2 PAC
36.5

This is too good to be true!

TonyVanDam said:

Destiny's Child is on the list with 17.5 million sold.

The Spice Girls are also on the list with 11.0 million in sales.

tane1976 said:

Ur obviously not from the South....Alabama (the group) is quite big...





http://www.roughstock.com...urban.html

there is a write up on them that outlines their success....

reneGade20 said:

damn even they got a star and prince dont

You need to stop trolling the board.

TonyVanDam said:

correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't the list reflect US Sales only? I know that on a global scale, MJ is probably top 2 or 3 if not #1 just on the strenght of Thriller's sales....

ccollin88 said:

HEY U!! I just posted that because someone questioned the existence of a group that is quite famous...not to bash P-man.....

PurpleCharm said:

No wonder. The names were at the bottom. My bad again.

reneGade20 said:

Alabama!!!! Where have YOU been!

GRATEFUL DEAD
17.5

THIS is very wrong. Most of their career albums were free of charge.

The Dead only made money from live shows.
[Edited 7/21/06 20:18pm]

namepeace said:

I don't understand what you're saying. Edu's estimates actually err on the low-side, but are way more than the RIAA list, mostly because they list all the albums that didn't even reach gold or platinum and the figures between. And yet the RIAA list 'shouldn't' be rough, because they are the institute who hand out the Gold, Platinum discs so they should be keeping an eye on figures, but from the figures you would have though Prince would have more gold and platinum awards.

I don't know, maybe it is one of those things were they list 'Prince' and his Symbol name as too different artists and haven't added the 2 together, that might account for his missing awards.

TonyVanDam said:

dude mj sold well yes,but he just didnt sell more than madonna.thriller sold more than any lp except for the eagles greatest hits.and they have had way more lps that sold more than all the other mj lps.madonna has had about 15 albums,2 have gone diamond and all but 2 have gone multi platinum.this is compared mjs 7 lps.now this is not sayin mike didnt sell well,but there are many others that sold more than him.u.s and worldwide

DavidEye said:

Barbra has more released albums than Madge and Boriah!


I'm shocked you don't know this!

Barbra was huge in the 60 & 70's!

TonyVanDam said:

Free of charge!!!

What's that tony?

um, u hav 2 remember that record companies need to send there data to the riaa, this is done through auditing of record sales. This hasnt happened to princes catalogue in years, and the 39m total doesnt include anything released independently or even the musicology / 3121 sales, therefore u can up the 39m by a considerable amount.

as 4 mj, the only albums audited are off the wall thro 2 invincible, and he hasnt been recertified since 2001.

I would think the Jackson 5/Jacksons would be on that list.

FunkyBrotha said:

Interesting, but how do the record companies themselves know how many records have been actually sold? Sure, they will know how many albums have been pressed and shipped, but that doesn't mean they actually get sold to someone, I'm sure world-wide there are plenty of unsold albums sitting on shelves or in record store storage. They only way they would know how many have actually been sold would be to go to a company like Soundscan - and they only started in '92 plus I heard it is reckoned they miss 5% of sales (probably through small stores, etc, they don't cover).

Seems strange those companies wouldn't be annually auditing sales anyway. Another problem would surely be where an artist is on more than one label, if the record companies themselves are sending the data, you may get one that is uptodate and another that is years behind leading to misleading figures.

As I've said before, there doesn't seem to be any de facto way to get accurate figures, only estimates.

khemseraph said:

WRONG!!!

It's true that The Eagles Greatest Hits Vol.1 sold about 1.2 million copies more in the USA that Michael Jackson Thriller. But worldwide, Thriller sold way more than ANY of The Eagles' career albums!


Also, you STILL have to count Michael's career with the Jackson 5/The Jacksons is order to get the exactly number of career albums sold.

[Edited 7/23/06 20:05pm]

TonyVanDam said:

Perhaps you missed the part about this list being only U.S. sales. In the U.S., Michael simply hasn't sold more albums than any of the artists listed above him. Michael hasn't released that many albums, and outside of Off The Wall, Thriller, and Bad, none of them sold a great deal. I mean Dangerous, HIStory, and Invincible went multi-platinum, but they weren't massive like his previous albums. For U.S. sales, that list is accurate. MJ fans need to accept the fact that he is not the all-time sales champ. More Americans bought Garth Brooks albums than MJ albums.

And all of Prince's certifications are basically up to date. In his "Ask Billboard" column, Billboard staff writer Keith Caulfield said earlier this year that, apart from The Very Best Of Prince, Prince's back catalogue hasn't moved many units over the last few years. At least not enough to change his certifications. I appreciate the work Edu put into his findings but honestly I think he grossly inflated a lot of the numbers. 39 million is about right for Prince's total US sales. I don't know why people here are dismissing the RIAA and Soundscan over a fan list based on "best guesses" (no disrespect to Edu intended).

PurpleCharm said:

And I think WB must be VERY happy with Prince - considering that out of the 39 million sales about 36 million are under the WB label... not bad for a label to have an artist like this....

renfield said:

Well, 39 million is the total based entirely on Gold and Platinum awards, of reaching at least 500k or 1million sales. So an album could have sold 499k and not get a Gold award! Or an album could have sold 1,999,999 and not get a double Platinum award! The point being that the RIAA figures are the absolute minimum, they don't add on the inbetween figures or sales of albums that didn't make 500k. With the amount of albums Prince has put out, you can easily see that there are millions of extra sales not accounted for in the RIAA list.

