The band Linkin Park were a huge part of the musical landscape during the 00s. In recent years, the hype slowed down but their newly issued album One More Light proved there is still a fan base for them around the world.

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UPDATE: This post will remain featured for a week in tribute to the band's lead singer, Chester Bennington, who passed away today, July 20, 2017. May he rest in peace.

Please note all figures have been updated as of June 3, 2017.

Music acts in the middle of the road are often the most difficult to evaluate success-wise. For veterans, the situation has been is clear for a long time as decades of catalog sales settled their position among their peers. For new artists, you only need to turn on the radio to know who's hot. However, artists with careers that started 10 to 20 years ago don't belong to any of these categories.

So, where do Linkin Park stand in the all-time list of most successful bands? Are they on the scale of the Gorillaz?, (who's sales stand around 20 million equivalent album sales) or on the level of Guns N' Roses? ( with sales well past 100 million?) Or do they stand somewhere between these pair?

Original Albums Sales

NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are also factored in.

Hybrid Theory (2000)

Meteora (2003)

Minutes to Midnight (2007)

A Thousand Suns (2010)

Living Things (2012)

The Hunting Party (2014)

One More Light (2017)

• World - 400,000

NB: Estimation of its to date shipment. As it just came out, the gap between sales and shipment is still relevant, but it will be fulfilled in a matter of weeks

Original Album Sales - Comments

With their three 00s albums moving a combined 42 million units, there is no doubt that Linkin Park was one of the biggest acts of the decade. Although sales decreased album after album, those LPs, Minutes To Midnight included, were among the very best selling albums of their respective years. In fact, with Hybrid Theory at #1 of 2001, Meteora at #3 of 2003 and Minutes To Midnight at #6 of 2007 they all easily made the Global Top 10 of the year as published by the IFPI.

Times got harder from the 10s, however. The band's last three albums sold a combined 6,05 million, nearly 7 times less than their predecessors. If the market notably decreased in the meantime, that doesn't fully explain such a difference. Worst, their sales never rebounded with their new album One More Light not looking to reverse the trend. With the exception of Living Things, all their albums sold 65% or less of its immediate predecessor. A Thousand Suns was the most abrupt fall, selling barely 35% of Minutes To Minutes. However, The Hunting Party selling 1,1 million copies in 2014 is not that bad. So, while the band's profile undoubtedly decreased they remain a relevant act.

Obviously, pure album sales aren't the be-all and end-all of popularity indicators. With downloads entering into the game in the mid-00s, and streaming exploding one decade later, their most recent albums may not be as weak as they seem. Let's check those additional parameters on the following sections!

2000 Hybrid Theory - 20,800,000
2003 Meteora - 13,300,000
2007 Minutes to Midnight - 7,800,000
2010 A Thousand Suns - 2,700,000
2012 Living Things - 2,250,000
2014 The Hunting Party - 1,100,000
2017 One More Light - 400,000

Physical Singles Sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 3 to 1 ratio between one album and one physical single.

As with every other rock band, Linkin Park hardly relied on physical singles sales. This became even truer with this format quickly collapsing after the group's debut. All in all, the band sold over 3 million physical singles.

Hybrid Theory (2000) - 417,000 equivalent albums

One Step Closer - 180,000
Crawling - 310,000
Papercut - 120,000
In The End - 650,000
Points Of Authority - 130,000

Meteora (2003) - 276,000 equivalent albums

Somewhere I Belong - 330,000
Faint - 120,000
Numb - 230,000
From The Inside - 100,000
Breaking The Habit - 140,000

Minutes To Midnight (2007) - 72,000 equivalent albums

What I've Done - 100,000
Bleed It Out - 50,000
Shadow Of The Day - 70,000
Remaining Singles - 20,000

Orphan Album - 198,000 equivalent albums

Numb / Encore - 660,000

Digital Singles Sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between albums and digital singles.

Part 1

Although Linkin Park never truly had a big digital hit, the catalog appeal of their early tracks, plus Minutes To Midnight's singles, generated a healthy tally of 44 million digital singles sold.

What I've Done, which is the only track that had both advantages - favorable market context upon release and strong catalog appeal - ends up as their best selling hit at 6,8 million, followed by various cult tracks including In The End, Numb and Numb / Encore remix, which will come in the Orphan category.

