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The list is frequently edited in good faith; however, sales figures published by reliable sources may need to be verified with certification databases to avoid inflated figures. Albums without sufficient certifications to support published claimed figures may not be added to the list. Editors should expect all albums' claimed figures be supported by the following specified amount of certified units. To be on this list, albums must have:
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The sales seem incredibly inflated, Nielsen Soundscan reported that the album had sold less than 1 million from 1993-1995 in the United States but it recieved certifications for 8 million. From 1991 to 2006 Nielsen said it had sold 5 million during that period despite the fact it recieved certifications for 17 million. 2006 to 2020 again Nielsen said it only sold 6.4 million even including stream equivalent units, but it got certified for a additional 9 million.
If we can use the claimed figures for Eagles greatest hits with this amount of inflated sales numbers, then it should only be fair to use the 100 million claimed sales of Thriller Never17 ( talk) 03:23, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
I propose deleting the "Timeline of the best-selling albums" section. The unfortunate reality is that we do not know what were the all-time best-selling albums in the pre-Thriller era. Record sales tracking for much of the 20th century was very crude at best. Determining how much an album sold was difficult enough in the US, let alone globally. The sources in the section are not based on certifications and contain very dubious or contradictory assertions. The Sheila Weller article cited for Carole King's Tapestry says that by 1976, "global sales of her eight solo albums totaled 20 million", even though as of 2024, her certified sales are less than 19 million, despite some very recent sales audits in the US, King's largest market by far. Many of the other sources are also media articles (or even less reputable sources like Barnes & Noble), which, as we know, rely on the numbers provided by the artist's representatives or record company, which are often inflated for promotional purposes. For instance, the claim that The Sound of Music soundtrack sold 15 million copies is based on an Allmusic article which says clearly that the record company (RCA) was their source.
Relying primarily on non-certified numbers opens a Pandora's box. Many of you are probably familiar with the claims that Iron Butterfly's 1968 album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sold 8 million copies in its first year and 30 million copies overall. While these claims are not supported by certification data, they have been repeated by journalists and made their way in various articles and books, so why not then include the album in this article, both in the main section and in the timeline section?
I'm a music stats geek as much as the next person, but I think sometimes it's better to just admit that we don't don't have good data and therefore cannot make certain statistical rankings. -- NicolasJz ( talk) 17:06, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
Led Zeppelin IV, and Their Greatest Hits by The Eagles. Look at the timeliness between release, and how far along each album's timeline each Big Certification occurs. It becomes obvious that there's "inflated certifications". So, should we just accept these enormous numbers just because the RIAA says so? How is that more "reliable" than something in a respected publication?
Isn't it Wikipedia's policy to exclude sales claims that are based only on media articles and not also on certifications? The second sentence of the article, for instance, says albums must have at least 10M certified units. I'm just curious about what the policy is exactly. When I look at various Wikipedia lists of best-selling albums and artists, certifications are the basis of the lists. The main section of this article is based on certifications and specifically excludes albums whose claimed sales are completely at odds with their certification numbers, such as Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (30M claimed), the Who's Tommy (20M claimed), Blondie's Parallel Lines (20M claimed), Barbra Streisand's A Star Is Born (15M claimed) and Frampton Comes Alive! (16-20M claimed). I am trying to understand why this one subsection uses a different methodology, the result being that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (with 8M claimed sales by 1969) should be included in here but is excluded from the main section (despite 30M claimed sales in total). Likewise, according to media articles, Frampton Comes Alive! was the album that overtook Tapestry as the best-selling of all time, not Saturday Night Fever ( https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/01/04/Peter-Frampton-still-very-much-alive/8977978584400/). If album sales claims do not need to be backed up by certification numbers, shouldn't we include on the list all of these albums I mentioned? Shouldn't we get rid of the "at least 10 million certified units" rule at the beginning of the article and change the list accordingly?
