I agree that CITW should be added to Elton's sales.
I can certainly see the charity aspect, but it is:
1. A Taupin/John penned song
2. Performed by no one else but Elton John
3. Released as a single by Elton John
4. Performed live at Diana's funeral in front of a billion people by Elton John

But in my mind, I also add groups and solo artists for totals like MJ and Jacksons/J5 together, so no biggie

Hi again Nathan!

I agree with everything you said - just a small comment on Miles Davis, I'm sure his CSPC total would be at the very least 40 million, if not more! 😉

Hi Nathan!

There is no doubt that CITW is Elton's song at 100%. While slightly different, the 1997 release can be compared to U2's album Songs of Innocence when it was given away on iTunes. Obviously, the difference is that people buying Elton's single took the decision of doing it, but it was felt almost as a mandatory move due to the emotion / good deed they were doing. It is really comparable in that that people hasn't felt as giving money to the artist, but the artist still won plenty of it. U2 were paid very well by iTunes, which indeed bought those copies, while Elton's was paid on the second song, while the public wanted to give money to the Foundation. That's why from a music industry perspective, I see it as a freebie / non-event since the public wasn't aiming to give them money at all.

Of course, legends aren’t based soley on numbers of albums. Syd Barrett is a LEGEND, although he only participated in the two of Pink Floyd studio albums.

Wow, awesome article. I really thought Elton would finish higher, but still an amazing figure. One thing I was wondering about is why a box set, like "to be continued" is only counted as one unit in the CSPC. I remember buying that box set when it came out, because next to Led Zeppelin it was one of the most comprehensive box sets ever released, and as I recall it was in the neighborhood of $60.00, the equivalent of about 5 or 6 regular album sales at the time. On the other hand Queen's Platinum Collection was counted 3 times in the CSPC, and on Amazon it is currently selling for about $17.00. Shouldn't the box set by Queen be either counted as fewer units or the box set by Elton be counted as more units?

Hi Lance!

Interesting question there! Though MJD might explain it further, I believe the main reason for this is because of the nature of the 2 sets. Both are classified as box sets by Wikipedia, but here, Queen's Platinum Collection is definitely a box set, while To Be Continued is classified as a compilation set.

I believe the reason here is because the 3 discs on The Platinum Collection have the same track list as their 3 Greatest Hits Album (I,II and III). Thus, when this box set was released, it cannibalized the catalog sales of all those 3 albums. Thus, sales of that box set was assigned to those 3 compilations each. If counted only once, catalog sales of the 2 other compilations were neglected as that set also ate into the catalog sales of all 3 sets. When one purchased TPC, they would not need to buy their 3 Greatest Hits albums.

As for To Be Continued, it is more of a simple compilation album than a box set as it only cannibalizes the catalog sales of its parent studio albums. Using Spotify streams of each song on TBC, sales are assigned to each studio album, as when one purchased TBC, they would not need to purchase the sales of the studio albums involved. Since the track list of each disc on TBC are not identical to any complete compilation or studio album of John's, it can't be counted more than once. Had TBC had each disc consisting of track lists identical to Greatest Hits (Vol I, II and III) of Elton's, then perhaps it would receive the same treatment as TPC. As MJD pointed out, Elton is under the 200m mainly due to how his catalog was exploited. This is one example of how his catalog wasn't benefited with sales units.

Apparently, MJD also referred to this situation as well!

MJD: Elton really suffers from an exploitation of his catalog that doesn’t benefit sales units. First, he never had a major selling box set. The only one close to that, To Be Continued…, was a ‘new’ package rather than already existing sets put together.

I hope this answers your question!

I see the logic in it, and I also understand that this site measures popularity and not necessarily the monetary value of sales created the way Billboard tries to, which I think is good because a double album that sells 7 million albums isn't more popular then a single album that sells 13 million albums. However, I'd argue the 350,000 copies of "to be continued" cannibalized several times that number in studio albums and compilations because it was such a comprehensive set, just as Queen Platnum and the individual Greatest hits albums that made it up cannibalized it's back catalog, as I bought both sets for the same reason, to avoid buying a bunch of studio albums. But I suppose that would be impossible to determine, and many of the people who bought "to be continued" probably, at best, would have bought one or two of his greatest hits albums had the box set not existed.

I do think that Queen's Platinum Box set cannibalized Greatest hits Volume I and II more then it did Volume III, and Volume III got taken along for the ride, to some extent, because of the value of buying all three together.

But either way, this is a great site because you have figured out a fair way to make those determinations, and you are consistent about it. Thanks for the work you are doing here. It really is interesting and well done.

Hi Lance!

All your comments are fully valid. It has been a point of concern for me for quite some time. I'm blocked between my convictions, which led me to beieve for example that To Be Continued must be weigthed stronger than a random compilation, and the rules which need to be set and the same ones for all artists.

If you check Renaud's CSPC article, I tried exactly what you said on it. This French rock legend released several multi-disc compilations. They aren't expensive, close of Queen's PC, but shut down a lot his catalog since they include 2 or even 3 discs.

A rule I'm thinking of right now could be weighting compilations as per their number of songs. I definitely don't like weighting by the number of discs 'in direct'. As you said, a double album selling 7m isn't bigger than a stand alone CD selling 13m. I also don't think that a cheap 3CD compilation should count as 3 proper studio albums especially since a handful of songs will provide most of the appeal (your comment on Queen's GHIII is correct), so we can't really go by discs only. The number of songs could be a solution through - after all, a 15 songs compilation will have singles from 5-7 albums, a 40 songs compilation will cover at least a dozen of studio albums, cannibalizing all of them.

