i was on a website looking up worldwide sales and ran across prince.


1 The Beatles 1BB
2 Elvis Presley 1BB
3 ABBA ~260,000,000
4 Cliff Richard ~260,000,000
5 Madonna ~250,000,000
6 Michael Jackson ~250,000,000
7 Nana Mouskouri ~250,000,000
8 Mariah Carey ~215,000,000
9 Celine Dion ~215,000,000
10 Elton John ~215,000,000
11 The Rolling Stones ~210,000,000
12 Garth Brooks ~210,000,000
13 Led Zeppelin ~200,000,000
14 Julio Iglesias ~200,000,000
15 Tom Jones ~200,000,000
16 Whitney Houston ~185,000,000
17 AC/DC ~184,000,000
18 Paul McCartney ~175,000,000
19 Genesis ~160,000,000
20 Phil Collins ~155,000,000
21 U2 ~150,000,000
22 E. Humperdinck ~130,000,000
23 Guns N' Roses ~120,000,000
24 Chicago ~120,000,000
25 The Eagles ~120,000,000
26 Wei Wei ~120,000,000
27 Neil Diamond ~120,000,000
28 Modern Talking ~120,000,000
29 Prince ~*120,000,000
30 The Bee Gees 110,000,000
31 Bon Jovi ~110,000,000
32 R.E.M. ~110,000,000
33 Pink Floyd ~105,000,000
34 Janet Jackson ~105,000,000
35 Kenny Rogers ~105,000,000
36 Barbra Streisand ~100,000,000
37 Mireille Mathieu ~100,000,000
38 Alla Pugacheva ~100,000,000
39 David Bowie ~100,000,000
40 Johnny Mathis ~100,000,000
41 Black Sabbath ~100,000,000
42 Ricky Nelson ~100,000,000
43 Luciano Pavarotti ~100,000,000
44 Brenda Lee ~100,000,000
45 A. R. Rahman ~100,000,000
46 OmPrakash ~100,000,000
47 Illayaraja ~100,000,000
48 Barry White ~100,000,000
49 Deep Purple ~100,000,000
50 Lionel Richie ~100,000,000
51 Dolly Parton ~100,000,000
52 Rod Stewart ~100,000,000
53 Aerosmith ~100,000,000
54 Billy Joel ~100,000,000
55 Marianne James ~100,000,000
56 Fleetwood Mac ~100,000,000
57 Johnny Hallyday ~100,000,000
58 Charles Aznavour ~100,000,000
59 Oscar Peterson ~100,000,000
60 Bruce Springsteen ~96,000,000
61 Def Leppard ~90,000,000
62 Bob Dylan ~90,000,000
63 The Ventures ~90,000,000
64 Earth, Wind & Fire 90,000,000
65 B'z ~86,000,000
66 Eddy Arnold 85,000,000
67 Jean-Michel Jarre ~80,000,000
68 Brtiney Spears ~80,000,000
69 Eurythmics ~80,000,000
70 KISS ~90,000,000
71 Linda Ronstadt ~80,000,000
72 Santana ~80,000,000
73 Dalida ~80,000,000
74 Metallica ~80,000,000
75 Salvatore Adamo ~80,000,000
Note: Stats are approximates for end of 2005. Stats are from sales estimates from Wikipedia

Damn, shoulda bought 2 copies of 3121 and Prince would have been on 23.

Btw who is Wei Wei????

Something is seriously wrong here!

Guns has sold as many records as Prince..I can't believe that..
Guns has only made 3 Real albums..

Please don't believe in everything that it's written in Wikipedia...
This list can't be trusted...

As i posted before Prince sold between 80 and 85 million albums worldwide.
Please follow the links below

http://www.prince.org/msg/7/189511

http://www.prince.org/msg/7/182470

yeah, this list seems to be massively inflated in almost, if not every, case.

For starters, since it says worldwide sales, it probably includes singles as well as albums. Plus there are some weird omissions and inclusions. Much as i dig 'em, is no way the Eurythmics has sold 80 million albums!

What the hell is 1BB ???

calin said:

I assume it means 1 billion (i.e. one thousand million).

