France Album Sales: Bob Marley

Original 1973-1983 Albums catalog sales

While Legend was registering outstanding scores, how much his studio albums have been steadily selling then? There is two major sources of information to accurately answer this question. In November 1995, Island certified 1990 to 1995 sales of several of their biggest artists like U2 or Sade, but also Bob Marley.

Incredibly, Exodus, Kaya, Live!, Rastaman Vibration, Survival, Uprising all went Gold. Second piece of information is detailed Year End Top 100 World Albums that included an heavy amount of Bob Marley albums. In 2004/2005, the same six albums certified in 1995 sold below numbers.

1975 Live! – 13,500
1976 Rastaman Vibration – 13,000
1977 Exodus – 19,000
1978 Kaya – 16,500
1979 Survival – 16,000
1980 Uprising – 15,000

If all of them crossed the Gold status in 1990-1995, ratio of sales suggests below figures:

1975 Live! – 104,000
1976 Rastaman Vibration – 100,000
1977 Exodus – 146,000
1978 Kaya – 127,000
1978 Babylon By Bus – 158,000
1979 Survival – 123,000
1980 Uprising – 115,000

Figures for other albums in 2004-2005 are also available for earlier albums, just like a bunch of certifications received in 1992: both Catch A Fire and Burnin’ went Gold (100,000), Babylon By Bus and Survival went Platinum (300,000) and Kaya and Uprising went 2xPlatinum (600,000). As it was his catalog update in nearly a decade several of those awards were well overdue. Putting all information together give us following results: