Pop sold eight million copies worldwide??

[Vox02]

From Q magazine :

Edge: "It was a success, with the exception of the United States. It sold eight million, so it was by no means a failure. There was a sense on the record company's part that this was going to be an enormous record for us in America. And when it wasn't, we took it in our stride. It sold faster than The Joshua Tree in America, but it stopped at a certain point."


It sold faster than TJT? Obviously, Edge forget the diference between pre-Soundscan era and Soundsacan era, hehe

I stopped at certain point? Pimm's book stated that Pop sold 4,900,000 copies worldwide in 4 weeks, is it correct?

Vox

 

[STING2]

Although its Edge's album, he is actually not the best one to answer such questions, the staff at the record company are. There is no evidence to support that POP sold 8 million copies worldwide. The highest confirmed figure that I saw at the end of 1997 was 5.5 million. I think people naturally rounded that to 6 million, but then someone takes that and its 7 million etc. Here is what we know about POPs sales worldwide.

United States 1.5 million
Canada 380,000
Europe 2 million
Australia 70,000

Those are confirmed sales levels. The European sales level is obviously somewhere between 2 and 3 million, perhaps 2.5 million, but it has not reached the 3 million mark in Europe yet. I do not have album sale info for POP in Central and South America, but I know it did not sale as much as ATYCLB down there based on chart performance.

Here are confirmed sales for ATYCLB:

United States 4 million
Canada 600,000
Europe 4 million
Australia 350,000
Brazil 500,000

ATYCLB has currently sold over 11 million copies worldwide.

Based on what we know to be confirmed true about POP's sales in Europe and the United Sates and considering the fact that that is where the majority of their sales come from, its actually difficult to get to the 5.5 million worldwide figure for POP let alone an 8 million figure. By now, POP may have passed the 6 million mark, but not more. Just by looking at the confirmed sales its obvious that ATYCLB sold double of what POP did. 5.5 million that I saw in Billboard is half of ATYCLB current 11 million +.

Not to say that POP was a failure though, it was one of the 20 best selling albums worldwide in 1997 with 5.5 million in sales.