Best Selling Album: Music Styles, Artist Popularity, Top Album Lists and Sales Ranking

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

A long time ago, people no longer used discs, cassettes or vinyl records, preferring to listen to music on the Internet. And only the most avid fans get copies on physical media, because this way you can support the artist and perpetuate the memory of the next purchased album. So this is the top selling albums of all time, let's go!

THRILLER - Michael Jackson

Of course, in the first place in our top is a record from pop king Michael Jackson. Thriller is the world's best-selling album with over 110 million purchases. Can you imagine that every 60th person living on Earth at the moment has a copy of this record?

Critics even before the release noted that Michael Jackson is the best singer in the genre of pop music, and "King" soon lived up to its status. Probably even at this point in the worldthere is no person who has never heard a single song of Michael Jackson. Thriller is considered a classic of the genre, and it remains the best-selling album to this day, largely because even after the death of the legend, he still has a sea of \u200b\u200bfans and imitators. What is only the patented "moonwalk".

Michael Jackson's songs are still used today as soundtracks for Hollywood films. In fact, the king of pop has created a cult, popularizing pop music around the world. The Thriller album will forever remain a benchmark among listeners.

BACK IN BLACK - AC/DC

Following the king of pop, the best rock musicians of all time AC/DC break into the top! The famous band is still active, despite the fact that most of its albums were recorded back in the 80s. The band's best-selling album, Back In Black, has a very unusual story.

Look at the cover - minimalistic style and mourning black. The thing is that during the recording of this album, the vocalist and frontman of the band, Bon Scott, died, so the album was released when the group already had a new vocalist, Brian Johnson. Actually, Back in Black was in the end completely dedicated to the deceased frontman. The name translates as "Return in Mourning", as if hinting that the group is not going to break up.

The release was not planned as a commercial release and the band did not show any hope of getting big money for it. However, just a few months after the start of sales, critics called it the best albumof the year, and then the best-selling album in the rock music genre. Thus, AC/DC re-released several times already on new media, and Back In Black can still be found in music stores today.

THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON - Pink Floyd

The famous Pink Floyd album cover is familiar to every music connoisseur. The best-selling albums can't boast a first-year sales rate after release, except for Dark Side of the Moon. Pink Floyd were very popular even before their release due to the unusual sound and performance of their songs.

The genre in which these musicians perform is extremely controversial, but many rock publications define their music as experimental or progressive rock. The songs use about a dozen instruments, and each subsequent album is fundamentally different from the previous one.

Dark Side of the Moon took off, its sales skyrocketed immediately after release, but even after that it was not in the top ten best-selling albums in the world. The album began to gain further sales after the band announced that they would not play this album at performances.

Only 25 years after the release, you can hear compositions from it during live performances. Among the fans all these years, of course, there was a struggle for the record in stores. A very interesting marketing ploy, because today they go to Pink Floyd performances mainly because of this very album. However, you can’t just get into the list of the best-selling albums in the history of music, Pink Floyd is the besta band that still plays experimental music to this day.

THEIR GREATEST HITS - Eagles

Eagles are the founders of soft rock and country rock. It would not be entirely correct to call the record presented above the best-selling music album, because it is not an album at all. This is a kind of collection of the greatest hits for the entire existence of the group. Nevertheless, this team has so many fans that this collection has collected about 42 million buyers.

Eagles are still performing, but tickets for their concerts are very expensive, it is almost impossible to get to a live performance. Most likely, even if you are not familiar with the compositions from this collection, you have definitely heard them in films or commercials.

Country rock is not very popular today, especially among the Russian listener, but in the West this genre has numerous armies of fans, both among young people and among very old people. The Eagles were also inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame for making a tremendous contribution to the development of rock culture as a whole.

METALLICA - Metallica

Best selling album of all metal bands. Metallica needs no introduction, Metallica and metal are synonymous. This album symbolizes all the desire for a harder and more aggressive sound, which is quoted today. "Metallica" became the prototype of the new time in rock music - no one before them used electric guitars to express suchfast rhythm and bone-crushing sound.

This album has sold 30 million copies and is almost a relic among true metalheads. Another name for the album is The Black Album ("Black Album"). And although this is far from their first release, all the loudest hits of the band got here. Only in the first week since the start of sales, 650,000 copies were bought on various media.

It's safe to say Metallica's influence is priceless. Today, rock and rap are popular, rock is known thanks to Metallica and the bands of the first thrash metal wave. And this album along with this symbolizes the diversity and enduring popularity of this group. It is the best-selling album of all time by a metal band.

HYBRID THEORY - Linkin Park

Now it is worth mentioning the music school of the new time. Linkin Park's Hybrid Theory album has 20 million sales… in 18 years! It is rightfully the best-selling album in the world since the beginning of the 21st century. While the same Dark Side of The Moon was released back in '73 and collected twice as many buyers, Linkin Park's album is considered to be essentially the leader in sales in such a short time. This is the first rock band that performs its music in a very unusual genre - rap rock. However, many critics attribute the band's style to alternative, progressive rock or nu metal. Not only is Hybrid Theory the band's debut album, it's not an easy task to perform in a controversial, brand new genre, which is why LinkinPark closes our top today.

Unfortunately, in 2017 the band's lead singer and frontman Chester Bennington passed away. For the rest of the band, this news came as a shock, because they had an international tour planned. The concerts were cancelled, and for a long time the fans believed that Linkin Park would no longer play, because Chester was a key figure in the team. However, six months later, the group gave a concert, and after it, other members said in an interview that Linkin Park would not break up.

Sales status today

Physical media is not as valuable today as it was 30 years ago due to the development of the Internet and wireless communications. Discs and records today are more of a decorative character and are popular only among devoted fans of bands. Statistics indicate that over the past 10 years (at the time of this writing - 2018), album sales on iTunes or Spotify online resources are several times higher than sales of physical copies. In addition, many compositions of famous bands are now available for listening completely free of charge, which reduces the purchase of albums to nothing.

Conclusion

Despite the irrelevance of buying physical copies of albums, the number of sales symbolizes the scale of popularity and quality of music sold bestsellers. We can say with confidence that when a new interesting album is released, millions of people will buy it. Also, as opposed to discs, online album stores are now put up, where they are actively bought up. Counting thesenumbers generates charts and rankings, where the world's best-selling music album is widely covered in the media or on the Internet.

Support your favorite bands, buy their albums and listen to the right music!