How many bands have nine 5-million selling albums with a catalog of 6 studio efforts only? Not many for sure. One of them is the Mark Knopfler's cult band, Dire Straits. Responsible for some of the most iconic records of the 80s, the group has now been inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame some 40 years after their debut.

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What was the sound of the Rock music scene from the late 70s? Now that's an interesting question. The Beatles installed the era which is now considered to be Classic Rock. During several years, all rock stars were following the same road. Some bands had harder sounds, others were softer, but the spirit and the roots of their songs were close.

This golden generation came to an abrupt end in 1974. Suddenly, there was no more Beatles and Simon & Garfunkel, the Rolling Stones were now failing to reach the Top 10 more often than not with their new singles, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin had passed away and Brian Wilson was struggling with his demons more than ever.

From 1974 to 1977, nobody seemed able to take over the massive hole let by the departure of many. A few Rock albums conquered English-speaking countries like Fleetwood Mac's Rumours, Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell and Boston's eponymous debut, but they haven't break over most markets. During several years the only rock album which did wonders globally was the Eagles' Hotel California.

This absence of cross-over rock album was no coincidence. With emerging genres as diverse as disco, reggae and punk, tastes of the general public were always more complex. To satisfy everyone and to continue to grow Rock had to evolve and to incorporate these new elements.

The year 1978 can be regarded as the trigger of this new generation. Many bands debuted on that season, four of which were going to sell an immense amount of records during the next few years: Van Halen, Police, Toto and of course Dire Straits. These bands offered songs with more varied instrumentals than their predecessors while paving the way to the following generation, the Arena Rock years of U2, Bon Jovi and Guns N' Roses. Among rookies of 1978 no band was studied at Chartmasters so far. It is time to fix this anomaly!

Dire Straits Albums Sales

Dire Straits (1978)

Communiqué (1979)

Making Movies (1980)

Love over Gold (1982)

Brothers in Arms (1985)

On Every Street (1991)

Original Album Sales - Comments

1978 Dire Straits - 10,320,000
1979 Communiqué - 6,870,000
1980 Making Movies - 7,040,000
1982 Love over Gold - 7,510,000
1985 Brothers in Arms - 30,850,000
1991 On Every Street - 9,140,000

Studio albums of Dire Straits moved 71,7 million units collectively, a tremendous achievement with 6 LPs only. It is all the more impressive considering that the US resisted to most of these albums, just like Asian markets. I'm not even talking about the fact that the global market was facing tough years in mid-80s when the band was peaking.

How can they be so high with this context? Well, thanks to sensational success in all other areas like Europe, Brazil and Oceania. As an example, the band's 6 studio albums sold 200,000 units on average in Switzerland, as much as Madonna's True Blue, her career-peak in this market. Brothers In Arms alone outsold the legendary diva's albums Like A Virgin, True Blue and Like A Prayer combined, which shows how much the band dominated these years.

Their insane sales in some places along with their weak ones elsewhere conclude on truly weird spots. The band sold more albums in New-Zealand than in Japan. All their post-1988 releases combined, including compilations, sold more units in France than in the US.

This situation is the reason why I struggle a bit to point out their apparent consistency. While their weakest seller sold nearly 7 million units, a superb total, the consistency is kind of superficial. A better claim is that all their albums managed to make it big in at least one region.

Physical Singles Sales

Dire Straits never got a #1 single in the UK. Sultans of Swing, Money For Nothing, Walk of Life and Private Investigations were their only Top 10 hits. The story was similar in the US where their only Top 10 hits are the 3 former songs, with Money For Nothing hitting the top spot.

As we can see, like most rock bands, they weren't strong sellers in this format. The 3 songs which made the Top 10 on both sides of the Atlantic are the only ones which sold more than 1 million units globally. Their career total is modest at 8,38 million units.

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

Dire Straits (1978) - 474,000 equivalent albums

Water of Love - 20,000
Sultans of Swing - 1,490,000
Sultans of Swing (1988) - 60,000
Wild West End - 10,000

Communiqué (1979) - 108,000 equivalent albums

Lady Writer - 330,000
Once Upon A Time In The West - 30,000

Making Movies (1980) - 246,000 equivalent albums

Tunnel of Love - 260,000
Romeo and Juliet - 280,000
Skateaway - 280,000

Love over Gold (1982) - 237,000 equivalent albums

Private Investigations - 570,000
Industrial Disease - 110,000
Love Over Gold - 110,000

Brothers in Arms (1985) - 1,185,000 equivalent albums

So Far Away - 490,000
Money for Nothing - 1,850,000
Walk of Life - 1,300,000
Your Latest Trick - 60,000
Brothers in Arms - 220,000
Money for Nothing / Brothers in Arms - 30,000

On Every Street (1991) - 240,000 equivalent albums

Calling Elvis - 520,000
On Every Street - 70,000
The Bug - 50,000
You and Your Friend - 10,000
Heavy Fuel - 110,000
Ticket to Heaven - 40,000

Orphan - 24,000 equivalent albums

Twisting by the Pool - 80,000

Digital Singles Sales

I would lie if I say that these figures are impressive. In comparison to the remaining big 80s rock bands, digital sales of Dire Straits are fairly modest. Sultans of Swing and Money For Nothing remain popular with more than 2 million downloads a piece.  Then a group of 3 songs continues to appeal, it consists in Romeo and Juliet, Walk of Life and Brothers In Arms.

