Which albums had the highest number of worldwide sales?

Previous Comments (newest first)

15 Feb 2013

Scorpions?

What about Scorpions? LOVE AT FIRST STING > 9.000.000 CRAZY WORLD > 15.000.000 1972-1979: > 11.000.000 1980-1989: > 33.000.000 1990.1999: > 29.500.000 2000-2009: > 9.000.000 ------------------------------------ > 82.500.000 + + the singles(still loving you,Rock you like a hurricane,wind of change....etc. +compilations,live albums? They should be on some of your chart!

9 Feb 2013

Live - Throwing Copper

This album has a shot at 10M don't you think? It sold about 8M in America only... that's a "minimum" of 8M...

Also you put Counting Crows' August album but it probably sold less than Live's.

We suspect you are right, but we follow a fairly simplistic route to get to our numbers, no "reasonable tweaking" is allowed here

5 Feb 2013

Iron maiden sales

These are the actual Iron maiden sales As of Jan 2012

1.Iron maiden - 5 million 2.Killers ++ +- 6 million 3.Numner of the beast - 14 million 4.Piece of mind -+ 8 million 5.Powerslave ++ -+ 7 million 6.Somewhere in time - 6.5 million 7.Seventh son of a seventh son - 7 million 8.No prayer for the dying - 6 million 9.Fear of the Dark -+ 5 million 10.X factor +- 1 million 11. Virtual XII - 0.75 million 12. Brave new world - 4 million 13. Dance of death +- 3.5 million 14. A matter of life and death - 4 million 15. The final frontier -+ 3 million

Live Albums Live after death - 8.5 million Maiden england + - 1.5million A real live one +- 2 million A real Dead one +- 1 million Rock in Rio ++ + - 1 million Death on the road - 1 million

Compilations Best of the beast - 3 million Edward the great +- 1 million Somewhere in time - 1.5 million

Their certifications Only support 20 - 25% of their total sales, which is mainly because they were a non- commercial band,However their high grossing tours, Eventually made many sales statistics information collectors collect a detailed info on their sales. The only eact sales certifications they got was the RIAA certifications.

Their sales in europe are far more than the sales indicated in certifications.

Powerslave, Live after death, NUmber of the beast eventually sold 2 million copies in the US. But they were never certified as double platinums.

Iron maiden are one of the very few bands, and as far as i know the only band to achieve high sales as a non commercial band.

We don't trust sales figures from anyone (even ourselves).

I do remember taking a guy in a wheelchair to a gig of theirs on Holloway Road in early 1979 (SteveH)

27 Jan 2013

SCORPIONS

crazy world from scorpions sold around 11-12 million in the world .... can you find if its true and by the way since im here ehheeheh can you know the sales from scorpions

cheers from Portugal

Nuno Nabais

We don't trust any claims of "worldwide sales" (even our own). So our answer would have to be we don't know

24 Jan 2013

The Beatles

It always amuses me that Michael Jackson fans think that MJ was the biggeststar in music. And yet, he was not. His sales began to decline after the early 90s, and if it was not for his death, those sales would remain in decline. However, the Beatles continue to sell to each new generation as if they were a new act. Every several years there appears to be a new wave of Beatlemania sales. Great music will live forver.

18 Nov 2012

Robbie Williams

Hi could i know once for all how many records has sold TO date? Thanks

You can't. The real answer is no one knows.

3 Nov 2012

Mariah Carey sales far from the correct values

Hello, I'm writing this email as I was really surprised with some of the chart's numbers. Starting by saying that Bodyguard has is the best selling album for a female artists and being the only one achieving the 40 M rank.

Music box and other albums come pretty even with around 30 M. Would also like to clarify that Mariah Carey sold 17 M, Butterfly sold 18 M, Emancipation of Mimi around 14-15 M by now, Rainbow around 9-12 M, the Unplugged album sold above 15 M , the Emotion Cd sold 8 M, +charmbracelet 4 M, Glitter around 3 M ...please check your numbers

You are not reading what has been written. First of all our estimate for "The Bodyguard" is 37.3 million. "Come On Over" by Shania Twain has an estimate of 42.7 (and last time we checked Shania Twain was female).

Your other numbers are both unlikely and, since they are not sourced at all, should be ignored.

And finally you should have seen our comment "quoted sales figures are inherently untrustworthy and should normally be treated with extreme caution" and "we don't trust even our own listing of sales numbers".