I don't want to make a big deal out of this because obviously it's not the most important thing on Wikipedia. For my own knowledge and for future editing, I would just like to understand what is the favoured methodology to use and to see it applied consistently. Best -- NicolasJz ( talk) 19:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
References
And, as of April 22 2024, no further updated certifications. Maybe they're waiting for October 30 again. It's obvious that this is not real. It's promotion. It's hype. It doesn't represent actual albums sales. It represents the Cult of Michael Jackson, not how many albums were manufactured or sold. And, that opens the door to "certifications" in a much broader sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.135.139 ( talk) 08:16, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
UK... music sales certifications were established in 1959. As an example, Elvis Presley was awarded a Silver Record for 250 000 UK sales of his 1960 LP G.I. Blues in 1962. [ https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Disc/1962/DISC-1962-02-17.pdf](spread across pages 8-9).The BPI certification began in 1973. But to pretend that 14 years' worth of Silver(and Gold) Records simply never existed is farcical.
Canada.. [1]. 1970. Note too that if one searches for Led Zeppelin II on the Music Canada website, you are informed when the album went Platinum etc. But not when it was certified Gold in Canada. Because that happened in 1970. So, there are at least 5 years' worth of Canadian Certifications...ignored. It appears that the "Platinum" Certification goes back to 1975 in Canada, but Gold was around long before that.
In the British case, much of the information is available in book form, and should be utilised. Canadian Certifications appear much trickier to track down, but hopefully I am mistaken about that. But, to claim that "UK Certification began in 1973, and Canadian Certification began in 1975" is wrong on multiple levels. 197.83.246.171 ( talk) 09:52, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I just want to know who hates Led Zeppelin so much. They sold the same number as Shania Twain, yet you dump them in the 20-29m units moved instead of the top bracket. Any explanation would be greatly appreciated. 137.103.48.4 ( talk) 18:36, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
[2] [3] (Page 16) 197.87.135.139 ( talk) 16:14, 13 May 2024 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
List of best-selling albums article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17Auto-archiving period: 31 days |
The subject of this article is controversial and content may be in dispute. When updating the article, be bold, but not reckless. Feel free to try to improve the article, but don't take it personally if your changes are reversed; instead, come here to the talk page to discuss them. Content must be written from a neutral point of view. Include citations when adding content and consider tagging or removing unsourced information. |
List of best-selling albums is a former featured list candidate. Please view the link under Article milestones below to see why the nomination failed. Once the objections have been addressed you may resubmit the article for featured list status. | ||||||||||||||||
| ||||||||||||||||
Current status: Former featured list candidate |
This article is rated List-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
It is essential to provide
reliable sources when editing this article. For examples, see the
references section. Unsourced or unreliably sourced additions will be removed immediately.
The list is frequently edited in good faith; however, sales figures published by reliable sources may need to be verified with certification databases to avoid inflated figures. Albums without sufficient certifications to support published claimed figures may not be added to the list. Editors should expect all albums' claimed figures be supported by the following specified amount of certified units. To be on this list, albums must have:
|
The sales seem incredibly inflated, Nielsen Soundscan reported that the album had sold less than 1 million from 1993-1995 in the United States but it recieved certifications for 8 million. From 1991 to 2006 Nielsen said it had sold 5 million during that period despite the fact it recieved certifications for 17 million. 2006 to 2020 again Nielsen said it only sold 6.4 million even including stream equivalent units, but it got certified for a additional 9 million.
If we can use the claimed figures for Eagles greatest hits with this amount of inflated sales numbers, then it should only be fair to use the 100 million claimed sales of Thriller Never17 ( talk) 03:23, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
I propose deleting the "Timeline of the best-selling albums" section. The unfortunate reality is that we do not know what were the all-time best-selling albums in the pre-Thriller era. Record sales tracking for much of the 20th century was very crude at best. Determining how much an album sold was difficult enough in the US, let alone globally. The sources in the section are not based on certifications and contain very dubious or contradictory assertions. The Sheila Weller article cited for Carole King's Tapestry says that by 1976, "global sales of her eight solo albums totaled 20 million", even though as of 2024, her certified sales are less than 19 million, despite some very recent sales audits in the US, King's largest market by far. Many of the other sources are also media articles (or even less reputable sources like Barnes & Noble), which, as we know, rely on the numbers provided by the artist's representatives or record company, which are often inflated for promotional purposes. For instance, the claim that The Sound of Music soundtrack sold 15 million copies is based on an Allmusic article which says clearly that the record company (RCA) was their source.
