There are so many things to say about ABBA that it is hard to know where to start. Pretty much every single article about the cult Swedish band contains at least one myth about the band and its success. Even when a reunion tour is announced as it happened a few days ago, we need to get into the details before learning it refers to a virtual 3D show without the band itself.

https://flic.kr/p/dX31Rh

I'll temper all fanciful legends right from the start - no, ABBA hasn't sold 360 million records. No, their album Arrival hasn't sold 20 million units, nor Fernando single did 21 million. All those myths are very, very wrong. When working on their record sales, we quickly met many such claims, including from usually valid sources like the Billboard. Their management team at the time was very busy promoting the group by using such claims, not hesitating in communicating huge exaggerations, misleading people with sales of illegal copies and many more marketing tricks. It surely worked well since nearly 35 years after the group disbanded, the general public still views their success as bigger than it is, putting them with the Beatles, Elvis Presley or Michael Jackson and the likes although they do not belong in that league.

Ironically, if people with no detailed knowledge about the music industry inflate their achievements, most chart followers deflate their success, often considering the band is only able to sell their classic 1992 compilation Gold and all the rest can be thrown away. A key element often not understood well by those specialized watchers is how much availability is an issue. They tend to believe the general public purchase voluntarily specific albums. In reality, the general public doesn't really care about the album. People only aim to pick one with the few tracks they are looking for.

In ABBA's case, their label decided to go extensively by compilations, barely keeping their original studio albums available. As an example, their debut album Ring Ring was first issued in the US in 1995 only, some 22 years after its initial release. Speaking of that country, ABBA's success was decent but not that big there, limiting their sales in comparison to all-time top sellers. Thus, with promotion focusing on compilations, an average global market at their time and relatively low US sales, sales of their original albums aren't record breaking. The doesn't mean their popularity is weak yet, it just means that popularity got translated into their compilations. It is a good day for you as our CSPC approach serves very precisely to define the real popularity of an album independently of how it got exploited initially and as a catalog item.

ABBA original albums sales

Ring Ring (1973)

Waterloo (1974)

ABBA (1975)

Arrival (1976)

The Album (1977)

Voulez-Vous (1979)

Super Trouper (1980)

• America

  • US - 1,200,000
  • Canada - 150,000
  • Argentina - 250,000
  • Brazil - N/A
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia

  • Japan - 225,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 120,000
  • New Zealand - 25,000

• Europe - 5,270,000

  • UK - 1,225,000
  • France - 275,000
  • Germany - 1,125,000
  • Italy - 150,000
  • Spain - 150,000
  • Sweden - 600,000
  • Netherland - 375,000
  • Switzerland - N/A
  • Austria - 75,000
  • Finland - 51,000

• World - 8,200,000

The Visitors (1981)

• America

  • US - 500,000
  • Canada - 75,000
  • Argentina - 60,000
  • Brazil - N/A
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia

  • Japan - 200,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 50,000
  • New Zealand - 10,000

• Europe - 3,390,000

  • UK - 700,000
  • France - 125,000
  • Germany - 725,000
  • Italy - 70,000
  • Spain - 100,000
  • Sweden - 500,000
  • Netherland - 210,000
  • Switzerland - N/A
  • Austria - 60,000
  • Finland - 67,000

• World - 4,800,000

Original Album Sales - Comments

In other words, a total of 45,3 million copies sold with 8 albums combined. Obviously, this may seem disappointing. Albums like Grease or Dark Side Of The Moon by Pink Floyd from the same period are now coming close to such a figure on their own. As incredible as it may seem, Arrival, The Album, Voulez-Vous or Super Trouper all sold more than Dark Side Of The Moon in their respective first 12 months. I point out this fact to highlight how great those sales were in the 70s.

