SoundScan Era - USA's Best Selling Artists and Albums

[HolidayGuy]

Grease is the strongest weekly seller in the 95-100 range, so it could inch past some ahead of it.

[phoenix83]

Yes! We get updated SS figures for 3 albums whose last sales updates we had was in 2008!!

I wish they would give an update for Come On Over!

[thebigham]

^Why? We got an updated total in May for it.

Paul Grein for the 7/14/12 charts:

Led Zeppelin has sold 24,561,000 albums since 1991.

[HolidayGuy]

^Exactly- and it's not like it's selling a heckuva lot, in the wake of the release of Twain's Greatest Hits. A note about the mid-year info: Hunger Games has scanned 402K, not 415K.

[phoenix83]

^Why? We got an updated total in May for it.

er.....because it's 2nd on the list. They should (IMHO) update the top sellers every week. No reason for them to be doing it for JLP but not COO.

[Wayne]

^Why? We got an updated total in May for it.

er.....because it's 2nd on the list. They should (IMHO) update the top sellers every week. No reason for them to be doing it for JLP but not COO.

But Come On Over sells considerably less than 1,000 copies each week - what on Earth would be the point of updating its tally each week?

[phoenix83]

^Why? We got an updated total in May for it.

er.....because it's 2nd on the list. They should (IMHO) update the top sellers every week. No reason for them to be doing it for JLP but not COO.

But Come On Over sells considerably less than 1,000 copies each week - what on Earth would be the point of updating its tally each week?

Maybe I'm looking at this from the wrong perspective, but presumably they have the exact figures for all albums every week, so why not just update them every week? It almost seems like more effort to exclude some albums which are not selling much.

And to answer your question: for exact accuracy.

[Wayne]

But it'll never happen, thankfully - accuracy isn't a good enough reason to justify such a request, when the album could be selling in the low hundreds per week.

[thebigham]

No one here has access to weekly SoundScan figures for all albums.

We can only update the totals based on the leaked SoundScan charts each week.

Do I really have to explain this???

[thebigham]

I wish we had the exact SS sales for albums #101-#200 each week, but it's impossible and I am not going to ask for it. Hello...

[phoenix83]

But it'll never happen, thankfully - accuracy isn't a good enough reason to justify such a request, when the album could be selling in the low hundreds per week.

Basically in an ideal world* Soundscan would update all the figures every week, make them public, and we would know what the exact sales totals were. Even if the album in question had sold just 1 more copy that week.

* I know, we don't live in one. And I wasn't criticizing anyone here who gathers such data - sorry if that was the implication. I do appreciate these lists being updated weekly.

[EdWood]

At least we do get a lot of album sales information from Soundscan especially Catalog sales. Imagine if we could get this in the UK.

The amount of UK album sales info is limited compared to that from America sadly..

[phoenix83]

At least we do get a lot of album sales information from Soundscan especially Catalog sales. Imagine if we could get this in the UK.

The amount of UK album sales info is limited compared to that from America sadly..

Oh yeah, I would love to have those as well.

Specifically the precise current total for (What's The Story) Morning Glory?

[NothingFails]

From Chart Watch:

Usher's 2004 album Confessions tops the 10 million mark in U.S. sales this week. It's only the 19th album to reach that milestone since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking sales for Billboard in 1991. Confessions is the best-selling R&B album in this period (excluding hip hop). Here's the rest of the top five among R&B albums: Boyz II Men's II (8,586,000), TLC's CrazySexyCool (7,342,000), Janet Jackson's janet. (7,035,000) and Boyz II Men's Cooleyhighharmony (6,971,000).

So Mariah's "Music box" and "Daydream" are considered pop instead of R&B

Butterfly was when Mariah started being viewed more as a predominant r&b artist... during Music Box/Daydream, she kinda fit more in that Adult Contemporary vein that Celine, Whitney, Gloria Estefan, Amy Grant and others were geared towards in the mid-90s... it was one of the main reasons she lost such a huge chunk of fans with Butterfly because the Celine/Michael Bolton crowd was turned off to it (in fairness Whitney lost this crowd too with My Love Is Your Love but she gained a lot of younger urban fans as well as dance fans, so it balanced out)

[WolfSpear]

http://www.billboard.com/news/usher-s-c ... ost_recent

So... how exactly does Alanis pull ahead of Shania?

