From MusicWeek.com,

 

The Beatles’ worth to Universal has been spelt out by new Music Week research naming the group as one of the biggest-selling acts this century.

 

Universal made a point of extracting The Beatles as a band and as solo acts from its EMI concessions last week.

 

The business logic of that stand is underlined by a Music Week study of The Beatles’ recorded music sales since 2000, which reveals they are this century’s sixth most successful albums act in the UK.

 

In this period they have sold 8.2 million albums, according to the Official Charts Company – despite the band not having recorded together as an active unit for 43 years.

 

The continuing commercial might of The Beatles is also felt overseas with their compilation 1 the century’s biggest-selling album globally. It is also the post-millennium No.1 in the US.

 

Universal’s takeover of The Beatles’ catalogue comes just ahead of the 50th anniversary of the release of the band’s first single Love Me Do in the UK on October 5.

 

See this week's Music Week magazine for further Beatles analysis on pages 14 and 15.

 

Can anyone reproduce this sales analysis please?

If there is an article online I see what I can do this evening, otherwise I'm not typing 2 pages of info it will ltake me all day to do it.

The Beatles’ debut single Love Me Do hits 50

next week, but it is arguably the Fab Four’s

contemporary commercial power that

deserves most celebrating.

 

Five decades after – on October 5 to be precise –

that historic seven-inch went on sale the group

remain one of the biggest-selling acts around.

A Music Week analysis of UK album sales in the

21st century so far reveals just five artists have

outsold them over this period. All of them have the

advantage of having been active since the

millennium, putting out a string of brand new

albums, while The Beatles’ post-2000 sales have all

had to come from existing albums or repackages of

their back catalogue.

 

Their modern success, more than 43 years after

the four members recorded together for the last

time, is vindication why Universal made such a play

of separating the group from any disposal of their

record company Parlophone to satisfy EC regulators

in its $1.9bn (£1.2bn) EMI takeover.

 

According to the Official Charts Company, the

group have sold 8.2 million albums in the UK this

century, a total beaten only by Robbie Williams

(14.1 million), Westlife (11.7 million), Take That

(10.7 million) and Eminem (8.8 million). Michael

Jackson (8.1 million) is just behind John, Paul,

George and Ringo with his tally having increased

significantly since his 2009 death while also quickly

catching up is Michael Bublé (7.9 million) thanks

to seven-figure sales of his Reprise/Warner Bros

sets Crazy Love and Christmas.

 

Not surprisingly, The Beatles’ runaway top seller

this side of the millennium is the 2000 compilation

1, which was that year’s top overall album with

nearly 1.9 million sales, and it is on course to top

the cumulative 3 million mark in the next week or

so. It represents 36.4% of the group’s UK album

sales in this period and has sold three-and-half

times as many copies as the next most popular title,

the 2006 set Love, which was released to

accompany The Beatles’ Cirque du Soleil Las Vegas

show and has to date shifted around 835,000

copies. Among all albums, 1 is the century’s fifth

top seller in the UK.

 

The release of 1 in the first year of the new

century meant the group’s UK sales received a

significant boost right at the start of the new

millennium with 2.3 million Beatles albums sold in

2000 alone. This dropped to about 740,000 the

following year and under 400,000 in 2002, but

approached 1 million in 2006 thanks to Love and

increased by 205% year-on-year in 2009 to more

than 700,000 units as the remastered versions of

their original studio albums rolled out.

 

The biggest retail winner of the remasters

overhaul has been 1967’s Sgt Pepper’s Lonely

Hearts Club Band, which has sold around 140,000

additional copies since the new version was released,

a few thousand more unit sales than their 1969 set

Abbey Road has managed in the same period.

These sales have helped to take Sgt Pepper’s 21stcentury

UK total to around 560,000, making it the

group’s third post-millennium top seller, while

Abbey Road is sixth with about 375,000 sales.

Sitting in between the two studio albums are the

1973 compilations 1967-1970 and 1962-1966,

which were themselves issued in remastered form in

2010 and this century have both sold more than

400,000 copies.

 

Five of The Beatles’ 10 top century sellers are

original studio sets and also take in Revolver in

seventh place, The Beatles (“The White Album”) in

eighth and Rubber Soul ranked ninth. Let It Be –

Naked, the 2003 reworking of recordings for what

became the Let It Be album, ranks 10th, while the

original Phil Spector-produced album is 14th.

Probably not surprisingly, the group’s earlier

albums are the least popular with a modern buyer

with the likes of Please Please Me, With The

Beatles and Beatles For Sale attracting far fewer

sales than the later albums.

 

Although less popular in this sector than

compared to albums, The Beatles have generated

healthy one-track digital sales since their catalogue

finally went on iTunes in November 2010. In the

UK this has added up to 1.2 million unit sales,

although no title has individually been a huge seller,

perhaps because demand is spread across many

tracks rather than just a handful or so as is typically

the case with vintage acts. Thirty-nine of their

recordings have sold more than 10,000 copies

digitally in the market with both Hey Jude and Let

It Be having topped 80,000 download sales and

Here Comes The Sun 70,000.

 

The latter track has performed particularly

well in 2012, achieving 45% of its cumulative

digital total thanks to boosts such as the song

being covered by Gary Barlow in a Marks &

Spencer TV ad and on his Sing album with the

Commonwealth Band and its inclusion in the

Olympics closing ceremony.

Thanks very much - greatly appreciated.

Some fantastic sales figures given.

Hope to get the print version in WH Smith.

Will it have any more figures?

Thirty-nine of their recordings have sold more than 10,000 copies digitally in the market with both Hey Jude and Let It Be having topped 80,000 download sales and Here Comes The Sun 70,000.

 

I hope Music Week confirm when Hey Jude passes the million mark (if it hasn't already). Andy on Haven estimates it sales to be 996k up to the end of August.

From printed version of Music Week.

 

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8035/8044117245_991dfd67d4_z.jpg

 

Also included are selected other artists.

 

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8176/8044115135_eca016d8ef.jpg