Edu's estimations take on the RIAA figures and estimates the inbetween figures. For instance, Lovesexy has only a Gold award, 500k, in the USA, but various publications reported figures at the end of that year of it selling around 900,000. Of course albums continue to sell, although more slowly, over the years. From yearly soundscan figures, Edu estimated it has since sold 60,000 copies - I don't think that is too unreasonable over 17 years! Giving a US total of 960,000. I don't think that is 'grossly inflated' at all - but it is only an estimation, a ball-park figure, it could be higher or lower or just right.

On the RIAA website you can look up the awards for yourself. These are the albums with awards:

For You - none
Prince - Platinum 1m
Dirty Mind - Gold 500k
Controversy - Platinum 1m
1999 - 4 x Platinum 4m
Purple Rain - 13 x Platinum 13m
ATWIAD - 2 x Platinum 2m
Parade - Platinum 1m
Sign O' The Times - Platinum 1m
Lovesexy - Gold 500k
Batman - 2 x Platinum 2m
Graffiti Bridge - Gold 500k
Diamonds & Pearls - 2 x Platinum 2m
Symbol - 1 x Platinum 1m
The Hits/The B-sides - Platinum 1m
The Hits1 - Platinum 1m
The HIts2 - Platinum 1m
Come - Gold 500k
The Black Album - none
The Gold Experience - Gold 500k
Chaos & Disorder - none
Emancipation - 2 x Platinum 2m
Crystal Ball - none
Newpower Soul - none
The Vault - none
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic - gold 500k
The Very Best Of Prince - Platinum 1m
The Rainbow Children - none
Musicology - 2 x Platinum 2m

Which comes to 39 million, as in the RIAA list. You can see that For You, The Black Album, Chaos & Disorder, Crystal Ball, Newpower Soul, The Vault, The Rainbow Children, One Nite Alone Live and NEWS do not have an award. Did they sell zero? Of course not, between them must add upto a few million at least. I don't think Edu's figure of 48 million is that far off, taking all that into account - and he didn't even add on the 1 million of Musicology concert giveaways and or the tripling up of Emancipation.

TonyVanDam said:

You can have those if Prince can have all the albums he's worked on as a group member - Madhouse, The Time, Sheila E., NPG, Vanity 6 etc.

The list includes all Michael's solo projects. If you want to include albums when he was in a band, then you might as well clump all of John, Paul, George and Ringo's solo efforts on top of the Beatles figure, or indeed any of the other artists in the list who broke off from a band and released solo albums.

metalorange said:

I still think it's a little inflated. Lovesexy most likely has not sold 60,000 copies since 1989. Keith Caulfield posted some of Prince's back catalogue sales numbers since 1991 (when Soundscan started keeping track) and they aren't much. I admit, I too thought his back albums would have sold a lot over the years, but other than Purple Rain, they really haven't. Most people checking his work nowadays just go for the hits. I think Purple Rain sells around 3,000 copies a year...and the other albums are significantly less than that.

And album doesn't have to sell 500,000 copies to be certified gold, it has to ship that many. If Lovesexy had sold 900,000 copies it would have been certified platinum, because at least a million would have been sent to stores.

Prince hasn't sold as many copies of his back catalogue over the last 15 years as we all might think, unfortunately. And the albums that aren't certified at all...several of them (Crystal Ball, ONA, etc) sold less than 200,000 copies. Even added together, they don't contribute a whole lot to the total.

metalorange said:

sorry, metalorange. i was speaking about MY rough estimates I listed. Not anyone else's. I'd tend to believe Prince has sold somewhere around 40-50 million albums in the US, from For You to 3121.
[Edited 7/24/06 9:44am]
[Edited 7/24/06 9:44am]

renfield said:

Well, I shouldn't be defending Edu's numbers on his behalf, but I think he's close to the accepted figures on all the albums and add them together and that is the figure you get.

As for Lovesexy, it's fact that it's classed as Gold in the US, 500k or more. I don't see that it is out of the realms of possibility that it sold (or shipped) a few 100k more than that - in fact Edu gets his information from various articles that indicated Billboard figures of 900,000, and that's as much as anyone has to go on.

Edu actually uses the Keith Caulfield 'Ask Billboard' figures you mention - being given a figure of 68k from '92 to '05 for sales of Lovesexy, so obviously old Prince albums sell better than you realise! Edu uses the Soundscan figures and that info to come to his totals. Due to an overlap in time, Edu actually took off 8k which might have been included with the original 900k - to get a conservative total of 960,000 for Lovesexy.

Anyway, an official 39 million plus an extra 400k there, a 100k there, it quickly adds upto well into the 40s by any stretch of the imagination.

Oh, and at least according to Edu's reading of the Soundscan figures, Purple Rain sells around 100k a year in the US not the 3k you suggest! But I haven't personally seen these Keith Caulfield figures that have been mentioned.
[Edited 7/24/06 9:11am]

metalorange said:

Yes. But only NPG (which were Prince albums anyway) and Madhouse. Prince was a member of these 2 bands.

And yes, Paul McCartney's career albums sales are the highest of ANY artist, USA or Worldwide.

All I saying is if anyone is going to make a list of biggest career albums sales, they need to be more specific. As far as I'm concern, THAT list is a little off.

PurpleCharm said:

Definately its Volume of Albums for Prince I mean he's Hasn't been fighting for Top 100 since his last big hit "most Beautiful girl in the world" you know he doesn't care its all about the Art of Music for him pure Musicianship and I totally apreciate that in him. 7 = God bless

metalorange said:

Glad you put out that list of albums because I want to get tha ones I don't have Thks

metalorange, by my count, his album releases (not including Hits/B-Sides, the Girl 6 Soundtrack, and the Very Best Of) have sold a shade over 41 million, based on the figures you presented.