lastdecember said:

guess i wasn't paying attention to sales back then. i just recall our household having everything since the Prince album and it only got better from there. i learned later than "oversees audiences" appreciated good music more than we did in the US and i assumed that P's sales were good globally, (maybe thats just Europe and perhaps it shows up better in tour support, thus the Nude tour, SOTT, Lovesexy's sexy over there, and more recently the O2 run) and that they all went back and got everything before Purple Rain too. Dirty Mind just gold?! surprising.

Source?

sales mean NOTHING

The public are stupid and behave like sheep.

I'm sure it was said already, but Billboard has nothing to do with worldwide sales. They only have information about American sales, which they take from Nielsen SoundScan.

This list is made by a chart fan. Also, there's really no evidence that Thriller sold that much...

There are always discussions about what sold how much and given the diversity (and unreliability) of countries and methods involved in the tallying accurate figures are awkawrd to generate.

I have seen this exact list before and know of the guy who compiled it. He is a regular and very highly regarded contributer to the www.ukmix.org site.

This list has been pinched from his site http://fanofmusic.free.fr...orldAlbums and presented in it's entirity here.

Very cheekily somebody has infalted the Thriller sales by 10 million.

There is always one entry that helps gauge the overall accuracy and that it AC/DC's Back in Black. For some reason the completely inaccurate figure of 42 million is always bandied about and repeated ad nauseum. While it did sell vastly in the States (22 million), that figured represented the bulk of the total and a worldwide total of 32 million is a much more realistic figure.

wmccwmcc said:

You* have to remember, too, that many of these albums are still selling in large quantities, due to renewed interest in the artists/ discounted ("Mid-price") CD's etc..

Taking "Back In Black" as an example, I imagine it has shifted several thousand more copies in the last few months since they have been back on tour for the first time in 8 years and at a higher profile than they have had for as long as I can remember.




(* I don't mean "you" as in "wmccwmcc", I mean as in "One..")
[Edited 6/3/09 7:47am]

'Thriller' is listed in the Guiness book of World Records at 104m sold. I saw MJ get the certificate a couple of years back.

I dunno where they got the figure from. for years they listed it at 40/50m units sold.

Marrk said:

They still list it as having sold 55 million in that book.

Marrk said:

When you see figures like that it means they have included the album, singles, videos and anything else they can think of to make it appear it has sold more than it has. Basically it's a fib.

rocknrolldave said:

One of the reasons AC/DC have strong catalog sales because they don't have a definitive compilation hovering up sales. Although a compilation doesn't always mean the end of the back catalog (Beatles, Led Zep) there are plenty of exmaples where it does.

Here's a small chunk of the best selling albums in the States for 2009 Year to Date:

73 - 174,250 - GOLD-GREATEST HITS - Abba
74 - 171,522 - ISOULJABOYTELLEM - Soulja Boy Tell'em
75 - 169,922 - R.O.O.T.S. (ROUTE OF OVERCOMING THE STRUGGLE) - Flo Rida
76 - 162,080 - BLACK ICE - AC/DC
77 - 161,684 - SPIRIT - Leona Lewis
78 - 161,119 - EVOLVER - John Legend
79 - 159,484 - FOLIE A DEUX - Fall Out Boy
80 - 158,300 - GREATEST HITS - Guns N'Roses
81 - 156,500 - GREATEST HITS - Journey
82 - 155,807 - GOOD TIME - Alan Jackson
83 - 153,084 - UGK FOR LIFE - UGK
84 - 152,400 - LEGEND - Bob Marley & the Wailers

ABBA, Guns'n'Roses (albums pre C.D.), Journey and Bob Marley are all big sellers but I bet those are their only albums that have sold more than a couple of thousand this year.
[Edited 6/4/09 7:07am]

wmccwmcc said:

Another good point, agreed.

I'm not sure quite why Back In Black sells so much better than any of their other albums - maybe You Shook Me All Night Long is the song that everyone wants, and, as you say , there's not a compilation of ACDC songs with it on (not counting Who Made Who which was a kind of compilation in some ways, but wasn't really...)

Anyway, I shouldn't harp on about ACDC, cos that's not what this thread is about, but yeah, there are a lot of compilations in the overall best sellers list.