CSPC: The Beatles Popularity Analysis
Do you feel this very special moment when starting to read such an article? That’s what happens when the daily subject is the Beatles. I won’t be creating a fake suspense – they are the biggest selling music act of all-time. The music industry hasn’t been the same after they fully redesigned the map when debuting way back in 1963. More than half a century later, identifying accurate information about their sales and their achievements is still a nightmare. Well, it still was until today!
You surely read it all – they sold more than anyone, their popularity is unparalleled, they topped 1 billion sales, shifted over 600 million albums, Sgt. Pepper LP is past 5 million copies in the UK, they broke every chart record in 1964 and got more million sellers than every other act. That’s what you read, not necessarily what is true. Indeed, all the numerical claims are purely fake.
Myself I have been going back and forth with their sales figures for 12 years until reaching at last a high point of satisfaction in an accuracy objective. I would like to particularly thanks the massive input from both Hernán Lopez and Anthony Blanchard that helped building what I can proudly announce as the most comprehensive, accurate and enlighting article ever published about the Beatles charts and sales.
Some of the information published in this post may surprise you and can also contradict official data, data which happens to be wrong. If anything concerns you, feel free to request additional details within’ comments section about data source and methods used to grant accuracy.
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge the band results. The concept will not only bring you raw data of all the Beatles albums, physical singles, download singles, music videos and streaming, it will also accurately weight all this information to conclude on meaningful popularity indicators. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC idea, the next page explains it with a short video, I fully recommend you to check it before getting into sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to jump to the following pages. Let’s go!
Hello MJD
Will there be eventually an update on The Beatles to bring it in line with 2023
or thereabouts.
Most respectfully
i’m looking forward to it! they are still selling massively each year plus there’s been the reissues of their past albums, so i’m expecting great numbers
Those special editions (well, most of them) are worth every penny. So cool to hear their stuff on blu-ray.
I’m curious why their digital singles sales are so low compared to the likes of Queen and MJ?
I guess that one important reason is that they wait many years until put the catalogue there (2009), and 5 years later that market started to collapse, so they had few years to make sales. I mean, even Elvis have a little more digital sales, when the Beatles outstream him x2.
It’s explained on page 31 of this article.
I would love to see the sales of George Harrison. Both John Lennon and Paul Mccartney are updated while George and Ringo are missing. I assume Ringo hasn’t sold that well but George had string of succesful albums starting with All Things Must Pass. Maybe in the future when The Beatles sales are going to be updated you could also do George and Ringo, same as it was done with Neil Young, when both Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young were done at the same time. I’m sure a lot of people would love to see that. Thank… Read more »
An update on The Beatles would be great.
Yes
BFD on amount of records sold. Theres more people in the world. All these groups/people are playing because of the BEATLES. I bought my first guitar from a guys living room. I traded my flute in for an electric guitar, at Jacks Drum Shop, after Feb. 1964 when they were on Ed Sullivan. There was no Guitar Center, or anything like that. Since the BEATLES, everyone and their brother play guitar.