Jump to content

Featured Replies

Posted

From here.

 

Worldwide sales

1. Sgt Pepper’s lonely Hearts Club Band (1967) – 32 million copies sold

2. Abbey Road (1969) – 19.9 million copies sold

3. The White Album (1968) – 14 million copies sold

4. Rubber Soul (1966) – 8.6 million copies sold

5. Revolver (1966) – 7.2 million copies sold

6. Magical Mystery Tour (1967) – 7 million copies sold

7. Let It Be (1970) – 6 million copies sold

8. A Hard Day’s Night (1964) – 5.4 million copies sold

9. Help! (1965) – 4.4 million copies sold

10. Please, Please Me (1963) – 1.7 million copies sold

11. Beatles For Sale (1964) – 1.4 million copies sold

12. Yellow Submarine (1969) – 1.25 million copies sold

13. With The Beatles (1963) – 1.1 million copies sold

 

Where does sales data come from?

1) Most of the sales figures on this site are based on certifications. Please note that in many countries the certification includes a unit of measure equivalent to an album.

 

2) Music labels and artists official web sites. May include old versions of sites available via Web Archive (Wayback Machine).

 

3) Musical magazines*and sites and local publications. Music magazines are: Music Week, Billboard, Music & Media, Cash Box and others. Here you can find a large archive of old music magazines – World Radio History (in some countries access only through a proxy server). Local publications – news sites sites of various countries (Australian The Sydney Morning Herald, turkish Milliyet, danish BT Magazine, etc.). On these sites you can find information about certification or sales.

 

4) Nielsen Soundscan and charts figures. Nielsen Soundscan figures are used to more accurately determine sales levels in the US and Canada. For Korea and Japan, data published in the charts is used.

 

5) Spotify and VK Music. Used only to estimate the sales of Russian-language artists. 1500 streams are equivalent to 1 album.

 

6) Discogs and Meshok to estimate circulation in the USSR.

 

Why might the sales figures on our website be underestimated?

Our site relies mainly on certificates – this is a reliable source, but you may encounter some other problems.

 

1) certification has not been updated for a long time

 

2) album was never certified

 

3) certification roughly reflects real sales, but could be between levels

 

4) no certification in the country or appeared not so long ago.

 

 

Also from here.

 

Top 73 best selling Beatles albums worldwide and all their certifications in each country.

Edited by ben08

  • Replies 3
  • Views 989
  • Created
  • Last Reply

Top Posters In This Topic

  • Author

But based on certifications which need to be updated.

 

Need to add on 1 (32m), Red album (13.2m), Blue album (14.4m), Love (8m), Anthology 1 (7.2m), Live at the BBC (5m), Meet the Beatles (5.2m) and Hey Jude album (3.6m).

 

And numerous other million selling albums which you can see here.

  • Author

The web site gives a total of 214,289,694.

 

Many certs need to be updated, especially in US.

Many sales for albums between cert levels.

 

Around 300m would be a good estimate.

 

The 1 billion claim is based on units, where 1 album = 6 units (as used by The Guinness Book of Records, trying to compare with singles sales).

 

Create an account or sign in to comment

Recently Browsing 0

  • No registered users viewing this page.