Hybrid Theory (2000) - 2,190,000 equivalent albums

One Step Closer - 1,550,000
Crawling - 1,550,000
Papercut - 1,650,000
In The End - 5,750,000
Points Of Authority - 800,000
Remaining Tracks - 3,300,000

Meteora (2003) - 1,823,000 equivalent albums

Somewhere I Belong - 1,250,000
Faint - 1,750,000
Numb - 4,600,000
From The Inside - 700,000
Breaking The Habit - 1,450,000
Remaining Tracks - 2,400,000

Minutes To Midnight (2007) - 2,655,000 equivalent albums

What I've Done - 6,800,000
Bleed It Out - 3,200,000
Shadow Of The Day - 3,150,000
Given Up - 900,000
Leave Out All The Rest - 1,650,000
Remaining Tracks - 2,000,000

Part 2

Recent years have obviously been more difficult for the band with no era generating more than 7,5 million download singles sales. Burn It Down was a great success though, at nearly 3 million units sold.

Among Orphan songs, the Jay-Z-paired classic Numb / Encore does wonders in catalog sales, now up to over 5 million.

A Thousand Suns (2010) - 885,000 equivalent albums

The Catalyst - 1,400,000
Waiting For The End - 1,700,000
Burning In The Skies - 500,000
Iridescent - 700,000
Remaining Tracks - 1,600,000

Living Things (2012) - 1,125,000 equivalent albums

Burn It Down - 2,900,000
Lost In The Echo - 1,050,000
Powerless - 400,000
Castle Of Glass - 1,550,000
Remaining Tracks - 1,600,000

The Hunting Party (2014) - 375,000 equivalent albums

Guilty All The Same - 400,000
Until It's Gone - 400,000
Wastelands - 200,000
Rebellion - 200,000
Final Masquerade - 400,000
Remaining Tracks - 900,000

One More Light (2017) - 68,000 equivalent albums

Heavy - 400,000
Remaining Tracks - 50,000

Orphan Album - 1,935,000 equivalent albums

Numb / Encore - 5,200,000
New Divide - 5,350,000
A Light That Never Comes - 950,000
We Made It - 400,000
Remaining Tracks - 1,000,000

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

Thus... Equivalent Albums Sales = 212/132 * Spotify streams / 1500 + YouTube views / 11750

Streaming Part 1

In a Coldplay-like way, both Hybrid Theory and Meteora have magnificent streams. Each of them contain one blockbuster smash at more than 200 million Spotify streams, In The End and Numb. Please notice this latter song doesn't include the Numb / Encore mash-up, which makes this tally simply unbelieveable.

All album tracks from both albums are impressively strong too, creating equivalent album sales of 780,000 and 693,000 units respectively.

Streaming Part 2

The norm is that catalog sales increase differences between the original success or not of albums. Successful albums only get bigger thanks to this, while lower sellers sell even less proportionally when they turn catalog. This is pretty normal given lower sellers often have a lot of fan-base generated sales, while the true big breakthroughs had sizable hits on radio which will last far longer.

Minutes To Midnight completely reverses this trend. In pure album sales it moved barely 37,5% of Hybrid Theory's sales units, however in streams it achieves nearly 60% of its results. This notable showing brings 464,000 equivalent album sales. A Thousand Suns has no song over 26 million, nevertheless solid streams from all tracks conclude on 189,000 equivalent album sales.

Streaming Part 3

Living Things proves again its nice results in comparison to its immediate predecessor. Both Burn It Down and Castle Of Glass maintain a great popularity with nearly 200 million Spotify streams combined. In total, streams from this LP's songs represent 435,000 equivalent album sales.

Both The Hunting Party and One More Light lack hits - at least so far for the latter one - but continue getting relevant streams with all their songs. They are up to 161,000 and 101,000 equivalent album sales respectively.

Streaming Part 4

The highlight of this list is obviously Numb / Encore. If we add it to the original song Numb, the 380 million total on Spotify would make it the biggest catalog hit of the platform ahead of Lose Yourself by Eminem.

New Divide was big upon release, as shown by its YouTube views which stand at over 400 million. With that said, it isn't holding as well on Spotify. Although its 67 million streams remains a notable figure.

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.

Remaining Long Format

How to understand this table? If you check for example the Live In Texas CD+DVD line, those figures mean it sold 3,400,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 1,137,000 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.

The second part on the right of the table shows how many equivalent streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents on the overall package. Thus, streaming figures tell us songs from Hybrid Theory are responsible for 56% of Live In Texas track list attractiveness, which means it generated 1,887,000 of its 3,400,000 album sales and so on for the other records.

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.

Hybrid Theory perfectly illustrates those mechanics. It was a tremendous success on its own, but it also created millions of additional sales through live and remix albums exploiting its songs, building a massive value of 6,8 million sales.

BONUS - Compilation Albums Sales

NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are also factored in.

