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[Gezza]

Hello Chart fans!

Good day to you all- well here’s a big spring countdown to keep you all entertained! Yes in an attempt to answer that age old question of just who the biggest popstars on the planet are we’re taking a look back over the past 35 years to bring you the Top 200 biggest popstars since 1980.

So how does this work?

Well there are two parts to the calculation which gives the list its form, the first part is easy enough and the second part attempts to take into consideration the change in market sizes over the various years.

Part one- all the acts who have sold a combined total of 1.5 million albums and singles in a calendar year combined were totted up. Naturally there are some acts who have achieved this in multiple years these will be dealt with as below.

Part two- In order to level the playing field and to show that to sell a million singles in say 2003 was a greater achievement than selling a million in 2011 given the comparative market size the following formula was taken into account:

Total single sales in the year by an act divided by total singles sold in that year= X
Total Album sales in that year by an act divided by total albums sold in that year=Y

Then add x & y together and get an overall percentage of all singles/albums sold by an act in a year. This percentage forms the basis of the list.

Multiple Years

When an act does this multiple years and the above formula is applied it is possible that though they may “sell” more in one year, their market percentage will be bigger in another, and indeed in 14 instances on this list this is exactly what happens, I’ll try to make this very clear as we’re going along.

In short then this is a list reflective of firstly market dominance then sales which will hopefully make it a bit more interesting I will however note in brackets their position on a "sales" only basis.

Any questions then just let me know I know it isn’t the easiest thread I’ve ever done and it took months to compile. I’ll do a sample post to illustrate how it will look using the lovely Cher Lloyd (and why not) as I’m afraid she hasn’t made it (spoiler). The figures incidentally are made up and for illustration only.