Best-selling albums in the United States since Nielsen SoundScan tracking began on:
[Wikipedia]
[Google]
[Amazon]
This is a list of best-selling albums in the
The following list includes the annual best-selling albums since 1991, as reported by
This is a list of best-selling albums in the United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
of the Nielsen SoundScan era. SoundScan began tracking sales data for Billboard on March 1, 1991. SoundScan data is unrelated to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) certifications, and is based on actual sales while
the RIAA's certification process is based on shipments.
Best-sellers (overall)
Best-selling albums by decade
1991–1999
2000–2009
2010–2019
Best-selling albums by year
The following list includes the annual best-selling albums since 1991, as reported by MRC Data
Luminate (formerly Nielsen SoundScan, Nielsen Music Products, and MRC Data) is a provider of music sales data. Established by Mike Fine and Mike Shalett in 1991, data is collected weekly and made available every Sunday (for albums sales) and eve ...
(formerly Nielsen SoundScan). For albums released after 2015, the best-performing album of the year is determined by album-equivalent units
The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, is a measurement unit in music industry to define the consumption of music that equals the purchase of one album copy. This consumption includes streaming and song downloads in addition to traditio ...
consisted of album sales, digital songs sales, and on-demand streaming, while the best-selling album is determined by album sales only.
Single week best-sellers
The first album in the SoundScan era to sell a million copies or more in a week is the soundtrack of ''The Bodyguard'' byWhitney Houston
Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer and actress. Nicknamed " The Voice", she is one of the bestselling music artists of all time, with sales of over 200 million records worldwide. Houston i ...
in 1992; the most recent album to do so is ''Midnights
''Midnights'' is the tenth studio album by American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, released on October 21, 2022, via Republic Records. Announced at the 2022 MTV Video Music Awards, the album marks Swift's first body of new work since her 2020 ...
'' by Taylor Swift
Taylor Alison Swift (born December 13, 1989) is an American singer-songwriter. Her discography spans multiple genres, and her vivid songwriting—often inspired by her personal life—has received critical praise and wide media coverage. Bor ...
in 2022. The following is a list of all of the albums that sold at least one million copies in a single week:
See also
*Album era
The album era was a period in English-language popular music from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s in which the album was the dominant form of recorded music expression and consumption. It was primarily driven by three successive music recording ...
*List of best-selling albums in the United States
This is a list of the best-selling albums in the United States based on RIAA certification and Nielsen SoundScan sales tracking. The criteria are that the album must have been published (including self-publishing by the artist), and the album must ...
*List of best-selling albums by year in the United States
This is a list of the best-selling albums by year in the United States ''Billboard'' magazine began publishing year-end lists for album sales in 1956. Until 1991, the ''Billboard'' album chart was based on a survey of representative retail outl ...
References
FootnotesNotes
{{notelist, 30em United States, Nielsen SoundScan tracking