They were definitely record breaking when we get into the details. Arrival was the 4th top selling studio album of the decade in the UK. Their last seven albums were likely the Top 7 best selling albums ever in Sweden. From 1975 to 1980 they moved more than 1 million albums per year in Germany. Arrival did more than half a million units in the Netherlands, some 850,000 units in Australia, arguably the biggest selling studio album ever up to that point in both countries. It was also utterly massive in Japan, just like was Voulez-Vous in Argentina. Only Ring Ring and Waterloo seem to be weaker albums but both were replaced as early as in 1975 by Greatest Hits which was a terrific seller too.

While we shouldn't dismiss those sales, we shouldn't get into false claims either. In all likelihood, Stig Anderson - the band manager and owner of their Swedish label -  communicated figures about Eastern Europe were estimates of illegal copies more than anything else. Unreal Polish figures he claimed clearly include exports to various other countries. Arrival million orders in Australia was never met as the album suffered from returns after such heavy shipments. I could go on and on with many more claims. If you happen to have doubts about something you read, feel free to ask for details in comments I'll be answering you!

As you understood, studio album sales isn't the be-all and end-all of ABBA record sales. The band also sold heavy amounts of compilations and, of course, singles. This is exactly what comes next...

1973 Ring Ring – 1,000,000
1974 Waterloo – 2,700,000
1975 ABBA – 3,600,000
1976 Arrival – 10,800,000
1977 The Album – 7,200,000
1979 Voulez-Vous – 7,000,000
1980 Super Trouper – 8,200,000
1981 The Visitors – 4,800,000

ABBA's physical singles sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.

You will have a hard time to find a country where ABBA failed to achieve at least one #1 single. Yes, they did it even in the US thanks to Dancing Queen. In most countries, their count of #1 singles was closer to 10 than 1 yet. Although the band lasted less than a decade, their string of smashes was incredibly impressive and served to amass some 54,4 million physical singles sold in the process.

Arrival is the album that had the lowest number of singles released with three only, but all three were huge bringing the huge tally of 3,3 million album sales equivalent. From Waterloo to Super Trouper all their albums produced enough singles sales to equal more than 1 million albums units.

Ring Ring (1973) - 150,000 equivalent albums

Ring Ring - 400,000
Remaining Singles - 100,000

Waterloo (1974) - 1,230,000 equivalent albums

Waterloo - 2,900,000
Honey, Honey - 1,150,000
Hasta Mañana - 50,000

ABBA (1975) - 1,935,000 equivalent albums

So Long - 250,000
I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do - 1,650,000
SOS - 2,500,000
Mamma Mia - 1,900,000
Rock Me - 150,000

Arrival (1976) - 3,315,000 equivalent albums

Dancing Queen - 5,350,000
Money, Money, Money - 2,800,000
Knowing Me, Knowing You - 2,900,000

The Album (1977) - 1,980,000 equivalent albums

The Name Of The Game - 2,600,000
Take A Chance On Me - 3,300,000
Eagle / Thank You For The Music - 600,000
Thank You For The Music - 100,000

Voulez-Vous (1979) - 2,550,000 equivalent albums

Chiquitita - 4,000,000
Does You Mother Know? - 1,600,000
Voulez-Vous - 1,400,000
Angeleyes - 200,000
I Have A Dream - 1,300,000

Super Trouper (1980) - 1,830,000 equivalent albums

The Winner Takes It All - 2,400,000
On And On And On - 300,000
Super Trouper - 2,900,000
Lay All Your Love On Me - 500,000

The Visitors (1981) - 780,000 equivalent albums

One Of Us - 1,400,000
When All Is Said And Done - 500,000
Head Over Hills - 500,000
The Visitors - 200,000

Orphan Album - 2,550,000 equivalent albums

Fernando - 4,100,000
Summer Night City - 1,000,000
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! - 2,500,000
The Day Before You Came - 600,000
Under Attack - 300,000

ABBA's digital singles sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.

I'll bring no news saying ABBA disbanded long before the digital era. Many classic acts still sold an heavy amount of download singles yet. ABBA is a bit disappointing in this area with less than 18 million singles downloaded, a figure not that bad but definitely not huge either.

