Forum
This top songs ranking is about the most successful songs of all time (understand “which have generated the most sales”), taking all formats into account thanks to our CSPC concept.
Top-selling singles are often the field of one-hit wonders or caritative releases because truly successful songs generally convince customers to buy the studio album they are part of. Our methodology takes that into account and allows us to get down to their intrinsic success, and compile this top.
Use the searching, filtering, and sorting options to make the most out of the ranking!
Please keep in mind that some artists are missing, because their analysis has not been done yet. Here is the complete list of covered artists. All figures reflect the value as collected at the time of the artist’s respective articles.
Top songs - Equivalent album sales (EAS)
[wpdatatable id=37]
You may be interested in...
Hello,
I've got a question related to songs and their respective EAS. For example, Michael Jackson's album Thriller has generated 120M EAS, because the sum of each of its nine songs has generated 120M EAS in total. ("Wanna Be Startin' Somethin" (6.1M EAS), "Baby Be Mine"... and so on.) Does it mean that the entirety of the album's buyers can be split to a certain favorite song, because each Thriller-buyer has a main incentive in form of a song from the album? If yes, then what is with those who bought the album not because of one certain song, but because of the intensity of great music the album has, without picking out a favorite song from it?
Thank you in advance for the answer.
Does this list update daily with the spotify count? Because I see some songs here have a much lower EAS than the EAS provided in the streaming tool...
You Broke Me First has over 1.2 BILLION streams from Spotify alone but it's being "outsold" by songs with <350M ? It needs to be added
How is layla at 37m just curious ik its iconic but i cant see how its higher than say thriller or teen spirit
Tate McRae has not yet been studied by ChartMasters. The top songs ranking takes into account physical sales, digital sales and streaming. This is why there are older songs high up on the list, even though they have less streams than newer songs.
Basically because Layla is the only big hit from its parent album, while Thriller is not the only big hit from its parent album thus it has internal competition from other big hits from the same album (Billie Jean, Beat It etc)
This is laughable if anyone ever see this ranking seriously as All I want for xmas is you is certified 14 million in us with another 5 million in the uk but Chartmaster grossly ranked it 16M globally
Hi Damian!
Maybe even more laughable would be saying that something is laughable without taking even a minute to understand what we are talking about. Just a thought!
It's about "equivalent album sales" ( EAS ) ! NOT about "single sales units" .
The EAS formula is highly flawed and doesn't represent what the industry uses, like IFPI. Album sales should not be the main driver of singles rankings.
I do agree that album sales, especially for pre streaming era songs, make sense to add given that's how many singles were listened to in the past. Modern songs in the streaming era are "inflated" (like we see now with RIAA) which disadvantages old songs. But the album sales should only be worth the same a single/track sale.
Subscription Streams Equivalents:
(Album + Track Sales)*200 + Premium Streams + Ad-Supported Streams/4.5.
The list needs to be updated for sure. Especially in the case of Selena Gomez. Lose You To Love Me and People You Know got a lot of sales now, and Calm Down basically is not on the list, which is one of the best selling songs of 2023...
Why does has 6.9M and Crazy in love has 9.7M if halo has 12.3M pure sales and 1.7M EAS from streaming while crazy in love has way less pure and less streams
Why crazy in love has more units than halo even though halo has more digital sales and streams?
Because "Crazy in love" it's about 1/2 of success of "Dangerously in love" and "Halo" it's 1/3 of success of "I am ... Sasha Fierce" .
Because Crazy in Love has more physical sales and is responsible for more physical copies of its parent album. Both factors are weighed more heavily in the formula. Also, Crazy in Love is really the only song from Dangerously in Love that is still significantly streamed today, so it gets the lion's share of the album units. Meanwhile, although Halo is the most popular song from I Am...Sasha Fierce, it still has to share album units with songs like Single Ladies, If I Was a Boy and to a lesser extent, Diva.
I'm currently working on a project to make a singles ranking that takes this principle into account. It uses a formula of album sales+physical singles+digital downloads/1.5+on-demand streams/500+video streams/750. The current top 10 is very similar, but modern songs are MUCH higher on the list (highest is Shape of You at #13), and older songs with more downloads/streams wind up placing higher (BoRhap is #4, Take it Easy is outranked by Don't Speak, etc)
Niggas in paris shows up twice here. Once with Jay-z and one time with just kanye at 795 and 807. I assume that this is an error.
I am totally for the equivalent album sales and congratulate for the harmonization of all income sources for an album, ending up with something we can compare oranges with oranges, instead of artichokes. And with the growth of the website, I have no doubt that these numbers are starting to be quoted with some level of seriousness throughout the www. However, when it comes to the singles / songs, that's where the cookie usually crumbles as noted throughout the numerous comments. This methodology (EAS) being used for singles / songs becomes unusable and discredited by most - no other website, certification program, label, chart uses this methodology for singles. Singles are singles and when it comes to giving them an equivalent value, these should be the universal equivalent single sales metric. 1 million ESS earn you platinum, not a dissection of the EAS - sort of like having to reverse engineer the numbers. It's an opinion voiced by many which I agree with, but again the website is yours so if you want to calculate by equivalent bananas that is your business and no one else's. All I can do is congratulate you on the good parts of this website. No hate, just an opinion.
I want to hold your hand by The Beatles hasn't increased in total sales in at least 8 months. 85th at the time REALLY?? Top 100 Best-Selling Songs of All Time (youtube.com). I assume the updates are not working
