Misplaced Pages

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Robdurbar (talk | contribs) at 09:05, 6 January 2006 (→Artists reported to have sold 250 000 000 records or more: move beatles to 't'; its the format used elsewhere). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

This article is currently under extended confirmed protection. Extended confirmed protection prevents edits from all unregistered editors and registered users with fewer than 30 days tenure and 500 edits. The policy on community use specifies that extended confirmed protection can be applied to combat disruption, if semi-protection has proven to be ineffective. Extended confirmed protection may also be applied to enforce arbitration sanctions. Please discuss any changes on the talk page; you may submit an edit request to ask for uncontroversial changes supported by consensus.

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "List of best-selling music artists" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (Learn how and when to remove this message)

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.

Michael Jackson, Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Led Zepplin, ABBA and Alla Pugacheva are all regularly cited as being the top seller. The Beatles and Elvis Presley's record labels both claim these artists have sold over one billion records. 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 artists listed above, the difficulties in gathering figures and the counter claims mean that proof is improbable.

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

This article may contain unverified or indiscriminate information in embedded lists. Please help clean up the lists by removing items or incorporating them into the text of the article.