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This is a list of the best selling musical acts globally. Equal weight is given to album and single sales, as well as paid downloads.

The artists are grouped by approximate sales figures, rather than ranked on a numerical scale. This is because global sales figures are hard to come by, with poor or no records available for many countries. Estimates are thus often made by fan sites, record labels and the addition of figures from various different sources.

World's biggest seller

The actual biggest 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.

Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Led Zepplin, ABBA, Alla Pugacheva and Michael Jackson are all regularly cited as being the topseller. Notably, The Beatles' and Elvis Presley's record labels both claim over 1 billion sales. However, at the 2000 World Music Awards , the 'best selling artist of the millenium' title was given to Michael Jackson . Countering this, Encyclopedia Britannica claims that Alla Pugacheva is a top seller, and that she 'may have sold more records than Michael Jackson' .

So, though it remains likely that the top seller is one of the six artists listed above, the difficulties in gathering figures and the counter claims mean that proof is probably impossible.

Artists reported to have sold 250 000 000 records or more

Artists reported to have sold 100 000 000 records or more

Artists reported to have sold 50 000 000 records or more

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