19 Oct 2012

"Queen's Greatest Hits I"

You should update the US certifications and total sales for Queen's "Queen's Greatest Hits I".

Here's the link to the RIAA certification: http://www.riaa.com/goldandplatinumdata.php?artist="queen"

(Click on "award description" twice)

11 May 2012

Underestimating sales

For the next time you update the list, I sincerely think you could improve your estimates for newer albums by including IFPI Platinum Europe Awards in your certifications for albums released later than 1994.

For example, "21" has a 8x Platinum (8 million) award in Europe, which combined with the new 9x Platinum certification for the U.S., 12x Platinum in Australia (0.84 million), Diamond in Canada (0.8 million), 4x Platinum in Mexico (0.24 million) and 10x Platinum in New Zealand (0.15 million), suggest sales of AT LEAST 19 million worldwide.

Here is the list of albums with the highest IFPI Platinum Europe awards:http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/IFPI_Platinum_Europe_Awards#.C3.81lbumes_con_mayor_cantidad_de_certificaciones

Thanks for the link. We will review the source data that best matches next time we update this list.

19 Apr 2012

Adele -21

I've taken a look at the certifications for Adele's "21", and they seems to be: 8x Platinum in the U.S., 15x Platinum in the U.K., Diamond in France (0.5 million) and 6x Platinum in Germany (1.2 million).

Surely that is enough for the album to be added to this list, right?

Next time we update this list it will no doubt be there. However we only get new certifications every few years (our focus is on older music)

Since you can see the factors we use (explained in the text) your numbers would give total sales of 14.2 which would place it at 162 in the list.

25 Feb 2012

BAD WAS THE SECOND BIGGEST SELLING ALBUM

I saw where you guys told someone that MJ's album BAD wasn't the second biggest selling album. During the 80's decade, it was said that BAD was the second biggest selling album right behind Thriller. Now it's not the second biggest selling album of all time, but during the 80's it was the second biggest selling album.

"Bad" was 8xPlatinum in the US in 1994. Eagles album "Eagles' Greatest Hits 1971-1975" was 29xPlatinum for an album released in 1976. The albums "Four Symbols (Led Zeppelin 4)", "The Wall" and "Rumours" were all released in the 1970s and have considerably higher overall sales than "Bad".

If you had misread the original claim and you thought that "Bad" was the second highest selling album of the 1980s then look at AC/DC's "Back In Black" released in 1980, 22xPlatinum in the US. Also "Brothers In Arms" and "Billy Joel's Greatest Hits, Volume I & Volume II" both released before "Bad" and have much higher overall sales.

These numbers are consistent across the whole world (we just used the US figures because they are easy to validate)

So sorry but the claim that "Bad" was ever the worlds second highest selling album is just wrong.

8 Feb 2012

bon jovi

I would like to know the selling datas of bon jovi's albums keep the faith and these days. thanx a lot

Details of both these albums are on the Bon Jovi album page. For example "Keep The Faith" was 2 Platinum in the US, and Platinum in the UK, and Germany. We feel that this does not give enough information to estimate total sales (which we would guess at 3 - 7 million).

Our suggestion would be that you look at the confirmed chart information (listed on the Bon Jovi album page) and make your own mind up. Armed with that data your guess would be at least as good as ours.

31 Dec 2011

Iron Maiden

I would like to know where you are getting the record sales for Iron Maiden...

The following Iron Maiden albums sales are what I believe to be true (worldwide sales):-

1. Iron Maiden (1980) - 10 million 2. Killers (1981) - 10 million 3. The Number of the Beast (1982) - 20 million 4. Piece of Mind (1983) - 15 million 5. Powerslave (1984) - 20 million 6. Somewhere in Time (1985) - 20 million 7. Seventh Son of a Seventh Son (1987) - 10 million 8. No Prayer for the Dying (1990) - 10 million 9. Fear of the Dark (1992) - 10 million 10. The X Factor (1995) - 3 million 11. Virtual XI (1998) - 2 million 12. Brave New World (2000) - 5 million 13. Dance of Death (2003) - 5 million 14. A Matter of Life and Death (2006) - 5 million 15. The Final Frontier (2010) - 5 million

Total - 150 million studio album records sold worldwide. And if you add all the live albums (e.g., Live After Death, Rock in Rio) and compilations (e.g., Best of the Beast) to that... they have easily sold 170 million records worldwide.

Please let me know if there are any real facts about Iron Maiden's album record sales. Thank you and up the Irons.