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

Dire Straits (1978) - 428,000 equivalent albums

Sultans of Swing - 2,470,000
Remaining tracks - 380,000

Communiqué (1979) - 54,000 equivalent albums

All tracks - 360,000

Making Movies (1980) - 230,000 equivalent albums

Tunnel of Love - 380,000
Romeo and Juliet - 920,000
Remaining tracks - 230,000

Love over Gold (1982) - 78,000 equivalent albums

Private Investigations - 270,000
Remaining tracks - 250,000

Brothers in Arms (1985) - 759,000 equivalent albums

So Far Away - 410,000
Money for Nothing - 2,070,000
Walk of Life - 1,030,000
Your Latest Trick - 360,000
Brothers in Arms - 920,000
Remaining tracks - 270,000

On Every Street (1991) - 74,000 equivalent albums

Calling Elvis - 70,000
On Every Street - 240,000
Remaining tracks - 180,000

Orphan - 12,000 equivalent albums

All tracks - 80,000

Streaming Sales

Streaming is made up of two families - audio and video. Our CSPC methodology now includes both to better reflect the real popularity of each track. The main source of data for each avenue is respectively Spotify and YouTube. As detailed in the Fixing Log article, Spotify represents 132 million of the 212 million users of streaming platforms, while YouTube is pretty much the only video platform generating some revenue for the industry. Below is the equivalence set on the aforementioned article:

Audio Stream - 1500 plays equal 1 album unit
Video Stream - 11,750 views equal 1 album unit

Equivalent Albums Sales (EAS) = 212/132 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750

Streaming Part 1

Sultans of Swing is one of these songs that have always been popular and which is made even bigger by the playlist systems of streaming platforms. An essential song on every cult rock tunes list, it rides on an impressive tally of 219 million streams on Spotify. It also gained 294 million views on YouTube. Equivalent album sales of the self-titled debut skyrocket thanks to this smash, they are on 316,000 units so far.

Communiqué is in the other side of the spectrum. Its lack of hits limit a lot its impact. Its album cuts aren't too bad at 2 million Spotify streams or more, but it isn't enough to make up from the terrible absence of relevant songs. It has 47,000 equivalent album sales in total.

At 105,000 units is Making Movies. Romeo and Juliet is its biggest strength thanks to its 55 million streams on Spotify. Tunnel of Love is a decent runner up at almost 20 million while the rest is decently consistent.

Streaming Part 2

Love Over Gold has only 5 tracks which isn't a good idea in our streaming era. Three of them maintain some kind of relevance but they aren't big either which sets the record on 51,000 equivalent album sales.

Unsurprisingly, Brothers In Arms is much, much higher. Its songs fall short of Sultans of Swing, but with 3 solid hits its days remain bright. All its album cuts are strong too, so are its YouTube views. This puts it on 423,000 equivalent album sales.

The reception of On Every Street was cold in many countries considering how massive its predecessor was. It is visible on its streams too as the general seems to believe that this era is mostly forgettable. Its biggest song, the title track, is below 12 million on both Spotify and YouTube.

Streaming Part 3

The discography of Dire Straits is really short. Their 6 studio albums include a mere 51 songs, but that is still almost everything they ever recorded. Their Orphan songs section is rather empty with only Twisting by the Pool making a tiny wave.

Lines in yellow refer to songs of Mark Knopfler which have been used into at least one product paired with Dire Straits material, most notably the 2005 compilation Private Investigations. They aren't added to Dire Straits' total but since we collected them for calculation purpose, we added this information to the table too.

Full Length related record 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. For older releases though, they also generate sales of various live, music videos and compilation albums.

All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the value originating from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued, this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains this method.

How to understand this table? If you check this example of Alchemy: Dire Straits Live, those figures mean it sold 5,290,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 411,874 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.

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 Dire Straits songs are responsible for 63% of the Alchemy: Dire Straits Live tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 3,332,000 of its 5,290,000 album sales. We will now apply this concept to all compilations, live albums, music videos and EPs.

Live albums & Compilations

Knopfler's band has always been a very solid album seller. It is confirmed with all their live albums and compilations. Alchemy sold well over 5 million units while Money For Nothing, Sultans of Swing and Private Investigations combine for nearly 20 million units. Since these products replaced each other upon release, this would have been roughly its release to date tally if only one of them had been issued.

In terms of sales distribution, we can notice that the strength of all their releases come mostly from Dire Straits and Brothers In Arms. It is no surprise as these two albums include almost all big hits of the band.

Music Videos, Box Sets, EPs

Full Length related records Sales – Summary

Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album’s success – the amount of compilation sales of all kinds it generated. Due to the dependency of sales of the original studio albums on these releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.

