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Hello Anthony. Can you offer any sales numbers for the US rock band HEART please?
Hi,
While you obviously did a tremendous job, it might be of interest to you to know certain sales figures, for example in the Soviet Union (USSR).
ABBA was featured in a best-selling multi-flexi disk magazine Krugozor with 0.5 million circulation FOUR times with a flexi disk of 2 songs from 4 of their albums (Arrival, The Album, Voulez Vous and Super Trouper) - it is 2 million confirmed sales. It can be easily corroborated by checking the circulation figure printed in the magazine.
These flexi disks were also released separately:
Additionally, there are their 4 albums released by the state record company in around 1 - 1.5 million copies altogether.
First or All : WOW ! impressive work ! Bravo !
A gold mine !
About the iron curtain, you can add :
Poland :
Arrival : 800 000 certified sales
The Album : 1 000 000 certified sales << All the Polish foreign curencies allowance were spend on this album
Unverifiabled but I have read somewhere that a bulgarian vinyles factory with a 5 000 000 units production capacity per year print only ABBA singles/albums for 5 years for the Eastern countries market
I have som things to add in this discussion. I doubt that these figures are right for several reasons, though I admire the work you put into it. One of the reasons for this is that Abba had so many labels around the world in their active days that all data just isn´t there to be gathered anymore. Sometimes the data is lost and some labels just doesn´t exist anymore. I know for example that Abba was massive in Denmark and Norway right from the beginning and total sales of albums in only those two countries should be north of 2 million copies. There is also no figures of Poland for example where I know the state spent the whole budget for western music on abba in 1976 when they bought 600.000 copies of Arrival.
Another interesting thing is that in 1978 I read an interview with Stig Andersson in a Swedish Newspaper where he said that he had gathered data of all Abbas sales and claimed that at the time abba had sold 250 million records worldwide (combined singles and albums). He also said that he had everything on paper and seemed triumphant in noting that no other act had any claimed sales on paper. Not even the Beatles, he added. It was short after that the marketing campaign in the US claiming Abba to be the largest selling act in the history of recorded music was released.
How do you estimate the download sales...and why is Dancing Queen more than twice the next biggest seller?
When we do karaoke , my sisters always sing Abba and The Carpenters songs. And theyre quite popular in the Philppines too.
Very interesting breakdown. The physical album sales would however be based on sales at the time (vinyl), excluding the multiple releases on CD and to a less extent cassettes - but CD sales over 35+ years would contribute a lot more I guess? Tobler/Magnus Palm state sales are around 1m - 2m per annum. Also, Japanese sales? Discomate stated 13m album sales in 1980 (also pre-CD), but that isn't reflected here. "People Need Love" the single sold 285,000 units in Japan on Philips label.
There is also the unknowns, like 100s of complication albums, the box sets (28 singles each), 10,000 sold - released 3-4 times, could account for 100,000 units by itself. Readers Digest - 1m reported sales from their ABBA box set also.
Hi Wayne!
Sales are all based on up to date data. Original albums of ABBA have been very low catalog sellers due to compilations selling a lot. Nowadays, the immense majority of their annual sales is achieved by packages like Gold and Definitive Collection.
The 13m figure for album sales in Japan as of 1980 is absolutely impossible. It may be one more use of the old "1 album is worth 6 singles" trick from the time. In fact, their albums had scanned 2,08 million units by 1980 and their singles 800k, thus 2,08*6 + 800 = over 13 million.
There is no trace of People Need Love in Oricon books, that song never charted and as per discogs, it seems this single was never released in Japan. While looking into this though, I did notice that She's My Kind of Girl was a hit in 1972 with 188,000 units sold, peaking at #7 on 24,000 sales on 27/3/1972. It's a Bjorn & Benny song though, released in 1969 without Agnetha and Anni-Frid.