[thebigham]

^They fixed it.

Albums With 10 Million in U.S. Sales, 1991-Present
Artist Title (Year) Sales To Date*

1 Metallica Metallica (1991)
15.79 million
2 Shania Twain Come On Over (1997) 15.52 million
3 Alanis Morissette Jagged Little Pill (1995) 14.75 million
4 Backstreet Boys Millennium (1999)
12.19 million
5 The Beatles 1 (2000)
12.07 million
6 Whitney Houston/ Soundtrack The Bodyguard (1992)
12.03 million
7 Santana Supernatural (1999)
11.73 million
8 Creed Human Clay (1999)
11.59 million
9 'N Sync No Strings Attached (2000)
11.13 million
10 Bob Marley & the Wailers Legend (1984)
11.06 million**
11 Norah Jones Come Away With Me (2002)
10.85 million
12 Celine Dion
Falling Into You (1996)
10.79 million
13 Eminem The Marshall Mathers LP (2000)
10.61 million
14 Britney Spears . . .Baby One More Time (1999)
10.55 million
15 Hootie & the Blowfish Cracked Rear View (1994)
10.27 million
16 Soundtrack Titanic (1997)
10.17 million
17 Backstreet Boys Backstreet Boys (1997)
10.12 million
18 Eminem The Eminem Show (2002)
10.08 million
19 Usher Confessions (2004)
10.00 million

*SOURCE: NIELSEN SOUNDSCAN,
sales through the week ending July 1, 2012
**11.06 million between 1991-present; earlier sales not included

[FliplovesMC]

But it'll never happen, thankfully - accuracy isn't a good enough reason to justify such a request, when the album could be selling in the low hundreds per week.

So true, movement of a couple of hundred copies a week is not as significant, take The Bodyguard Sdtk as a perfect example. Before Whitney's death, that album was stuck at 11.8~mil with barely detectable yearly sales. Only after her death did it move another about 200k more that it finally crossed the 12mil threshold, which even now has slowed down, at least until that Whitney movie comes out, hopefully.

[TIfan]

Don't forget they could celebrate 20 years of the bodyguard as well.

[M2M]

Supernatural was at 11.772 at the start of the year. How did it lose numbers?

[GUS argentino78]

Great numbers! I guess "21" will become the 20th album to sell 10 million!

[thebigham]

Linkin Park and Pearl Jam should also hit 10 million scanned this year.

[FliplovesMC]

Linkin Park and Pearl Jam should also hit 10 million scanned this year.

Linkin Park is more likely to make this year especially since they are more prominent with a new album and all but I do hope Pearl Jam gets there this year too. However, with the way it's selling, it might take about 35 weeks or so.

[GUS argentino78]

Linkin Park and Pearl Jam should also hit 10 million scanned this year.

Linkin Park is more likely to make this year especially since they are more prominent with a new album and all but I do hope Pearl Jam gets there this year too. However, with the way it's selling, it might take about 35 weeks or so.

Yes, "Hybrid theory" will be the next 10 million seller:
27 78 65 13 LINKIN PARK HYBRID THEORY 4497 88 2395 9,978,074

We'll see who reaches that treshold next. Curiously both contenders' albums names are numbers, "Ten" or "21".

Soon 7 million for Queen!!!
27 64 31 5 QUEEN GREATEST HITS 6973 112 3291 6,987,307

...and 9 million for Nirvana!!!
42 180 185 170 NIRVANA NEVERMIND 1479 -3 1528 8,992,955

[GUS argentino78]

EMINEM MARSHALL MATHERS LP

Soundscan: 10,614,347
BMG club sales: 1,540,000

TOTAL: 12,154,347

Plus the unknown figure from Columbia house

This album is still undercertified... should be 12 or 13 platinum

[thebigham]

Linkin Park and Pearl Jam should also hit 10 million scanned this year.

And Adele!