World Top 50 Albums updated:
For the period June 15-21
NLOTH up from 25 to 24 with total sales of 42,700
As for the total album sales numbers...5 million shipped seems very plausible to me, as this album is selling very well in all cornes of the globe. Maybe that has always been the case with U2's music, and we just didn't have access to the information in the 80's and 90's that we do today.
NLOTH is doing very well in Southeast Asia, for example, as are the two singles that have been released so far...Magnificent is up from 16 to 11 on the "Top 20 Singles Chart" for Asia. The chart is shown on the same website as the album chart, and on the global singles chart, Magnificent continues it's somewhat erratic run by rising from 48 to 32 this week (Jun 15-21 update...same as world album chart). Also, the album is selling well in South America.
The countries listed by the United World Chart as being the "sources" for Global Sales figures is hardly exhaustive, and while the "World Top 50 Albums" chart lists a few more countries than the other chart as sales sources, it, too, does not cover the entire world.
I'm just saying that these global sales charts, as well as Billboard, cannot really really claim to know total worldwide sales. Access to that information, while much improved, has not kept up with global consumer access to purchase music. Given this, the only real way to know how many albums have been "sold" is to track to the total number shipped. While I don't think there have been 5 million individual purchases or downloads of NLOTH, the only completely accurate figures are shipments, and truth be told, once the album is shipped to retailers, it's basically sold from the record company's standpoint.
Anyway, with such a lengthy tour ahead, one that will probably play to a record number of fans in very large venues in numerous countries (large markets), I'd be surprised if there weren't at least 1.2 to 1.5 million copies of NLOTH available for sale. That's an inventory to sales ratio of around 30-35%, which seems normal to me (3.3M sold out of 5M shipped/for sale).