Similarly, we went through all compilations listed on discogs - that's 190 packages. Many of them are listed inside the various tables of the article, then the lowest ones are added through the "Remaining compilations" folder assigned to 2 million sales. It includes products like Reader's Digest pair of releases. The box was a limited release in Europe / Oz / SA that never charted, it's clear it hasn't sold 1 million. You need to always wonder what it refers to with these labels claims. In that case, it's a 4-6 discs box depending on its forms, so when they mention 1 million, they refer to the number of discs sold rather than complete packages.
How many copies does abba gold sell per year? I always see this album on several charts around the world.
I wonder which of the 5 is most successful in terms of catolog: Abba Gold, Bob Marley Legend, Beatles One, Thriller, Dark Side of the Moon.
Hi Lorrane!
Not all albums have the same nature of catalog sales. Some are highly consistent like Dark Side while others rely more on huge surges time to time like Grease or Thriller. Gold and Legend have a bit of both, solid yearly sales plus occasional boosts. Thus, it's hard to tell a yearly pace of sales for each of them, it depends if we look at 1-5-10 years time frames. Also, with most charts now including streaming the answer is almost impossible to answer.
Anyway, I would say Legend really took the lead as the biggest catalog seller of all. It's the biggest in the US while it is one of his weakest markets comparatively speaking. It has averaged more than 1 million WW sales per year from 1991 to date and still registers close to half a million pure sales in spite of the dreadful market.
Thanks for responding. Of course "People Need Love" was an obvious mistake - hard to remember an article 30 years later. The physical sales figures listed - where are they derived from? Much of the (physical) sales data is not much different (some a little too low) to what was estimated 70's/ 80's - hence my comment this seems to be vinyl sales only. Singles data however is quite different in a few examples. For example - Chiquitita was a UNICEF single, and sales was estimated as 4m back then (by UNICEF). Same as you record here. Fernando you have as 4.1m, whereas it was a massive hit in comparison to Chiquitita - there is no way this is possible; whether your data states differently, it does not match the reality of the time. Estimates back then were 6m-10m for Fernando. DQ was their biggest, and reported as 6m in 1976, 1m+ in 1977 (thus if this is their biggest hit, then of course 10m for Fernando is also not possible). Your comments on Readers Digest and Japan sales are extremely logical, and fit what would be more realistic. What I find the most difficult to comprehend, but data is data, is that ABBA sales were at the peak period of sales (IFPI) and topped charts globally vs AC/DC lesser known albums in 80's (low peak sales) that never charted and yet reportedly sold more than them. Not disputing it - just makes my head spin.
Hi Wayne!
Sales claims aren't considered when we build our articles, only valid charts & sales related data. We go through every relevant market and check what really happened instead of just copying a global sales myth.
If we take the example of DQ, in the US, the UK, Japan, France, Germany, Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Ireland and Portugal it did an estimated 4,35 million. The rest is extrapoated with relative market sizes.
The Chiquita / Fernando isn't a valid comparison if you check charts on main markets. Fernando basically doubles sales of Chiquita in already mentioned markets (3,6m vs 1,8m) but Chiquita was an all-time top seller in Latin America, where international singles (including most of ABBA hits) don't sell at all / aren't even released. It moved an estimated 1,6 million there, which pushes it close to Fernando globally, but through completely different markets.
As for ABBA / AC/DC, if we stop data at 1982 or so, there is no match, ABBA were way, way bigger than AC/DC. It has to do with catalog sales, AC/DC are Beatles-esque there. In 2008 alone they shipped 6 million back catalog albums, that's as many as the biggest ABBA's albums during their promotional campaigns.
The English + Spanish versions of Chuquitita are different. Different vocals, different lyrics, different language. Count them separately.
Chiquitita - 2.4m English, 1.6m Spnanish
I agree about CHIQUITITA. I can tell in my country, Argentina, it was a mega hit, known by everybody from all generations (similar to Adele's 21 this decade). It sold extremely well in the Latin markets. When I grew up and started to investigate more, I was surprised learning it wasn't that big in other markets... for us "Chiquitita" is in the same level of popularity as "Staying alive", "You're the one that I want" or "Bohemian Rapsody".