As we've said before we base the estimates on these pages ONLY on certifications that we have extracted directly from the official sites. We then do the simple calculation which is explained above.

We continue to believe that there are NO estimates of album sales that should be trusted (and in that we include our numbers on this page)

7 Dec 2011

Dobry blog

Dzieki za ciekawy blog

28 Nov 2011

Guns N Roses Greatest Hits

hi, just wanted to say I think GNR's greatest hits how has a certification in the USA of 5x Platinum.

17 Nov 2011

sales of Thriller (RIAA updated)

Hello, I just thought I'd mention that the RIAA certification for Michael Jackson's Thriller has been updated to 29x platinum. This is obviously due to the sales increase following his death and so I think it's also possible his other albums have been recertified although I haven't checked.

The same is probably true for the other major markets such as the UK, so it's probably worth checking those certifications too.

Regards,

Chris.

Thanks for the update, we only invest the time required to extract and consolidate the RIAA chart as the listing becomes well out of date, but next time we do that this data will be incorporated.

14 Sep 2011

A few observations

Hello:

I saw in the list Shakira's album "Fijacien oral" that its certified 8 times platinum in the US, but I think it refers to a category especificaly for the latin market inside the US, where every gold certification counts as 100,000 copies and every platinum certification counts as 200,000. So it would be 1.6 million copies rather than 8

You are correct in suggesting that the RIAA has a special category for Latin albums with lower thresholds.

Unfortunately the RIAA site lists these awards as "Platinum" rather than what they are which is "Los Premios de Platino" which makes it impossible to tell which records have Latin awards and which ones the more significant numbers.

Since we cannot tell the difference we will just have to treat this as yet another reason not to trust sales numbers.

29 Jul 2011

Phil Collins

Is there really a serious possibility that 'No jacket required' has sold somewhere over 30 million copies and 'but seriously' somewhere 30 mill near?

As we say at the top of this page this is an attempt to estimate based on the few reliable sources we have. We explain the approach we've taken and given that way of estimating.

The actual estimates are below 30 million for both of them.

The estimate here is 24-34 million for "No Jacket Required" and 19-30 million for "... But Seriously". Given that "No Jacket Required" sold three times as many copies in the USA, and "... But Seriously" sold more copies in Europe we still think that these are reasonable ranges.

27 Jun 2011

Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

Why everywhere else if you look Elton John's 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' ismentioned to have worldwide sales of at least 31 million copies? If that's true it makes it easily to the top ones.

First of all let us say that we don't trust any claimed estimates for albums (we don't even really trust the ones on this page). The number of 31 million is claimed in a number of places but we don't see any credible source for it.

The next point is that 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' is a double album, some certification authorities (and for some periods) counted each sale twice for double albums, so in the US where a million copies would be needed to get a Platinum for a single album only half a million copies would be needed for a double album. Confusion about when this rule held, and how it was applied have led some sites to double (or half) the estimated number of sales of some double albums.

The largest market in the world is the USA. RIAA certified 'Goodbye Yellow Brick Road' as 7 x Platinum in 1998. One would expect that total worldwide sales would be about 3 times that level, that is about 21 million copies 13 years ago. Our estimate is well below that figure because, like many albums of the 1960s and 1970s, the album was not certified in France and Germany (or recently in the UK). As we explain in the text this lack of evidence for older albums reflects a lack of interest by the record companies in paying for the certification, and cannot be taken to prove a lack of sales.

So our guess as to the sales would be somewhere about 25 million copies or so (21 million in 1998 plus an extra four million since then). A total of 31 million would require some kind of major boost in recent sales (in the same way that "Thriller" sold a lot of copies in 2009 because of the singer's death). We can't see any reason to believe that this has occurred.

So we would agree that the number calculated here is too low, but 31 million seems too high to be believable.

7 Dec 2010

all time album sales

I see you have led zepp 4 number 2 on your list , I think you have to add me buying lz4 to your list , since I have been buying that album for the last 6 to 8 months , I have bought 53 of them.

7 Dec 2010

albums of all time sale

Why is sales numbers of all time sales differ then wikipedeida sale numbers of all time , whats going on here. Is anybody keeping with sales numbers , that they give you

There are two different issues here, first of all at least some of the the sales numbers on Wikipedia are clearly wrong. They are quoted without giving reliable sources and are edited by people that have an interest in distorting the numbers.

One of the reasons for having this data available in this form is to counter the completely blatant lies that certain editors have placed on Wikipedia (and have repeatedly reinserted when reasonable people try to correct).

