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Best selling hard rock albums :
1. Led Zeppelin - IV : 37m
2. AC/DC - Back In Black : 37m
3. Guns N' Roses - Appetite For Destruction : 31m
4. Bon Jovi - Slippery When Wet : 24m
5. Bon Jovi - Cross Road : 23m
6. Boston - Boston : 22m
7. Led Zeppelin - II : 22m
8. Def Leppard - Hysteria : 19m
9. Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion II : 19m
10. Guns N' Roses - Use Your Illusion I : 18m
11. Led Zeppelin - Houses Of The Holy : 18m
12. ZZ Top - Eliminator : 18m
13. Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin : 16m
14. Van Halen - Van Halen : 16m
15. Van Halen - 1984 : 15m
16. AC/DC - Highway To Hell : 15m
17. AC/DC - Live : 15m
18. Aerosmith - Greatest Hits : 15m
19. Guns N' Roses - Greatest Hits : 14m
20. Creed - Human Clay : 14m
Sure, also Bon Jovi's New Jersey (13.9m in 2016), but I have GNR's Greatest Hits at 14.4m and Creed's Human Clay at 14.2m 😉
In your opinion, what figure would Appetite for destruction reach today without the 14m greatest hits, and Nevermind without the 2002 greatest hits?
I'm guessing close to 34m for Appetite, the Nirvana GH had a much smaller impact I think so I'd add maybe just 1m.
The CSPC method gives AfD millions more because of the GH album. Are you saying that it's too inflated?
Well, if the idea is that 14m people would've bought a GNR album if the GH wasn't released, then it's highly simplistic, to say the least. What's the point of releasing a GH then ?
An extreme example is The Beatles' 1, it sold 20m in its first year (!), does that mean 20m people would've bought another Beatles album instead ? Of course not, there was an extra value to have all these songs on one CD.
As for AFD, it was selling maybe 700k a year before the GH, with no GH we can guess an average of 300k/year since then, so more than 5m. It probably sold less than 3m since then, meaning its sales were divided by two.
I did not understand, 700,000-300,000 = 400,000; 400,000 * 18 = 7,200,000 from 2004 to today not 3,000,000
I think you're right, but the whole point of CSPC method regarding compilations is that their sales are redistributed according to the streaming numbers of the included studio albums. Sometimes, that might be justified, but I think compilations have an own appeal as well.
700k a year in 2003, 300k/year since then with no GH = >5m, 3m< with the GH.
Oh I know about the CSPC method 😆 It's totally irrelevant to this discussion though, the question was "how much more AFD would've sold without the GH", and my guess is about 2.5m.
The CSPC album ranking is just like the "most streamed albums" list, it measures the popularity of songs, not albums.
Sorry, didn't mean to suggest you wouldn't know this website. I'm also checking if I understand correctly and I see albums being compared, partly because of sales from compilations redistributed to them. It flows from the popularity of songs, but impacts the albums a lot. Bu I understand the difference with the question raised, thanks!
I'd say 28.5m for SWW and 16m for New Jersey. Note that Cross Road must've sold like 12m in its first year, thanks to the massive hit Always (#1 in Europe).
A massive hit indeed back then! But it only got 2,3 million EAS through Crossroads
Yeah, an opposite case would be Eminem's Till I Collapse, it wasn't even released as a single but now it's credited for a third of The Eminem Show's sales (23m) because of its high streaming numbers... It's not a perfect system !
Indeed! A system that favores well streaming hits (largely supported by playlists, more or less like airplay, but better measurable) and is less favorable for short-term hits (especially in large discographies).
Hi Analord!
An additional comment to your example of 1, The Beatles were selling 6-8 million albums a year at that point, and for the release of the best of, EMI stopped shipping them months ahead and took months to resend them later on. They froze their sales for 6-12 months to let room for '1', which effectively replaced many million sales, even before we start speaking about lower catalog sales later on.
Of course, the group already had best of albums. Red/Blue, Past Masters 1/2 and GH shipped a combined 1.42 million copies in the UK alone the 7 years before 1. In the 7 years after its release, they shipped only 266k, with nearly half of them being shipped in 2007, when they switched the focus back. This is despite a market increase of 17.6% from the period 93-99 to 01-07.
Although their sales were already downgraded by existing compilations, studio albums dropped as well. Abbey Road went from 401k to 161k. Please Please Me from
173k to 51k.
