biggest selling artists of all time?

[andyuk]

Hi there i was wondering if anyone had a top 20 of biggest selling artist of all time for sales of albums?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Yahweh]

That is up for debate and I dont think anybody really has come up with a definate list yet, nor do I think it will ever happen.

 

[andyuk]

ok so how many do we think U2 has sold? 160,000? where would you think this would put them?

 

[vaz02]

i think 120-150 mill and that i asume will put em 15-21.

 

[Yahweh]

Abba claims to have sold over 350 million albums and I still dont believe that to this day, in my mind that is impossible they sold that many based on pure stats. I want to see the proof of it before I believe it

 

[Vox02]

Maybe 135/140 million.

Vox

 

[edge3]

Abba claims to have sold over 350 million albums and I still dont believe that to this day, in my mind that is impossible they sold that many based on pure stats. I want to see the proof of it before I believe it

The often quoted 350-400m album sales figure for ABBA only comes about 'cos the record company used to count 1 album brought = 3/4 copies sold (as they also did for Beatles, Presley etc). ABBA's actual album sales, counting 1 album brought = 1 album sold, can be no more than 100m (probably about 80m actually)...their total US album sales are no more than 20m.

I think U2 have now shipped around 170m albums in total with their actual sales around 150m. This puts them high up on the all-time all artists list (like top 20) & certainly in the all-time top 10 best selling bands ever.

 

[ybird3k]

edge 3,
what do you mean by "record company used to count 1 album brought = 3/4 copies sold"

purposely fiddling the figures to make the artist look bigger than they actually are?

 

[vaz02]

edge 3,
what do you mean by "record company used to count 1 album brought = 3/4 copies sold"

purposely fiddling the figures to make the artist look bigger than they actually are?

Thats illegal isnt it ? I think something like that happened to the Bay City rollers.

 

[andyuk]

so obviously we don't have a proper list but can people say who has sold more albums than U2? i take it the beatles, elvis etc but who else?

 

[ybird3k]

from looking at USA sales, id say possibly:-

pink floyd
rolling stones
led zeplin
madonna
elton john
michael jackson
eagles

 

[04072511]

In the US, Aerosmith have sold more than U2.

 

[jmccuanu2]

A good source for this info, at least in terms of U.S. album sales, is on the www.RIAA.com website. Go to the website, click on the Gold & Platinum tab at the top, then click on Bestsellers on the right hand side of the screen. It will bring up a list that says "Top Artists" and it lists all the artists and their US album totals, all the way down to artists who have sold a minimum of 14 million albums, I believe.

It is cool to look at where everyone stands, at least here in the states. The Beatles are far and away the leaders, and if I remember correctly U2 is like at #21 with 50.5 million records sold.

It is fun to look at the website, but RIAA states on there that they don't even attempt to give worldwide figures due to the fact that so many sources from around the world are unreliable. And the webmasters are notorious for not updating it regularly, or at least that is my opinion. Seems they move awfully slow on that, but it is still a good source of information. Hope this helps.

 

[STING2]

from looking at USA sales, id say possibly:-

pink floyd
rolling stones
led zeplin
madonna
elton john
michael jackson
eagles

Remember that with the exceptions of Michael Jackson, Madonna, Elton John, the above artist get a much larger chunk of their sales from the United States than U2 does. If you go to the BPI site, for UK sales, you will see that U2 is out in front of several of these artist.