout Rest of The World sales listed here is only 29k. So what the hell are u talking about? GGGB also sold like 9 million albums compared to Blackout 2.2 million. Do u have dyslexia or something?

MJD listed all markets for all artists, he just displayed the main ones. Do the math, GGGB 3.9 million sales in Europe for example doesnt add up with the totals that was displayed. Which means it is listed for every single countries, even the ones that arent displayed. When it comes to Britney it is easier to list more markets, because her record labels kept her certifications updated back then. So there is direct more accurate results for her. For Rihanna when it comes to the smaller more obsecure market the sales was more bssed on estimations.

Her BMG sales were added to RIAA. BOMT and OIDIA were scanned at 12 million ++ and 9 million ++ by soundscan. RIAA still certidies BOMT 14x and OIDIA 10x because they already add BMG club sales. When it comes to single, yes I agree that many of her singles would have seen big certification increase once updated (People dont usually update singles sales anyway). But based on Album sales even if there is any increase once updated, I highly doubt shes going to see that big of an increase. Britney has always been a poor catalogue seller. Shes very good at selling massive amount of albums within the first 1-2 years and after that her albums stop selling. So whatever albums that hasnt been updated is hardly going to make any difference. Besudes, this website has already taken into factors all of that stuff, and make their own estimations.

I noticed “From the Bottom of my Broken Heart” is missing from the “Digital Singles“, as is “Outrageous” from In The Zone, (despite her injury it was still a single released), also Tom’s Diner (stand alone single), and “Someday I will Understand”.

I know it may technically have been placed under Remaining Songs, but I feel that they would at least perform better than some of her lower listed singles.
Do her remixed singles combine with the original singles? For example; Overprotected was released in original form abroad; while in the U.S. the Darkchild remix was released. Are these figures factored in?

What about Boys, and Drive Me Crazy? Both are remixed soundtrack singles, are remixes counted separately?

Baby one more time sold 17.001.000 copies by the end of 1999 and Oops!...I Did It Again sold around 16 million copies by the end of the year 2000

you need to update this soon, since this was posted Criminal has become a streaming juggernaut. same with Gimme More. I Wanna Go & Sometimes are doing decent as well

All of the artists' streams are updated automatically on this list: https://chartmasters.org/2017/10/best-selling-artists-albums-and-singles-of-all-time/18/

Look at the last column. So Britney's total increases every time this is updated (almost daily for most artists).

Is Glory above 1M CSPC units already? Can we get an update on that? Thank you!