Not sure why there are two Bs though. Unless it was 1 Billion Billion, which is I believe a squizillion.

28 Modern Talking ~120,000,000
29 Prince ~*120,000,000


Modern Talking!!!???

Edu said:

u have For You as having to gone gold and Dirty Mind as platinum and Parade as double platinum...so I mean yours seem a lil inflated as well..seeung as how these particular lps haven't reached those sales in the u.s. according to riaa.plus maybe those stats reflect world wide sales not just the uk.and u.s.a.we seem to forget there are other countries that buy music besides those two.anyway i thought it was interesting so thats why i posted.

leonciolm said:

Prince beat Pink Floyd.
I doubt it!!!
Dark Side Of The Moon must have sold a bazziliongilliontrillion copies.

this list is so wrong its practically outrageous and laughable, for starters mariah carey has not sold 215million records, she's barely sold half that. the beatles and elvis have not sold 1billion records, its simply not possible, there are no official sources within the recording industry which have indicated sales of that length. Let us bear in mind that the worlds four largest markets the u.s., the u.k., germany and france have a combined population of 480million people. other markets are relatively minor in importance and therefore that would suggest that every single human being in those countries have bought at least two elvis records and two beatles records. NOT REALISTIC, i dont even know anyone that owns an elvis record.

Secondly, on the other hand, MJ's record sales are grossly under-exaggerated. The official sales for mjs biggest albums are pretty common knowledge how could u get it wrong. Off the Wall 18million Thriller 59million Bad 31million Dangerous 32million History 19million (38m single albums) Invincible 10million, Blood 7million Number Ones 7 million. Thats over 200million based on his solo major albums alone, adding on singles, minor albums, his jacksons and jackson 5 stuff you get a figure closer to 400million.

Thirdly, if u sit down and do this with madonna's albums u get a figure no where near 250million!

Hi khemseraph

well, what i can say is the following:

i have been searching and collecting information about record sales (and especially about Prince's sales) for 20 years now. Since i had acess to the net (more than 10 years ago) i have also exchanged a lot of informations with guys a bit all over the world, people interested in these stuff of best selling albums like me. this is only to show that i don't post things just to call attention.

in order for you (and anybody interested) to understand why i say that "Parade" can be certified 2xPlatinum in USA (for more than 2 million copies SHIPPED to the stores) you must try to understand the following:

1) RIAA only certifies an album IF AND ONLY IF the label (Warner in this example) ask for an audition to their shipping documents. unless there is this specific request RIAA by itself doesn't do nothing in order to discover how many copies of an album were sold to the retailers.
so the true shipments of an album (it's "official" sales from the label's point of view) are NOT necessarily reflected on the RIAA certifications database, and sadly this happens a lot.
a prime example is the soundtrack "Grease": was certified for 8 million copies shipped in 1984 (22 years ago!), and according to Soundscan (organisation which counts sales to the public AND NOT shipments) this soundtrack sold 5,375,000 copies since January 1991 and according to BMG Record Club an additional 899,000 copies were sold through mail order (this are USA sales). so, at least 6,274,000 copies of "Grease" are not reflected on the RIAA certification for this album, and it's still missing all the eventual sales between 1984 and 1991.
right now i know that "Grease" could be (and should be) certified for 14xPlatinum, but for some unknow reason the label till the present didn't apply for such certification (curiously the label did it for the other 70's classic soundtrack "Saturday Night Fever", certified 15xPlatinum in 1999).
so, RIAA says a lot but doesn't say the whole story...

2) back in 1992, both in "Billboard" and "Minneapolis Star Tribune", articles were published with Prince's album sales. that's why i know that "Parade" sold, by the end of 1992, 1.85 million copies OUTSIDE USA and 1.9 million in USA.
i also know, because it was posted in Billboard Online, in reply to an email i sent them, that "Parade", according to Soundscan, sold in US 230,000 copies since 1991.
it's simple mathematics to guess that "Parade" shipments must be over the 2 million mark by now
obviously you can disagree, but for me and many other charts "freaks", who spend hours and years in search of data, the 2 million sales in America of "Parade" are a kind of fact

feel free to ask me any question you wish regarding sales and Prince's sales in particular

cheers