CSPC: U2 Popularity Analysis

U2 Career CSPC Results

U2

So, after checking all figures, what’s the most successful album by U2 and how many overall equivalent albums sales have they achieved? Well, at this point we barely need to do the addition of all figures defined all over this article!

In the following results table, all categories display figures in equivalent album sales. If different, pure sales are listed between parentheses.

'Av.' stands for Average, 'LD' for Last Day.

As a reminder:

  • Studio Album: sales of the original album
  • Other Releases: sales of compilations generated thanks to the album
  • Physical Singles: sales of physical singles from the album (ratio 3/10)
  • Download Singles: sales of digital singles from the album (ratio 1,5/10)
  • Streaming: equivalent album sales of all the album tracks (ratio 1/1500 for Audio stream and 1/6750 for Video stream)

See where the artist ranks among remaining singers


What do we see here? The Joshua Tree is the predictable winner. Up to an incredible 47,7 million, the only albums we studied so far topping it are Nirvana‘s Nevermind, the Grease Soundtrack and Led Zeppelin‘s fourth album, all over 52 million.

There is more to highlight. Whilst on pure sales Achtung Baby is their second biggest selling title by far, with the CSPC’s approach that crown goes to War at 24,6 millionsomething that not many would have seen coming a few pages earlier. Achtung Baby, on its own hand, still cumulated a great 24,4 million CSPC’s sales.

Driven by Beautiful Day, All That You Can’t Leave Behind reaches 20,5 million CSPC’s sales, proving, once again, it is far bigger than How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb, despite having similar pure album sales and being remembered as about equally successful. As it generates more yearly sales now than both Achtung Baby and War, it may even challenge the band discography runner up spot in the future.

The Unforgettable Fire looks now better with 13 million CSPC’s sales, although still lower than Rattle And Hum at 16,7 million. In the other side, Boy, October, Zooropa and Pop didn’t get much outside their original sales.

You may be wondering about U2‘s final CSPC total. Well, the final result is an astonishing 194,5 million, only 6 million short of Led Zeppelin‘s total.

Do not forget to check our amazing lists posted inside the CSPC: Data Collector which includes the full listing of all CSPC results compiled so far to better gauge their position in the history of the music industry.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, Chartmasters.org.

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