Best Selling Artists Ever.

I love statistics, so here's a list over the best selling artists in music history.

Artists That Have Sold 250 million Records Or More

- ABBA
- Alla Pugacheva
- The Beatles
- Bing Crosby
- Chubby Checker
- Cliff Richard
- Elton John
- Elvis Presley
- Frank Sinatra
- Julio Iglesias
- Led Zeppelin
- Madonna
- Michael Jackson
- Nana Mouskouri
- Queen
- Tino Rossi

Artists That Have Sold 100 Million Records Or More

- AC/DC
- Aerosmith
- Gene Autry
- Charles Aznavour
- The Beach Boys
- The Bee Gees
- Black Sabbath
- Bon Jovi
- David Bowie
- Garth Brooks
- Mariah Carey
- The Carpenters
- Chicago
- Phil Collins
- Perry Como
- Creedence Clearwater Revival
- Deep Purple
- Neil Diamond
- Celine Dion
- Fats Domino
- Eagles
- Fleetwood Mac
- Genesis
- Johnny Hallyday
- Whitney Houston
- The Jacksons
- Joni James
- Billy Joel
- Frankie Laine
- Vicky Leandros
- Brenda Lee
- Mireille Mathieu
- Johnny Mathis
- Modern Talking
- Ricky Nelson
- Patti Page
- Dolly Parton
- Luciano Pavarotti
- Pink Floyd
- A. R. Rahman
- Prince
- Lionel Richie
- Kenny Rogers
- Rolling Stones
- The Royal Canadians
- Rod Stewart
- Barbra Streisand
- Donna Summer
- U2
- Dionne Warwick
- Wei Wei
- Barry White
- The Who
- Stevie Wonder

Where's Jimmy Buffett? He's sold way over 250 million records =(

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Originally Posted by StarChild

Where's Jimmy Buffett? He's sold way over 250 million records =(

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Oh, I doubt that. Since he wasn't on the list, I doubt he's sold that amount.

Only a handful of artists have sold over 250 million records.

Where's MetallicA? I'm sure I heard they've sold 90+

And there's AC/DC! love 'em to DEATH :hat:

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Originally Posted by Chris

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Originally Posted by StarChild

Where's Jimmy Buffett? He's sold way over 250 million records =(

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Oh, I doubt that. Since he wasn't on the list, I doubt he's sold that amount.

Only a handful of artists have sold over 250 million records.

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*sad face* that makes me sad...

oh well I'm over it :D

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Originally Posted by StarChild

Where's Jimmy Buffett? He's sold way over 250 million records =(

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Actually no. He RECORDED 250 million records. He only sold about 36 of them.

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Originally Posted by Spaceman Spiff

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Originally Posted by StarChild

Where's Jimmy Buffett? He's sold way over 250 million records =(

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Actually no. He MADE 250 million records. He only sold about 36 of them.

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and my dad owns those 36 ^__^

There's actually a third list, but it is WAY TOO BIG to post:

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Artists That Have Sold 50 Million Records Or More

- Metallica

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Metellica is on that list.

:)

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The world's best-selling music artists cannot be listed officially, as there is no organization that has recorded global music sales in the manner that the RIAA does in the United States. This page lists those artists who have made claims to be among the top sellers. Within their sales brackets, artists are listed in alphabetical order, rather than by number of records sold. Equal weight is given to album and single sales, as well as paid downloads. Sources are typically fan sites, record labels, newspaper articles or manual addition of figures from various official sources. This means that these figures should be considered claims, not facts.

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I think John Denver is at 60 million or so, James Taylor at 35. I do take pride in that JD's Greatest Hits was only the third album ever to sell 10 million copies. He also was the best-selling artist of 1975. Unfortunately, folk artists have never sold too well for whatever reason. Ah, well.

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Originally Posted by Kirobaito

I think John Denver is at 60 million or so, James Taylor at 35. I do take pride in that JD's Greatest Hits was only the third album ever to sell 10 million copies. He also was the best-selling artist of 1975. Unfortunately, folk artists have never sold too well for whatever reason. Ah, well.

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Folk artists don't sell well because it is not "popular music" same with classical. It is populist ... but not popular, and for that I do not understand why it sells so very little.

Are the artists posted in random order becaue it would be interesting to know the best selling artist in the world is... and somehow I doubt it is ABBA.

And all this tells you is that popularity and musical quality are by no means correlated...

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Originally Posted by Breine

Are the artists posted in random order becaue it would be interesting to know the best selling artist in the world is... and somehow I doubt it is ABBA.

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The artists are listed alphabetically.

Awww, no Grace Jones. :(

Good.

:(!

Michael Jackson is the best selling artist world-wide, I've read that before. But I'm surprised The Eagles aren't on the 250 million, their Best Of album was supposedly the best selling album in all of the US? I don't think the list is too accurate.

Music sales are very hard to document - it's known that Thriller by Michael Jackson is the biggest selling album ever for instance but after that about five or six albums are mentioned by different sources as being in 2nd place (The Eagles and Pink Floyd for instance) and it all gets very muddled.

I'm suprised Nsync isn't on that list. With that whole craze of them and they're No Strings Attached album they had going in the 90's.

I'm surprised U2 didn't make the 250 million list.

wtg Dolly Parton!

And Dionne Warwick? wtf :O

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Originally Posted by fire_of_avalon

And Dionne Warwick? wtf :O

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You obviously don't know a damn thing about Dionne! >O :D

Dionne has had over 60 Top 100 records in her 45-year career and has sold over 100 million records worldwide. She's won over ten Grammy Awards, and many of the Bacharach standards that exist today, where made famous by Dionne in the 60's.

:D