Both Dire Straits and Brothers In Arms are responsible for around 12 million sales of compilations, live albums and music videos. It shows why the former album hasn't been able to really pull ahead of their remaining albums in spite of 40 years of catalog sales while containing a hit as big as Sultans of Swing: because it was quickly cannibalized by other packages which contained it too.

BONUS: Compilation Albums Sales

Alchemy: Live (1984)

Money For Nothing (1988)

Sultans of Swing: The Very Best of (1998)

Private Investigations (2005)

BONUS: Total Album (all types) Sales per Country

• America

  • US - 21,625,000
  • Canada - 4,595,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - N/A
  • Mexico - N/A

• Asia -4,340,000

  • Japan - 1,050,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 4,100,000
  • New Zealand - 1,160,000

• Europe - 57,820,000

  • UK - 14,150,000
  • France - 9,005,000
  • Germany - 8,190,000
  • Italy - 5,160,000
  • Spain - 3,160,000
  • Sweden - 1,650,000
  • Netherlands - 2,950,000
  • Switzerland - 1,615,000
  • Austria - 770,000
  • Finland - 555,000

• World - 100,350,000

Please note that some of the countries totals may be slightly incomplete when the figure is N/A for minor releases. Countries with too much missing information to be precise enough are listed as N/A.

Dire Straits Career CSPC Results

So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each album by Dire Straits achieved? Well, at this point we hardly need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!

[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]

At 45,75 million equivalent album sales to date, Brothers In Arms confirms one more time its position among the all-time most successful rock albums. The number can be seen as someway disappointing still. The highest selling rock album during the 80s, we can notice that it is losing ground since Bon Jovi's Slippery When Wet, U2's Joshua Tree, Bruce Springsteen's Born In the U.S.A. and Guns N' Roses' Appetite For Destruction are now all ahead of it with total sales ranging from 46 million to 50 million. We shouldn't turn our nose up though, this 1985 classic is right there with all the all-time greatest records.

Dire Straits is a strong second with 23 million units generated in total. It is the biggest rock album from 1978. The remaining four albums have all similar results with sales between 7,5 million and 11,8 million equivalent album units.

In total, Dire Straits sold 108,5 million equivalent albums sales. This is an average of more than 18 million per era, almost 2 million per song ever recorded! No doubt the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame opened their doors to the group this year.

The following sections list their most successful songs as well as their records and achievements.

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

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Chartmasters.org.

BIGGEST TRACKS - Dire Straits

The list of most successful songs is compiled in album equivalent sales generated by each of them. It includes the song's own physical singles sales with a 0,3 weighting, its download and streaming sales, and with appropriate weighting too, plus its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.

1. 1978 - Dire Straits - Sultans of Swing [Dire Straits] - 20,880,000
2. 1985 - Dire Straits - Money for Nothing [Brothers in Arms] - 14,860,000
3. 1985 - Dire Straits - Walk of Life [Brothers in Arms] - 12,880,000
4. 1985 - Dire Straits - Brothers in Arms [Brothers in Arms] - 9,600,000
5. 1980 - Dire Straits - Romeo and Juliet [Making Movies] - 7,410,000
6. 1982 - Dire Straits - Private Investigations [Love over Gold] - 3,950,000
7. 1985 - Dire Straits - So Far Away [Brothers in Arms] - 3,300,000
8. 1982 - Dire Straits - Telegraph Road [Love over Gold] - 2,860,000
9. 1985 - Dire Straits - Your Latest Trick [Brothers in Arms] - 2,850,000
10. 1980 - Dire Straits - Tunnel of Love [Making Movies] - 2,740,000
11. 1979 - Dire Straits - Lady Writer [Communiqué] - 2,430,000
11. 1991 - Dire Straits - On Every Street [On Every Street] - 2,430,000
13. 1991 - Dire Straits - Calling Elvis [On Every Street] - 2,320,000
14. 1982 - Dire Straits - Love Over Gold [Love over Gold] - 1,830,000
15. 1979 - Dire Straits - Once Upon a Time in the West [Communiqué] - 1,580,000

Records & Achievements

• At 45,751,000 equivalent album sales, Brothers In Arms is the most successful album from 1985.
• At 20,880,000 equivalent album sales, Sultans of Swing is the most successful song from 1978.
• At 14,860,000 equivalent album sales, Money for Nothing is among the three most successful songs from 1985.
• Brothers In Arms belongs to the Top 10 best selling albums ever in several countries including the UK, Australia and New-Zealand.
• Brothers In Arms is the only studio album ever with 400,000 sales or more in each the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Netherlands, Sweden and Switzerland.
• At 34 weeks, Brothers In Arms holds the longest run ever among artist albums at #1 in Australia.
• Dire Straits is the only act ever with 3 studio albums which charted 200 weeks or more inside the UK Album Chart.
• At 218,923,000 streams, Sultans of Swing is the 7th most streamed song from the 70s on Spotify.

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