Secondly, as the text on this page indicates, the numbers here have been calculated based on certification data. The source data we have is reliable, but clearly incomplete. For example we cannot find available data for the French certificates before the early 1990s. We take that reliable data and apply a simple calculation, which is clearly described in the text above. This approach is good enough to clearly show, for example, that "Thriller" could not possibly have sold more than 100 million copies. We have put a range in to indicate the uncertainty in our numbers.

So in summary, the album sales data on Wikipedia is wrong. The data here is wrong, but less wrong than the Wikipedia data. If anyone claims to know the correct worldwide album sales numbers they are lying to you.

29 Nov 2010

Europe:The Final Countdown

The final Countdown sold around 8 million. Why is there not on this list?

The albums in this list are all estimated to have had sales of at least 10 million. Sales of 8 million wouldn't be enough to get listed.

The album "The Final Countdown" was 3 X Platinum in the US, achieved a Gold in Germany and (in the lists we have access to) was not classified in the UK or France. Based on those figures we would guess total sales of 4-7 million.

8 million is possible but its at the very top end of the range. And as we said 8 million is too few for this list.

9 Sep 2010

IRON MAIDEN

IRON MAIDEN RULES AND THE US DOESNT EVEN ACKNOWLEDGE THEM ON THIS LIST AND THEY DON'T CARE

30 Dec 2009

LAUNDRY SERVICE SHAKIRA

Where's "Laundry Service" by Shakira? It sold 20 million copies.

Looking at the album page for Shakira we can see that it was certified as US 3 x Platinum, UK 2 x Platinum, France 2 x Platinum, Germany 2 x Platinum.

Which means it had sales of at least 4.4 million, and by our calculations probably sold 12.8 million (with an estimated range of 10-16 million sales).

By these numbers the album should be on this list. However this English language album was originally known as "Servicio De Lavanderia" in France, so when the list was calculated the French numbers were omited and the resulting estimate of 9.9 million sales was below the cut-off. This mismatch has now been fixed, so next time list is calculated it will be included.

Sales of 20 million are much higher than our estimate. And the fact that both BMI and Shakira's own web site (at www.shakira.com) estimate sales as "more than 13 million". Which seems very reasonable.

So we think that 20 million copies is so much of an overestimate it is clearly wrong.

2 Dec 2009

Genesis biggest seller

Hi I read with a friend of mine on a website that Genesis highest selling album is not We Can't Dance it is actually Invisible Touch. It looks like to me that your numbers and maybe statistics are outdated. We Can't Dance sold 22,000,000 copies worldwide and went 4 times platinum in the U.S. and Invisible Touch went 6 times platinum in the U.S. and has sold 24,000,000 copies globally. I even read on the VH1 website that Invisible Touch is Genesis highest selling pop album to date.

Thanks Aaron Wake

First of all thank you for your input. Of course most of the lists on this site measure success in the charts round the world and not sales. So, for example, the 1983 album "Genesis" lists higher than "Invisible Touch" because it was a hit in more countries, but it is fairly certain that its sales were lower.

Claims of worldwide sales on web sites are generally not trustworthy, for example on Wikipedia look at the number of page modifications and the length of discussions on all pages that mention sales numbers. The issue is that there are no validated worldwide sales numbers so every group of fans use their own approach to estimate numbers.

We do have a page that lists our estimates of sales numbers. We use a combination of the certification levels from the US, UK, France and Germany (the four biggest markets). That page describes how we combine those numbers to estimate worldwide sales. It also explains why we don't trust even our own listing of sales numbers.

The two albums you mention are listed on that page. Your numbers for the US sales are correct, however you don't list the fact that "We Can't Dance" was also 5xPlatinum in the UK and 5xPlatinum in Germany, while "Invisible Touch" was 4xPlatinum in the UK and 1xPlatinum in Germany. "Invisible Touch" was more successful in the US, however the certifications and chart positions show that "We Can't Dance" was clearly a bigger hit in Europe.

Our estimate is that "We Can't Dance" sold 15-24 million worldwide and "Invisible Touch" sold 12-17 million.

We don't know where VH1 got these numbers from, however we have seen other occasions when VH1 has over emphasised acts that were successful in the US and ignored acts that were hits anywhere else in the world. This is one of the reasons why we don't use any of their charts in this site.

So, we believe that the balance of evidence suggests that "We Can't Dance" sold more, however the wide margin of error leaves the question open. We also have learnt that you should not trust any website that lists worldwide album sales numbers (even our own).