ChargedVT said:
A big thank you to FITZ who posted the link in the other thread. I searched the Finland archives and came up with sales for 8 U2 albums. Finland is a very small market and U2 have never been really huge in that country but these albums are on the International Top 400 and sales are until the end of 2004 so the only one that would be much higher is HTDAAB.
#241 Achtung Baby - 34,938
#266 Pop - 32,952
#326 Best Of 1980-1990 - 29,864
#348 Rattle And Hum - 28,632
#358 The Joshua Tree - 27,965
#365 All That You... - 27,312
ALSO
How To Dismantle - 21,348 (but would be higher now)
Best Of 1990-2000 - 15,430
Very interesting site for Finland Sales.
http://www.ifpi.fi/
U2's album sales in Finland are still better than their album sales in Japan on a per capita basis by nearly a 3 to 1 margin. Still, their sales are very low in Finland compared to how well they sell in many other countries. 20,000 is GOLD in Finland, while 40,000 is PLATINUM. This is a very high standard for GOLD and PLATINUM in a country of only 5 million people. On a per capita basis in line with US levels for GOLD and PLATINUM, it should be about 8,500 for GOLD and 17,000 for PLATINUM.
Interesting to see how high POP is as far as U2's best selling albums in Finland. Its less than 2,000 copies away from being U2's best selling album in Finland.
While U2's sales in Finland are very low by their standards elsewhere, it was interesting to see that several other big bands did not have a single album in the top 500.
Domestic artist in Finland do much better than International artist. If the top 500 domestic chart is added in with the international chart, Achtung Baby would only come in at around #550 of the best selling albums in Finland.
But, U2 have no problem selling out a 50,000 seat stadium when they come to Finland despite the fact that most of their albums have sold only about one half to two thirds of that figure.
Its also interesting to note that only one international album sold enough copies in 2004 to be certified platinum in Finland.
