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.
Possible biases of this page
- Bias towards acts who have had success in the United States of America. Though on the one hand the USA provides the largest music markets in the world, the RIAA, which records sales figures in the country, has been accused of deliberately certifying certain American artists' records (and other Western acts who have been successful there) in order to boost their sales position [citation needed].
- Bias towards modern artists. There are three reasons behind this. The first two concern the fact that comparatively less successful modern artists will have sold more records, as both global spending power and population have increased. In 1950, the world's population was 2.5 billion; by 2000 it had risen to 6 billion [1]. When selling over 0.25 billion records - as is claimed for several artists - these figures make a notable difference, although most of the population resides in poorer countries who buy less music than richer countries. Thirdly, older artists suffer from bias as their record sales are less likely to have been noted down; equally, this could cause vaguer estimates and figures to be the only available data.
- Fan sites, press articles, certification authorities and record companies are also accused of inflating record sales for publicity reasons.
- Certain artists who have sold millions of albums over their career, will be excluded from the list. George Michael, for example, does not appear, despite claims for over 80 million record sales [2], as he achieved fewer than fifty million as Wham!, and fewer than fifty million as 'George Michael'.
World's best seller
The actual best selling musician in the world will probably never be known. Records of sales in many countries, particularly in the developing world, are poor and date back less than 20 years. The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Elvis Presley are all, however, regularly cited as being the top sellers. Less common claims are made for a number of other artists though these are usually taken as less valid.
Artists claimed to have sold 200 million records or more
- In alphabetical order
ABBA Sweden 70s-80s Rock/Pop/Schlager [3][4] Alla Pugacheva Russia 70s-00s Pop [5] The Beatles UK 60s-70s Rock/Pop Guinness estimate [6] [7] Bing Crosby U.S. 20s-70s Pop (Traditional) [8] Chubby Checker U.S. 60s-00s Pop/R&B [9] [10] Cliff Richard UK 50s-00s Pop [11] Elton John UK 70s-00s Piano Rock [12] Elvis Presley U.S. 50s-70s Rock'N'Roll/Pop/Country/Gospel [13] [14][15] Frank Sinatra U.S. 30s-90s Pop (Traditional) [16] Julio Iglesias Spain 70s-00s Pop (Latin) [17] Led Zeppelin UK 60s-80s Hard Rock/Blues Rock [18] Madonna U.S. 80s-00s Pop/Dance/Electronica [19] Mariah Carey U.S. 90s-00s Pop/R&B [20] Michael Jackson U.S. 60s-00s Pop/R&B/Rock/Disco/Soul/Hip Hop/Standards [21][22] Nana Mouskouri Greece 60s-00s Pop [23][24] Queen UK 70s-00s Arena/Glam/Heavy Metal/Progressive Rock [25] Tino Rossi France 30s-80s Pop [26]
Artists claimed to have sold 100 million records or more
This list of songs or music-related items is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. |
Artists claimed to have sold 50 million records or more
This list of songs or music-related items is incomplete; you can help by adding missing items. |
![[189]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/2/25/SpiceSalesFeb2000.JPG){kind=link}
Notes
- 1 Source states that Mark Knopfler's total career sales are 105 million albums. Removing his solo work, this places Dire Straits in the 50 million plus category