Relying primarily on non-certified numbers opens a Pandora's box. Many of you are probably familiar with the claims that Iron Butterfly's 1968 album In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sold 8 million copies in its first year and 30 million copies overall. While these claims are not supported by certification data, they have been repeated by journalists and made their way in various articles and books, so why not then include the album in this article, both in the main section and in the timeline section?
I'm a music stats geek as much as the next person, but I think sometimes it's better to just admit that we don't don't have good data and therefore cannot make certain statistical rankings. -- NicolasJz ( talk) 17:06, 1 April 2024 (UTC)
Led Zeppelin IV, and Their Greatest Hits by The Eagles. Look at the timeliness between release, and how far along each album's timeline each Big Certification occurs. It becomes obvious that there's "inflated certifications". So, should we just accept these enormous numbers just because the RIAA says so? How is that more "reliable" than something in a respected publication?
Isn't it Wikipedia's policy to exclude sales claims that are based only on media articles and not also on certifications? The second sentence of the article, for instance, says albums must have at least 10M certified units. I'm just curious about what the policy is exactly. When I look at various Wikipedia lists of best-selling albums and artists, certifications are the basis of the lists. The main section of this article is based on certifications and specifically excludes albums whose claimed sales are completely at odds with their certification numbers, such as Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (30M claimed), the Who's Tommy (20M claimed), Blondie's Parallel Lines (20M claimed), Barbra Streisand's A Star Is Born (15M claimed) and Frampton Comes Alive! (16-20M claimed). I am trying to understand why this one subsection uses a different methodology, the result being that In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (with 8M claimed sales by 1969) should be included in here but is excluded from the main section (despite 30M claimed sales in total). Likewise, according to media articles, Frampton Comes Alive! was the album that overtook Tapestry as the best-selling of all time, not Saturday Night Fever ( https://www.upi.com/Archives/2001/01/04/Peter-Frampton-still-very-much-alive/8977978584400/). If album sales claims do not need to be backed up by certification numbers, shouldn't we include on the list all of these albums I mentioned? Shouldn't we get rid of the "at least 10 million certified units" rule at the beginning of the article and change the list accordingly?
I don't want to make a big deal out of this because obviously it's not the most important thing on Wikipedia. For my own knowledge and for future editing, I would just like to understand what is the favoured methodology to use and to see it applied consistently. Best -- NicolasJz ( talk) 19:18, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
References
And, as of April 22 2024, no further updated certifications. Maybe they're waiting for October 30 again. It's obvious that this is not real. It's promotion. It's hype. It doesn't represent actual albums sales. It represents the Cult of Michael Jackson, not how many albums were manufactured or sold. And, that opens the door to "certifications" in a much broader sense. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 197.87.135.139 ( talk) 08:16, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
UK... music sales certifications were established in 1959. As an example, Elvis Presley was awarded a Silver Record for 250 000 UK sales of his 1960 LP G.I. Blues in 1962. [ https://www.worldradiohistory.com/UK/Disc/1962/DISC-1962-02-17.pdf](spread across pages 8-9).The BPI certification began in 1973. But to pretend that 14 years' worth of Silver(and Gold) Records simply never existed is farcical.
Canada.. [1]. 1970. Note too that if one searches for Led Zeppelin II on the Music Canada website, you are informed when the album went Platinum etc. But not when it was certified Gold in Canada. Because that happened in 1970. So, there are at least 5 years' worth of Canadian Certifications...ignored. It appears that the "Platinum" Certification goes back to 1975 in Canada, but Gold was around long before that.
In the British case, much of the information is available in book form, and should be utilised. Canadian Certifications appear much trickier to track down, but hopefully I am mistaken about that. But, to claim that "UK Certification began in 1973, and Canadian Certification began in 1975" is wrong on multiple levels. 197.83.246.171 ( talk) 09:52, 4 April 2024 (UTC)
This
edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request. |
I just want to know who hates Led Zeppelin so much. They sold the same number as Shania Twain, yet you dump them in the 20-29m units moved instead of the top bracket. Any explanation would be greatly appreciated. 137.103.48.4 ( talk) 18:36, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
[2] [3] (Page 16) 197.87.135.139 ( talk) 16:14, 13 May 2024 (UTC)