Just like with physicals, their leading track and album are Dancing Queen and Arrival.

Ring Ring (1973) - 38,000 equivalent albums

Ring Ring - 150,000
Remaining Tracks - 100,000

Waterloo (1974) - 180,000 equivalent albums

Waterloo - 650,000
Honey, Honey - 400,000
Hasta Mañana - 50,000
Remaining Tracks - 100,000

ABBA (1975) - 383,000 equivalent albums

I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do - 300,000
SOS - 450,000
Mamma Mia - 1,600,000
Remaining Tracks - 200,000

Arrival (1976) - 728,000 equivalent albums

Dancing Queen - 3,800,000
Money, Money, Money - 400,000
Knowing Me, Knowing You - 400,000
Remaining Tracks - 250,000

The Album (1977) - 338,000 equivalent albums

The Name Of The Game - 250,000
Take A Chance On Me - 1,200,000
Eagle - 200,000
Thank You For The Music - 500,000
Remaining Tracks - 100,000

Voulez-Vous (1979) - 300,000 equivalent albums

Chiquitita - 500,000
Does You Mother Know? - 500,000
Voulez-Vous - 350,000
Angeleyes - 200,000
I Have A Dream - 350,000
Remaining Tracks - 100,000

Super Trouper (1980) - 345,000 equivalent albums

The Winner Takes It All - 900,000
Super Trouper - 350,000
Lay All Your Love On Me - 350,000
Happy New Year - 250,000
Our Last Summer - 250,000
Remaining Tracks - 200,000

The Visitors (1981) - 135,000 equivalent albums

One Of Us - 300,000
When All Is Said And Done - 100,000
Slipping Through My Fingers - 200,000
Remaining Tracks - 300,000

Orphan Album - 233,000 equivalent albums

Fernando - 400,000
Summer Night City - 150,000
Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! - 600,000
The Day Before You Came - 250,000
Under Attack - 50,000
Remaining Tracks - 100,000

ABBA's streaming sales

The table below lists Spotify streaming of all songs from the five albums we are studying. The Comprehensive Streaming is reached by multiplying Spotify figures by 68/26. In fact, https://www.ifpi.org/downloads/GMR2016.pd f" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">as shown in IFPI 2015 Report, there were 68 million paying subscribers to all streaming platforms by the end of 2015. While the exact count of Spotify paying subscribers by the end of 2015 is unknown, that figure reached 20 million in June 2015 and 30 million in March 2016, thus an estimated 26 million is used as of the end of 2015.

The equivalent album sales is the division of the comprehensive streaming figure by 1500 as it is now the norm in the new industry model.

Streaming Part 1 - Taking Off

Considering how weak of a catalog seller it has been, Ring Ring doesn't perform too badly in the streaming field with most album tracks floating around half a million plays. The album definitely lacks hits though as the biggest is the title track with only 5 million streams.

In terms of album sales equivalent, Waterloo is already three times bigger. Although it is still nothing huge, the title track has a nice 19,4 million plays, contributing to 60% of the album results.

Streaming Part 2 - Peak Years

ABBA was a stronger seller than the first two, it also features better in the streaming area. At 38 million, Mamma Mia remains one of the band most remembered songs, SOS is still holding a decent popularity at 14 million. In the other side, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do, I Do at 4 million got truly forgotten as years passed.

Arrival isn't really bigger overall but it owns Dancing Queen. At 69 million plays, this is still the group signature song. Streams of both albums are well over 100,000 album equivalent sales.

Streaming Part 3 - Still Riding High

Both The Album and Voulez-Vous have very similar results. None of them as a truly massive track but both contain several mid-range songs that enable those albums to get relatively healthy totals.

If 100,000 album sales equivalent for each record is nothing to be ashamed of, those results are still on the low side for such a well known band. As a comparison point, while those six albums up to Voulez-Vous combine for less than 600,000 units, Fleetwood Mac 1977 album Rumours alone easily eclipsed that figure.