So the solution I'm thinking of is for compilations (technically To Be Continued is concerned since it isn't a box of already existing products) cutting them after 30 songs which looks like a good threshold as it is the maximum number of songs you can put on one disc (Beatles' or Elvis' comps), but at the same time it avoids counting twice a 2-CD compilations which has only 12/13 songs per disc. To avoid inflating too much budget compilations with various discs, an extra weight of 0,5 per 20 songs can make sense.

To summarize:
- proper boxes (merges of existing discs), they are still assigned in full to each individual CD*
- compilations under 30 songs, they are worth 1 unit
- compilations with 31 to 50 songs, they are worth 1,5 units
- compilations with 51 to 70 songs, they are worth 2 units
- etc.

* I still need to see how to handle Garth Brooks with his 10-CDs $25 boxes

It sounds like a good way to be fair with artists like Elton who sold a lot of 2CD compilations while avoiding to inflate extremely heavy packages sold at a budget price. It also take into account that while a 50 songs set cannibalizes a lot of albums, all songs do not have the same worth, there is always 5-15 tracks convincing the buyer, so he doesn't necessarily want all extra discs, thus "deep" songs (after the first 30) count for less. What do you think about it?

I think that would be fair weight to the extra value of the good box sets. Certainally the people who bought"to be continued" wouldn't have ran out and bought all the studio albums that made it up. They would have probably bought volume I, II and maybe III of his greatest hits, but the box set had some nice extras in it. So I think if that was given a weight of 2 albums that would be a logical offset. On the other hand, I think if the best of Led Zeppelin would have come out prior to the Led Zeppelin box set, the box set would have sold more in the range of "to be continued". The Led Zeppelin box set benefited substantially from being, as I recall, the first career spanning compilation from them as well as being the first proper remaster of the recordings. However over 50 % of it's value came from two albums, according to your statistics. It was brilliant marketing on the part of Atlantic, but I think it was just an expensive compilation in a market that was starved for one and unlike Elton, they didn't have a greatest hits 1, 2 and 3 to compete against. But perhaps giving that the weight of 2 compilation albums would be fair also.

What about "Don't go breaking my heart"? It doesn't appear on the list although it may have been his biggest hit single during the 70s.

Hi MSchr!

Which list do you refer to? For sure Don't Go Breaking My Heart is part of the article 🙂

Hallo,
perhaps I'm too blind to find it. I'm not refering to the 1993 version from the Duets album. The original version from 1976 is not on the list with the physical singles. If I overlooked it please tell me.

It *is* on the physical singles list, but it's missing from the digital singles list.

On which page exactly? I'm sorry, but I'm still confused because it's not listed under "Rock of the Westies".

hello what are the total AES for George Michael and Elton John’s version of Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Me??

hi, coming back to this article im curious as total of dont let the sun go down on me. what are the separate sales for the original and the george michael duet?

Biggest Tracks

16. 1983 – I Guess That’s Why They Call It the Blues [Too Low for Zero] – 4,180,000
17. 1995 – Can You Feel the Love Tonight [Orphan] – 3,470,000
18. 1975 – Philadelphia Freedom [Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy] – 3,280,000

The Lion King soundtrack sold 18m though... I understand that you wouldn't want to credit him for the entire soundtrack, but I feel like he should be credited to some extent, especially if the Tarzan soundtrack is credited entirely to Phil Collins.

Hi Analord!

While the soundtrack isn't credited to him, I 100% agree that CYFTLT should get its relative share from the OST sales in this ranking. It was laziness from me as back then I didn't had the OST estimated.

I can’t believe that in Wikipedia it is mentioned that Goodbye Yellow Brick Road sold 30 million copies.

Wikipedia, as we know it, is built by anonymous contributors. Some are reliables, others aren't. And often, artists pages are fanmade... The 30 million copies for GYBR are as fake and ridiculously inflated as the 1 billion sales claims for the Beatles and Elvis. Or the 750 million sales for MJ, 110 million for Thriller, 300 million for Nana Mouskouri, 45 million for Meat Loaf's Bat Out of Hell, etc.

Sales of this album on Wikipedia are supported by a number of sites that give the same sales estimate. I believe the reason so many sites put up sales so high is because the album is double, so it counts twice. It would be nice to find a site that gives this information so it can be placed there, but at this point it gets difficult. After the 30 million appeared on Wikipedia, various sites copied the information and spread it around. What a pity. At least, thanks to Chartmasters we have sales information, no inflation.

Yes, this is the sad part about a lot of media outlets. Many are too lazy to look into anything themselves and simply copy what other newspapers have written already, often word for word haha. That's how these claims spread

Elton has surpassed 10M in streaming EAS. Of the current top 50 best selling artists, he is the 14th best in streaming.

A lot of these artists are from the streaming era though (Drake, BTS...etc) so I wouldn't compare their streams with Elton's.

Top 10 pre-2000s acts :

Queen - 21.6m
The Beatles - 16m
Michael Jackson - 14.4m
Metallica - 11.9m
AC/DC - 10.2m
Elton John - 10m
Bob Marley - 9.1m
Guns N' Roses - 8.8m
Nirvana - 8.6m
Pink Floyd - 8.3m

Not including Mariah Carey (8.8m) and 2Pac (8.4m) because they had a lot of success with their 21st century music.