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Here you will find our up-to-date list of all-time best-selling artists.
This top is evaluating and comparing artists' success across all formats, which are weighted on par thanks to our CSPC concept. The top is updated daily.
Best-selling artists by era
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The most successful artists ever. Numbers in equivalent album sales through all formats. Based on the original recordings' release dates. Video created with Flourish.
Best-selling artists of all time
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How music sales numbers are compiled
The table above shows the top artists of all time using the following ratios:
How do we get accurate best-selling artists lists?
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For decades, marketing tricks from labels and a lack of education from the media led to various myths about the best-selling artists of all time getting repeated so often that the general public assumed it was true.
Today, the same lack of education on the matter continues to be a pain for accuracy lovers. Most of these lists floating around online are either flat lists of RIAA certifications or a mere sum of all certifications from all countries. The first are given only on request, sparsely for many artists, and relate to the US only. The latter are adding together apples and oranges by mixing distinct formats and different national streaming conversion methods.
Our home-made solution: the CSPC and equivalent album sales
To solve these flaws, we introduced several years ago the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC).
If you are not familiar with this concept, it consists of retrieving sales figures from every format and weighting them on par with album sales. That's what we call equivalent album sales (EAS), or simply CSPC units.
In doing so, we grant that comparisons between artists from different periods make sense, unlike lists based on raw record totals.
The method also ensures that the same formula applies to all artists. So we are avoiding issues related to the varying conversion rate used for streaming in different markets, as well as by most labels in their communications.
The sales compilation process
When applying this concept to an artist, our team goes into the tank. We analyze all data available, from charts, certifications, internal reports, and official scanning systems. Through the years, we developed various methods to fill the holes, backing all numbers with meaningful indicators. In between, we have also discovered thousands of receipts.
To make everything as transparent as it gets, all figures for sales have been detailed on each artist's article, available through the link under their name. We also show dates of updates, both for sales and for streams.
The column 'Other LPs' includes long formats made of already released material like greatest hits compilations, box sets, live records, bootlegs, and music videos.
Digital singles include both downloads and ringtones. Streaming units include both audio and video streams.
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An ongoing process
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Obviously, digging into the catalog of an artist takes time. It would be easy to simply copy/paste the RIAA's most certified artists list in a minute. Given our ambition, the largest discographies require several weeks of study, with several people involved.
Most top artists have been studied by now, but some are still missing. The main ones are Neil Diamond and the Beach Boys.
These omissions are listed on this page, which enables users to vote for the next pick. As soon as a CSPC article is released, we treat the new leader of the requests list. You can vote too!
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The automatic update of streams
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As part of our process to get all artists treated at the same time, we have been implementing tools to automatically keep numbers up to date every day, whenever it is possible.
We also developed a tool to retrieve updated Spotify streams by artist. Thus, we are able to increase accordingly the streaming units of artists part of our all-time top artists leaderboard.
For further details, feel free to use the comment section.
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Frequently Asked Questions
The Beatles are the best-selling artists of all time with over 520 million equivalent album sales. More than 175 million sales behind, Michael Jackson is the runner-up ahead of Elvis Presley.
Michael Jackson is the best-selling solo artist of all time with over 340 million equivalent album sales. Elvis Presley is a close runner-up, with Madonna completing the top 3 lower down.
Madonna is the best-selling solo artist of all time with over 250 million equivalent album sales. Taylor Swift is quickly catching up, while Celine Dion is third.
As revealed by our list reflecting the most-streamed artists on digital streaming platforms, Drake, Taylor Swift, and Bad Bunny are the biggest artists worldwide in recent years, with the addition of BTS thanks to their heavy album sales.
No. While their success is indeed outstanding as they rank 1st and 3rd among all-time top-sellers, the billion claims made in the early 80s were based on an old accounting method using singles equivalent, where each album sale was valued as 6 units. Under this method, each of the 22 artists with over 167 million equivalent album sales on this page would be over 1 billion "records" sold.
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The notion of The Beatles selling more albums then Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley sold records is pure delusion and instantly makes this entire article irrelevant.
African artistes should be viewed with more importance, Wizkid already has about 60m+ career sales but isn't listed here, etc
What kind of madness is this? This site has gone crazy. All of this is just to put Taylor Swift in first place. Pink Floyd, a few weeks ago — and I have the screenshot — had 241 million, then it dropped to 240 and... now it's at 239. This is a huge joke. This site really shouldn't be taken seriously
Whoa how did we get 200+ artists, many of them with all their physical sales accounted for in one day?
@michael440 This didn't happen is just 1 day, these estimates have been made for some time now, perhaps you just happened to stumble upon them recently, but MJD has been slowly updating and adding previously untreated artists to make a more comprehensive all-time list of best-selling artists in the last month or so.
Where is Steely Dan on this list? I see it frequently reported they have sold in excess of 50 Million albums worldwide ?
Paul McCartney’s solo record sales are rather low as he is currently 53rd in the ranking!
@kipperMcCartney's solo Spotify numbers are also quite low, less than Lennon or Harrison. McCartney's result has included numbers that did not belong there. For example, Fourfiveseconds with Kanye West, Rihanna, etc. McCartney's contribution is guitar playing and, for example, Michael Jackson's song The Girl is Mine from the Thriller album and more with Kanye West. His own song Wonderful Christmas Time, 600 m streams. Howard Sounes, who wrote his biography Fab, said directly that McCartney and Lennon have been quite weak alone. They needed each other, then the best that has been heard was born. In fact, not all numbers are true. For example, 1 EAS unit album = 22 vinyl boxes price 150 dollar, so here in Chartmasters. Taylor Swift's result is much higher than 240 m EAS.
I knew that, I also expanded the answer to Spotify streams. When you look at the results critically and I urge you to use media literacy. The answer was a bit off, I admit.
The 1972 edition of “Guinness Book Of World Records”, statec The Beatles as being the world’s top-selling music act. Has this remained the same for every year since then?
@kipper The Beatles are still the best-selling artist of all time, with approximately 520 million (M) equivalent album sales (EAS) right now. Runner-up is Michael Jackson with approximately 345M EAS (if you add 60 million EAS of former group Jackson Five/Jacksons, then he is at 405M EAS). Number three is Elvis Presley at 324M EAS and number four is Queen at 287M EAS.
In the long run, I would say that Taylor Swift (at the moment at least 241M EAS) will surpass Queen and will therefore be the fourth successful artist of all time (behind The Beatles, MJ and Elvis). Maybe she will also surpass Elvis anytime, but I'm relatively sure, she won't surpass the still selling MJ's 405M solo plus group EAS.
My guess is The "regarding to sales permanently growing" Beatles will remain the all-time number one until the curtain falls.