Streaming Part 4 - The Curtain Call

Super Trouper, maybe surprisingly, happens to be the band most consistent album in the streaming domain with four hits over 10 million and five more topping 1 million. The Visitors marks a real drop in popularity compared to past albums as in spite of being solid overall its biggest song is on 7,5 million only.

Streaming Part 5 - Orphan tracks

Each of the first five tracks from this list came out as singles of several major compilations of the group. This includes two big hits, Fernando and Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! which combine for 35 million plays.

ABBA's full length related records sales

Checking carefully streaming results, we notice 24 songs only topping 4 million plays, including 15 over 10 million. In other words, they have a pack of strong songs and then tracks much less known. This is the perfect catalog to issue one huge one CD compilation. With a two-CD package, you already cover nearly all songs with some attractiveness. ABBA clearly have that mega selling compilation with Gold. They haven't quite stop there as dozens and dozens of other best of records came out since their very beginning. Let's start that extensive work with their global compilations.

Part 1 – Global Compilations I

How to understand this table? If you check for example Greatest Hits compilation album line, those figures mean it sold 7,500,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all songs included on this package add for 97 million streaming plays on Spotify.

The second part at the right of the table shows how many streams are coming from each original album plus the share it represents on the overall package streams. Thus, streaming figures tell us Waterloo songs are responsible for 30% of the Greatest Hits tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 2,237,000 of its 7,500,000 album sales and so on for the other records.

Comments now, when Greatest Hits came out the band was exploding with Arrival. Thus, this best of was the perfect companion to complete a decent ABBA collection. Logically, Greatest Hits 2 released in 1979 focuses on their 1976-1979 years while The Singles was the first career spanning compilation. We can notice a pattern emerging with ABBA being the main sales generator among their early albums while overall Arrival appears to be the biggest hits provider to their compilations. Considering those compilations sold very well each of their studio albums get awarded notable sales. 

Part 2 – Global Compilations II  - Golden ones

Here comes Gold! The hyper-mega selling album now stands at an outstanding 34 million and still climbing. Outside of North America, it is quite simply one of the Top 3 best selling albums ever. As the ultimate ABBA compilation, the track list of Gold represents very well the distribution of their hits attractiveness. Arrival is the leading generator of sales with a huge 8,8 million but what impresses more is how equally spread is that appeal with ABBA, The Album, Voulez-Vous and Super Trouper all representing from 11% to 16% of the package weight. Thus, all plus Orphan album on the back of Fernando and Gimme!... contributing in 3,5 million to 5,5 million sales of Gold.

The pattern of More ABBA Gold is obviously much different as it features tracks not present on Gold, while Forever Gold combines both, which is why it counts each album on its own. More ABBA Gold tally of 3,1 million itself includes half a million units from Gold 40th Anniversary Edition.

Original Compilation Sales

Here is a little surprise. I don't like much to post breakdowns of compilation albums as it goes against the CSPC ideology. The appeal of a best of is just the cumulative tally of the appeal of all its songs, which added value came from original studio albums. Still, Gold figures is various markets is just so extraordinary that I felt the need to post those numbers. In Europe, the album is the second highest selling album ever behind Thriller by Michael Jackson. In Asia it sold a huge 3 million, in Oceania it eclipsed the unbelievable total of 1,5 million. Even in North America, where the band popularity is supposed to be much weaker, the album sold more than 10 million units.

Gold (1992)

Part 3 – Global Compilations III

Those three records represent the three different distribution patterns existing for ABBA. The Definitive Collection features all big hits and follows the pattern of Gold. The band also released several love-themed compilations which tend to focus more on their latter hits which had a slower tempo than their early hits. The Name Of The Game is a budget compilation which used to avoid the truly big hits to focus on second-range hits in order to not be overshadowed by major labels compilations.

Part 4 – Global Compilations IV

Gold is so much under the spotlight and the band remaining compilations sales are spread over so many LPs that we tend to forget about them. Still, since we listed Gold, following compilations already add for 11 million units sold.

