CSPC: Bob Marley Popularity Analysis

Part 2 – Live albums

With more than 5 million sales each, Live! and Babylon by Bus have been incredibly successful live albums. The former of them is home to the most well known version of No Woman, No Cry. Naturally, the album which includes this song, Natty Dread, is the one which generated the largest share of Live! sales.

If both albums managed to continue selling well for decades it is because Babylon by Bus covers a completely different set of songs. The main providers of its appeal were hits from Exodus and Kaya, namely Jamming and Is This Love. This shows the incredible strength of a catalog when distinct pairs of songs can shoot live albums into 5 million plus sales.

Later live sets weren’t promoted the same way and were often hardly available after their original releases. It is still interesting to notice that they don’t follow the same distribution patterns among studio albums at all. Marley hasn’t been singing again and again the same hits with instead very diverse sets offered to the fans. The truly big release in terms of track list is Live Forever which includes nearly all the hits.