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There are several other albums listed as LIVE that are not live albums:
The US Male and Double Dynamite al contain studio masters recorded throughout the 1960's, these are Camden/Pickwick compilation releases.
A Legendary Performer Vol 3 contains studio masters, outtakes, interviews and 1 live track. It is a compilation.
The Great Performances contains Studio Masters, live TV performances and a couple of Live concert tracks but it is not a LIVE Concert recording it is a compilation.
Viva Elvis contains remixed and re-recorded studo masters for use in a Vegas cirque de soliel show, kt is not a LIVE concert, it cold be considered a soundtrack.
On Tour (Amiga) is a bootleg recording. where would the total sold numbers come from?
Special Collectors Edition 2002 - what is this? Elvis doesn't have an album using this title only.
Elvis at Stax is not a LIVE album. it is a 3 disc box set of Elvis's Stax recordings in 1973, there is also a single disc of highlights released. these are compilations.
Hi Anthony!
This is the SCE 2002 album listed.
About AMIGA's album you are correct. It appears 'real' AMIGA albums and counterfeit ones have now been mainly distinguished on discogs, we will exclude some of these once we update. Of course technically all AMIGA releases can be seen as unofficial, but for the real label at least we do add them. On Elvis due to the magnitude of releases we have also been kind lag on accounting for some loopholes, adding them to totals while they are usually excluded for most artists. It is of course debatable.
Thanks for all the insights about the recordings (live/non live etc), they add to the list of constructive comments we will take into account once we update the article!
when i went to usa last december i realized that the artist who had the most vinyls on stock (OBVIOUSLY excluding adele) was elvis, and i started think abt elvis' biopic. if it does well what can we expect from it? how much can elvis sales increase if it does well?
The film is going to be huge. After less than a week, the trailer has around 20m views (combined from Warner official accounts) on Youtube. The reaction has been overwhelmingly positive. I've read some (alleged) comments from tests screenings that say it's a home run and the studio is very happy with it. If true, they're going to spend a lot in marketing. Also, Luhrmann has good reputation as a director and his films tend to do well at the box office. It could be a perfect storm.
At the end of the day, Elvis is still the 3rd best selling artist ever. I think people took him for granted for the past decades but it seems nobody really forgot about him.
Maybe I'm too optimistic but I'm hoping for something on the level of what happened to Queen in 2018. At least it has to be bigger than the '02 revival.
I wonder if it's going to be enough to push him past MJ.
You are indeed too optimistic, Queen were already hugely popular before the movie while Elvis is more in the league of a David Bowie for example.
And he's already past MJ as far as I'm concerned, after all he sold more albums and more singles (not to mention his countless hit movies).
Elvis & Michael are pretty much tied, according to this site. They're both around 425 - 430 million records (Albums, Singles, Boxsets & Videos) sold globally. I think MJ edges him out tho, considering his digital single sales haven't been factored in since 2018. Also, MJ sold the same amount as Elvis, according to this site, despite releasing FAR less material. That's probably why MJ is considered the most successful, even over The Beatles. I think the movie will help boost Elvis's vinyl & streaming sales.
"Records" doesn't mean anything, combining albums and digital singles is ridiculous, don't you think ?
And I'm pretty sure most people consider The Beatles to be more successful than MJ.
MJ sold more total equavilent units than Elvis, which is what matters in the end.
It would be nice if it were a massive hit but I'd be suprised if it did as well as Bohemian Rhapsody.
I don't really have a 'dog' in this one so to speak. I appreciate Elvis and MJ but wouldn't call myself a superfan of either.
Just a thought. According to the ASR scale Elvis is around 70% as successful as MJ (696 VS 1000 as the baseline). Does this mean that because Thriller, Bad and Dangerous account for 69.3% of MJ's total EAS (ie 693 on the ASR scale) then just these three albums gave MJ the same level of success as Elvis?
Would another way of reading this be to say that these three releases made MJ 'as big/popular' as Elvis? It would also mean the these albums alone made MJ 'bigger' than The Eagles, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin , The Stones, ABBA and Madonna for example. Astounding if true!?!
I'm not a statistician and I know that this is a very basic/general way of interpreting it so I'm entirely willing to be corrected! Perhaps MJD and the team can enlighten me!
Thanks!
Elvis sold more albums and more singles than MJ, which is what matters in the end (to me).
MJ's total includes about 30m of "music videos" (such as documentaries like This Is It or The Making Of Thriller) which I personally wouldn't include.
Just for the record, Elvis' remaining sales (outside of the physical singles and studio albums categories) also include nearly 10 million music videos, as well as 16 million EPs valued as 8 million albums, plus nearly a million of interviews/tapes and loopholes, so I'm not sure that according to your way of seeing it Elvis did sell more albums than Jackson.
I'm just quoting the "Raw sales - All albums" list from this very website :
1. The Beatles – 333,145,000 (as of Mar 2017)
2. Elvis Presley – 244,475,000 (as of Sep 2018)
3. Michael Jackson – 235,440,000 (as of Sep 2017)
+ 16 million EPs for Elvis, indeed.
I just realized that HIStory is counted twice in MJ's total (18.6m in "Studio Album Sales" + 18.6m in "Other LPs Sales") which is like saying it's the 5th best selling album of all-time, above Zeppelin IV and Back In Black... That doesn't make any sense to me.
