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I agree with Thomas here, while AC/DC sold a lot in the US they were / are massive elsewhere too, hell their last albums have sold even more in Germany alone than the US. It's obvious the US is the most important market in the world since it's the biggest but artists can definitely get big numbers without selling too much there as well. Just look at ABBA, Robbie Williams and Johnny Hallyday. There are many more we haven't studied as well. Dire Straits for example is precisely ahead of VH due to much bigger sales elsewhere so it's not like it's just the US affecting our rankings.
Of course it's not just US sales, my point was more the feeling that some acts are this high placed mainly because of their US sales. Maybe this is not as obvious for AC/DC, though more than half of their total album sales are from the US. I probably should have used Aerosmith, Elvis or Led Zeppelin as an example. Hope I don't step on too many toes ;-).
Compare the numbers in Europe and Australia of AC/DC with those of RHCP or Green Day, they are certainly not lower... honestly not even those of European Led Zeppelin...
Hi Ugo!
I would lie if I say that Kiss are among top priorities, but they are certainly climbing the ladder at the moment. There are 4 great selling bands missing (The Beach Boys, Genesis, Chicago, R.E.M.), but after these Kiss must be one of the very top sellers, so a publication in 2021 can't be ruled out.
Hi Jonijusus!
You are correct, Selena Gomez and Eminem are still in the pipe. We also want to drop Drake when he returns. As you can see with the new publication, we were working on Mannheim Steamroller, a surprise article but a very interesting one to me.
Among contenders for upcoming CSPCs there are still Stevie Wonder that we had initiated until the passing of Eddie Van Halen, Fugees / Lauryn Hill who own 2 huge sellers with discographies quick to treat, and Dua Lipa who may be the most needed current star and would be fast to complete as well.
LOVE stevie, one question i have is fulfillingness’ first finale a contender for biggest album of 74, as from what j can tell there are no major seller/s from that year
i was wondering when drake would be updated so i’m excited to his update will be soon.
i would love to see you update all the “modern” artists who haven’t been updated since 2017/18 such as beyoncé, pink, one direction, selena, sam smith etc
The two bands were compared because there are those who think that in terms of physical copies Iron Maiden have sold more than Van Halen, which is impossible given the disproportionate number of VH albums in the United States. Obviously outside the IMs are more popular but they don't make up the difference because they're not Queen or Dire Straits 😉
Van Halen from 1996 to today have not sold many tickets certainly seen as in this period they have been a disbanded band with short reunions.
That's true, but I was trying to compare Van Halen to RHCP or Green Day, while I would like to see this comparison for AC/DC or Led Zeppelin with U2 or Mariah carey or so. Acts that are in their league.
Hi MJD,
Where do you get the chart positions from albums of the 1960’s/1970’s in France and Italy from?
And how do you know which chart to use because there wasn’t one official chart but many individual ones?
Hi cass!
I have an excel document with all charts for France, the ones from CIDD, VSD, Le Journal du Show Business. They can all be useful, the latter is deeper for example, but in general I rely mainly on CIDD. It's the most consistent ranking with certifications, although there were big misses. It was also the chart published by Billboard on its Hits of the World column. A key and always ignored data for older France statistics is the sequence of certifications. For many albums, to know when in the year an album was certified helps a lot.
For Italy I can use from time to time Hit Parade Italia as a gauge, although for pre-Europe releases discogs statistics are often more telling. The general note for all pre-official charts countries/period (and some post-official charts periods too) is always the same though: it takes to merge together several sources, with the correct interpretation of each, to draw a realistic picture of the reality. With experience, we can know which type of music was underrated by which charts for example.
Hi MJD,
Thanks for the response, very interestin! Is there any way you could make that excel sheet available? Or is there somewhere on the site I could look at it?
Great Work!
Cass
Hi Cass!
You can get the 75-85 years in this link. You will notice that some months are missing, some charts vary in size, etc. All this is a correct reflection of the existing charts. There are some albums shown with 13 weeks at #1 on Infodisc website for example, thanks to the file you will see that instead they led 1 month and they charts weren't published for the next two.
Hi MJD!
That's really interesting! Thanks for supplying that! By any chance have you got the early late 60's to early70's stuff available to see as well?
Again great work and site!
Cass