Reanimation (2002)

Live In Texas (2003)

• America

  • US - 1,200,000
  • Canada - 140,000
  • Argentina - N/A
  • Brazil - 215,000
  • Mexico - 25,000

• Asia - 345,000

  • Japan - 130,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 65,000
  • New Zealand - 15,000

• Europe - 1,340,000

  • UK - 150,000
  • France - 320,000
  • Germany - 340,000
  • Italy - 70,000
  • Spain - 75,000
  • Sweden - 15,000
  • Netherlands - 20,000
  • Switzerland - 35,000
  • Austria - 30,000
  • Finland - 5,000

• World - 3,400,000

Collision Course (2004)

BONUS: Total Album (all types) Sales per Country

• America

  • US - 29,900,000
  • Canada - 2,570,000
  • Argentina - 170,000+
  • Brazil - 1,225,000
  • Mexico - 540,000

• Asia - 6,700,000

  • Japan - 2,695,000

• Oceania

  • Australia - 1,410,000
  • New Zealand - 310,000

• Europe - 18,100,000

  • UK - 4,510,000
  • France - 2,495,000
  • Germany - 4,370,000
  • Italy - 1,220,000
  • Spain - 570,000
  • Sweden - 345,000
  • Netherlands - 395,000
  • Switzerland - 465,000
  • Austria - 370,000
  • Finland - 155,000

• World - 62,100,000

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.

Linkin Park Career CSPC Results

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

[xyz-ips snippet="updatedCSPCalbums"]

During this article, several questions emerged. The first one was how big their early albums really were. At 30,95 million, Hybrid Theory is pretty impressive, undoubtedly one of the biggest albums of the millennium. At 18 million and 11,4 million respectively, both Meteora and Minutes To Midnight are very solid successes to the surprise of nobody.

A second observation was about the downward spiral the band was facing album after album. While their popularity is clearly going down, CSPC figures tell us Living Things was actually a rebound from A Thousand Suns. As Streaming is clearly favorable to the later album, the gap is only going to grow. There is not much left to defend The Hunting Party though. At 1,5 million overall, the album is weak in all fronts with very low download sales and streaming appeal for a 2014 record.

One More Light isn't starting strongly, but the immense popularity of the band in the streaming arena may help it top its predecessor in the long run.

A third question we raised in the past was the Coldplay vs Linkin Park debate. As a reminder the Yellow band generated 60,4 million equivalent album sales for their 00s outputs - with four albums - and 85,1 million in total. With only three albums in the 00s, Linkin Park top them at 60,3 million. The large majority of their Orphan Album sales came from their 00s material as well, thus pushing the group total for the decade to more than 66 million. Maybe surprisingly, those figures make Linkin Park the biggest band of the 00s, ahead of Coldplay.

At 78,2 million album sales equivalent, Linkin Park's career total is quite solid as well, although their later material is increasing the cumulative number quite slowly. In any case, their catalog is going strong on streaming platforms. A situation poised to last for many years to come.

Compare all studied artists right there:

The following sections list the most successful songs by Linkin Park, as well as the full listing of all CSPC results compiled so far, to better gauge their position in the history of the music industry.

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

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

BIGGEST TRACKS - Linkin Park

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 2000 - In the End [Hybrid Theory] - 12,040,000
2 2003 - Numb [Meteora] - 7,220,000
3 2004 - Numb / Encore [Orphan] - 4,820,000
4 2007 - What I've Done [Minutes To Midnight] - 3,930,000
5 2000 - One Step Closer [Hybrid Theory] - 3,370,000
6 2000 - Papercut [Hybrid Theory] - 3,330,000
7 2000 - Crawling [Hybrid Theory] - 3,320,000
8 2003 - Faint [Meteora] - 2,610,000
9 2007 - Bleed It Out [Minutes To Midnight] - 2,420,000
10 2003 - Breaking The Habit [Meteora] - 1,880,000
11 2003 - Somewhere I Belong [Meteora] - 1,810,000
12 2000 - Points Of Authority [Hybrid Theory] - 1,530,000
13 2012 - Burn It Down [Living Things] - 1,420,000
14 2000 - A Place For My Head [Hybrid Theory] - 1,300,000
15 2007 - Shadow Of The Day [Minutes To Midnight] - 1,170,000
16 2007 - Leave Out All The Rest [Minutes To Midnight] - 1,150,000
17 2000 - Runaway [Hybrid Theory] - 1,110,000
18 2012 - Castle Of Glass [Living Things] - 1,040,000
19 2003 - From The Inside [Meteora] - 1,020,000
20 2000 - Pushing Me Away [Hybrid Theory] - 1,010,000

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