Except 18 Hits that surprisingly left out Dancing Queen, all those releases follow the usual big hits pattern of the band with Arrival being the main provider. If you remember well, their big studio albums range sold in the 7 to 10 million range, as you should be understanding, the other part of the picture is just as big, if not bigger.

A last couple of complete career recordings albums - The Albums and Complete Studio Recordings, both from 2005 - sold a combined 400,000 units. As with Bob Dylan and Led Zeppelin similar packages, those sales are attributed to each studio album.

Part 5 – Local Compilations I

Local doesn't mean weak. The Best Of ABBA was released only in Oceania and in German-speaking countries but still sold a gigantic 3,3 million on those territories, even becoming Australian biggest selling album ever at the time.

It hasn't break records in Germany in spite of being huge. It could have break some records if 16 ABBA Hits and The Very Best Of weren't two more German-language countries releases that divided sales into all those packages. In fact, from 1976 to 1981, ABBA sold the insane total of nearly 3 million best of albums in Germany alone.

As several of those albums came very early in their career, those sets sold mostly on the back of ABBA album hits, which brought in 3,4 million sales for those LPs alone.

Part 6 – Local Compilations II

More of the same. Gracias Por La Musica contained Spanish translations of their songs and was released in Japan plus, obviously, in latin language countries. The Magic Of ABBA was a direct order album sold mostly in the US. A Wie ABBA was one more German-language countries release. Very Best Of ABBA was a Japan-only LP.

What they do have in common? They all did incredibly well on markets were they got released and they all capitalized mostly on Arrival songs then a bit of every other studio album.

Part 7 – Local Compilations III

From there on, we will be seeing various lower profile records. ABBA had sold loads of best of albums in the 70s, then vitalized their catalog on CD format thanks to Gold. In between, various labels have released an immense number of minor compilations, budget ones, music clubs only ones and so on.

The next few sections will have no comments of their own since they are all pretty similar!

Part 8 – Local Compilations IV

Part 9 – Local Compilations V

Part 10 – Local Compilations VI

Part 11 – Local Compilations VII

Part 12 – Local Compilations VIII

Please note that for 'Remaining Compilations' I used the distribution of The Definitive Collection which is the best of with the largest total of streams and thus the most representative of the band discography.

Part 13 – Music Videos I

Part 14 – Music Videos II

Part 15 – Music Videos III

ABBA's career CSPC results

So, after checking all figures, how many overall album sales equivalent each ABBA album achieved? Well, at this point we barely need to do the addition of all figures defined all over this article!

[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]

With some artists previously studied, we saw several albums doubling their tally from their studio album sales to their CSPC total. ABBA situation is just extreme as each of their album at least double their sales in original album sales with ABBA multiplying its result by more than 6!

A relatively modest seller at 3,6 million, ABBA album is just way, way bigger than suggested by its initial sales. Home of hits like Mamma Mia and SOS, the album failed to sell more at first only because it was replaced by compilations very, very early before it had time to accumulate some catalog sales.

ABBA isn't the only album much bigger than it seems. It had to be expected considering their incredible compilation sales, but all their albums generated millions of sales outside of their original format. So much that a superb figure of 18,4 million album sales equivalent is barely enough for 5th biggest album among their eight releases.

The leading album is Arrival which dominates each of the five categories. Its impressive total of 35,1 million is enough to rank #4 in the 70s summary I posted a few days ago, ahead of albums like A Night At The Opera by Queen or Wish You Were Here by Pink Floyd.

Over a mere 8 albums, ABBA accumulates the total of 156,6 million equivalent albums sold, even excluding the Orphan Album that is still a stunning 18 million average per album. I started by saying the Swedes do not belong to the same league of the Beatles which is true, nevertheless their results are still mind blowing.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, Chartmasters.org.

We have more for you...

... ABBA's streaming masters analysis

... ABBA's global heatmap

... checking out the upcoming artists or even voting for them!

... similar artists

... best-selling artists, albums, and singles