In fact, once we combine all their pre-1993 catalog, it shipped 4.85 million units from 1993 to 1999 in the UK. From 2001 to 2007, while the market increased by 17.6%, the same catalog sold 1.544 million, a drop of 3.306 million units. In these years, they released 1, Love, and the naked version of Let It Be, which combined for 3.83 million.
I do not own comprehensive 1992 data, to add both years 1992 and 2008 to the comparison, but considering their 92,000 sales in 2008, against a yearly average of 693,000 in 1993-1999, we can safely come to the conclusion that, as big as the apparent sales looked like, units moved by 1 and Love were indeed nothing else than replacement units of their existing catalog.
It's no coincidence either that once 1/Love had 'eaten' as many catalog units as they had sold by themselves, the Remasters came in, reactivating the game for one more round.
While it's clear that on surface, compilations add sales to an artist, depending on how the catalog is managed in the long run, this is far from being obvious. EMI are very good at reactivating / redispatching sales so that every generation of people get both compilations and studio albums at some point, but for most artists, a compilation has a negative value at the end of the day.
Why do they come out then? Partially because it's easier for labels to print and ship 1 compilation rather than 6-8 studio albums. Partially because in physical records' era if there was 'dead meat' in a catalog, with studio albums that are never bought by retailers, a compilation was a way to restore the life of some mid-range hits. Partially because there are a lot of majors' employees who are very happy to get their annual bonuses by achieving their targeted sales thanks to a Christmas cash-in.
The last reason is far and away the main one. While as fans we look at sales of artists as something we need to optimize, for labels and their employees who handle a catalog before moving to another job in a pair of years, making money right now while you are responsible of it has always been way more important than carefully handling the legacy of a singer.
So by the end of the games Metallica was the smartest. With a very successful GH of their first 5 albums they could go from 134 million albums sold to less than 100 million...
"In fact, once we combine all their pre-1993 catalog, it shipped 4.85 million units from 1993 to 1999 in the UK. From 2001 to 2007, while the market increased by 17.6%, the same catalog sold 1.544 million, a drop of 3.306 million units. In these years, they released 1, Love, and the naked version of Let It Be, which combined for 3.83 million."
3.83m+1.544m=5.374>4.85m
I don't understand where the loss is for the artist ...
Hi Jsak!
The numbers shown compare the period 93-99 with 01-07. 'One' was the focused product until September 2009 when the remasters arrived. As I said, we haven't got full 1992 sales, but using the 1993-1999 average to compare with 2008, they 'lost' an additional 601k that year (693k vs 92k), and then again some in early 2009, although that was in part on purpose to make room for the remasters.
So it's really 3.83+1.544+.092=5.466<5.543m (=4.85+0.693)
Then, the market was 17.6% higher in the later period. With the same ongoing popularity, they should have sold over 6.5 million to replicate their pre-One sales, rather than 5.466 million.
A bit like Martin, I don't like "ifs" very much, but what's safe to say is that we can't say nor believe that One added 3.3m+ sales in the UK (or 30m+ globally) to their sales. It brought in way less sales, in fact we can't even feel confident about the balance being positive.
In your opinion, how much could Metallica lose from 134 million albums sold with a "1" post black album?
Top 10 most streamed songs from 1 (EAS) :
Let It Be [Let It Be] – 569,000
Hey Jude [Orphan] – 555,000
Come Together [Abbey Road] – 520,000
Yesterday [Help!] – 448,000
I Want to Hold Your Hand [Orphan] – 326,000
Help! [Help!] – 253,000
Eleanor Rigby [Revolver] – 231,000
Something [Abbey Road] – 230,000
Love Me Do [Please Please Me] – 172,000
A Hard Day’s Night [A Hard Day’s Night] – 168,000
Nothing from Sgt Peppers, the White Album or Rubber Soul (3 of the 4 best selling Beatles albums) but two songs from Help (their 8th best selling album), and you're saying the 34m people who bought 1 would've bought other Beatles albums ? Which ones exactly ?
It seems obvious to me that 1 was mostly targeted towards "casual" music fans, i.e. people who would've never bought a Beatles studio album, it's just not that kind of audience. You mentioned the sales drop of Abbey Road after 1, what about Sgt Peppers or the White Album ?
"what's safe to say is that we can't say nor believe that One added 3.3m+ sales in the UK (or 30m+ globally) to their sales."
Just to be clear, no one said that.