It's a double disc. One is a Grestest Hits and the other one with new songs. What does not make sense?
Actually MJ didn't invent double albums, there were others before like Pink Floyd's The Wall for example. Do you think all of these albums should be counted twice ?
I really think this double counting of HIStory deserves an explanation, and by the way Clockingbell asked the same question in the MJ thread two months ago, with no answer...
Hi Analord!
No need to use that suspicious and kinda childish tone, it's not like I manage to be up to date in answering comments, just now I only see these ones because I heard about another starting fan clash.
The Wall and HIStory are completely different subjects. One is a studio album, which happens to be double due to lenght, the other is a pack of two records, a compilation of already released songs, and a studio album with unreleased material. As you know, the difference between a studio set and a compilation is key inside the CSPC process. Sales of already existing material are distributed into original albums, because they cannibalize their sales. Had that 18m (or whatever) selling CD not come out, there would have been a spot for a compilation in these years, or latter comps would have sold more, it's the whole CSPC concept.
It's a rare occurence when artists mix old and new material to this extent, but there are still many examples of this kind of packages for other artists. A prime example coming instantly to my mind, Garth Brooks did it like 4-5 times, with double CDs or much larger boxes combining old material plus a new CD. These were treated same as HIStory. Can't remember their title, but Elvis Presley himself has this kind of packages, although much lower sellers.
I didn't mean to sound "suspicious", but surely you understand that not answering to a two months old post and then a two weeks old similar post might be a little frustrating...
As for your explanation, sorry but it still doesn't make sense to me. HIStory sold 19m copies, not 38m. Yes, it consists of old and new songs, so what ? Just because an album contains old and new songs we should multiply its sales by two ? I hope I'm not the only person thinking this is illogical.
And I'm surprised you agree with the RIAA inflating Garth Brooks' sales with these cheap box-sets... I certainly don't.
Hi Analord!
I would say that out of the 4 possible solutions, yours is definitely the most illogical of all. The whole thing is how you define "an album", it's not like every purchase is on par, if that was the case we would mix singles and EPs and albums, we certainly don't do that. Let get into the cases.
1) we consider that 19m persons bought a compilation with tracks from Thriller, Bad, etc., so we put HIStory among compilations, acting as if no new songs were into it. Illogical falls short.
2) we consider that 19m persons bought a fresh new album, putting the only only among studio sets. There, we consider these 19m persons bought no song whatsoever from Thriller, Bad, etc, paid nothing to get them, and their future purchases won't be impacted at all from this compilation. Makes no sense either, goes against the whole CSPC logic.
3) we consider that 9.5m persons bought a compilation, and 9.5m bought a studio album. To me that's the most absurd way to behave as it's like doing 2 errors to avoid doing one, and it has zero real value.
4) we consider that 19m persons bought a compilation and also a studio album, which actually happen to be nothing but the truth.
By the way, you speak about the 'cheap' box sets from Garth Brooks, discrediting them, as if one only needs to price his box at $30 to sell 2m copies of a box made of albums which already sold 10m on average. It's terribly inconsistent from you. Why would you want to deflate these releases because of their price, while your last arguments were this one about HIStory for which you want to ignore half of it simply because they were packaged together, in spite of the fact this release was double priced, and that Elvis outsold Jackson in album units and that was the be-all of sales, the only thing which matters, ignoring the fact that this is true only thanks to the monstruous amount of budget discs he sold, and that he wouldn't even be close without them. You can't consider the price as a key element when it's convenient to you and ignore it the rest of the time.
You were also not concerned with the Beatles' Mono / Stereo boxes being allocated to each album, same with Queen's Platinum Collection, Elvis' similar box sets but also his releases like From Memphis to Vegas / From Vegas to Memphis, which happens to be exactly the same thing as HIStory (one old, one new disc, packaged together at first and available afterwards as stand-alone releases), which have all been treated the same way as HIStory, simply because that's the only logical thing to do once we understand the cannibalization factor.
"4) we consider that 19m persons bought a compilation and also a studio album, which actually happen to be nothing but the truth."
Of course, people bought HIStory because they wanted the new songs and the old songs. You seem to think that 19m persons would've bought it even if it didn't include the old songs ? This is pure speculation, we should assume that people bought an album because of, you know, the content of the album, instead of pretending that MJ released two albums in 1995 that both sold 19m copies...
I mentioned Garth Brooks because I just realized that you're applying the same rule as the RIAA's when it comes to box-sets, i.e. a 2m-selling 10CD box = 20m albums. I disagree with that but it's not that big a deal, you mentioned the Beatles' box-sets but the Beatles are #1 anyway.
Not sure what you mean about Elvis' From Memphis/From Vegas, it was a new live album + a new studio album, but who cares, it sold like 1m copies or something... Also I'm sure you're aware that albums used to be way more expensive before the 80s, so "Elvis sold more because of budget albums", I don't think so.
Buddy, CSPC is just about how popular each album is. The compilations are split between studio albums, each gaining sales equivalent to its popularity. It's totally understandable that the 19M of History is split among the studio albums due to the CD with GH, as people bought the songs from the old albums. Not to mention the very high price that HIStory was sold at the time for being double CD. It sold 19M but could have been a lot more had it been marketed at a standard price. Anyway, I think you are arguing a point that goes completely against the CSPC' ideia.
