CSPC: Guns N’ Roses Popularity Analysis

Guns N’ Roses are possibly the only band that attracted, and infact still attracts to this day, both fans of classic rock music and fans of 80s arena rock. Such hits as, Sweet Child O’ Mine, Paradise City, Welcome to the Jungle, November Rain and Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door are still immensely popular.

Considering the majority of their successful singles came out in a four year span from mid-1988 to mid-1992, the cumulative sales reached by the band are outstanding. In terms of strict album sales, their 1987 classic Appetite For Destruction is one of the 22 albums in the 27-33 million units range worldwide, good enough for a spot just outside the all-time Top 10 best selling albums. Their career total album sales challenge the biggest US groups ever like Aerosmith, the Beach Boys and Bon Jovi, just under the two highest rollers the Eagles and Metallica. An incredible feat given they released far fewer albums than most of the aforementioned.

Unsurprisingly the band’s success is visible in the digital world also, with massive download sales and streaming results. Thus, let’s sum up all their achievements in every format to determine a clear picture of their success with the various albums of new music they issued.

As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge their results. This concept will not only bring you sales information for all Guns N’ Roses‘ albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming, but it will also determine their true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, the next page explains it with a short video. I fully recommend watching the video before getting into the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures.