List of best-selling albums in the United States
   HOME

TheInfoList



Click Here for Items Related To - List of best-selling albums in the United States
OR:
List of best-selling albums in the United States on:   [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Amazon]

This is a list of the best-selling albums in the United States based on
RIAA The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) is a trade organization that represents the music recording industry in the United States. Its members consist of record labels and distributors that the RIAA says "create, manufacture, and/ ...
certification and
Nielsen SoundScan 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 ...
sales tracking. The criteria are that the album must have been published (including self-publishing by the artist), and the album must have achieved at least a diamond certification from the RIAA. The albums released prior to March 1991 should be included with their certified units only, as their Nielsen SoundScan sales are not complete. Since February 2016, album certifications include "on-demand audio and video streams and a track sale equivalent" units. Groupings are based on different benchmarks; the highest being for at least 20 million units, and the lowest being for multi-disc albums certified at least 10 times platinum and single-disc albums that have been certified at least 10 times platinum but with sales figures lower than 10,000,000. Albums are listed in order of units certified, or sales figures when available, by greatest to least. As a result of the RIAA's methodology of counting each disc in a multi-disc set as one unit toward certification, most double albums on the list—such as
Pink Floyd Pink Floyd are an English rock band formed in London in 1965. Gaining an early following as one of the first British psychedelic groups, they were distinguished by their extended compositions, sonic experimentation, philosophical lyrics an ...
's '' The Wall'' and Outkast's ''
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below ''Speakerboxxx/The Love Below'' is the fifth studio album by American hip hop duo Outkast. It was released on September 23, 2003, by Arista Records. Issued as a double album, its length of over two hours is spread across solo albums from both ...
''—have been certified with a number double the number of copies sold. Such albums have the shipments of copies, not discs, indicated. Conversely, the certification level for double albums that fit onto one
compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in O ...
such as the ''
Saturday Night Fever ''Saturday Night Fever'' is a 1977 American dance drama film directed by John Badham and produced by Robert Stigwood. It stars John Travolta as Tony Manero, a young Italian-American man from the Brooklyn borough of New York. Manero spends h ...
''
soundtrack A soundtrack is recorded music accompanying and synchronised to the images of a motion picture, drama, book, television program, radio program, or video game; a commercially released soundtrack album of music as featured in the soundtrac ...
reflect the actual number of copies sold. The albums in this list are ordered first by number of units, then by platinum awards received, and finally by artist name and album title. Albums with two references for their estimated actual sales include sales through
BMG Music Club Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music co ...
. Albums with three references for their estimated actual sales include sales through
BMG Music Club Bertelsmann Music Group (BMG) was a division of a German media company Bertelsmann before its completion of sale of the majority of its assets to Sony Corporation of America on 1 October 2008. Although it was established in 1987, the music co ...
and
Columbia House Columbia House was an umbrella brand for Columbia Records' mail-order music clubs, the primary iteration of which was the Columbia Record Club, established in 1955. The Columbia House brand was introduced in the early 1970s by Columbia Records ...
. The best-selling album in the United States is '' Their Greatest Hits (1971–1975)'' by
the Eagles The Eagles are an American rock band formed in Los Angeles in 1971. With five number-one singles and six number-one albums, six Grammy Awards and five American Music Awards, the Eagles were one of the most successful musical acts of the 1970s ...
.


20 million or more copies


15–19 million copies


10–14 million copies


Fewer than 10 million copies


Notes


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 This is a list of the world's best-selling albums of recorded music. To appear on the list, the figure must have been published by a reliable source and the album must have sold at least 20 million copies. This list can contain any types of al ...
*
List of highest-certified music artists in the United States This is the list of the highest-certified music artists in the United States based on certifications of albums and digital singles (but not physical singles) by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). RIAA certifications are base ...
*
List of best-selling music artists The following list of best-selling music artists includes those music acts from the 20th century to the present with claims of 75 million or more record sales worldwide. This information cannot be listed officially, as there is no organization ...
* Lists of best-selling albums by country *
List of best-selling singles This is a compendium of the best-selling music singles. The criterion for inclusion is to sell at least ten million copies worldwide. The singles listed here were cited by reliable sources from various media, such as digital journalism, news ...
* Best-selling albums in the United States since Nielsen SoundScan tracking began *
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 ...
* List of best-selling Latin albums in the United States *
List of best-selling albums of the 21st century This is a list of the best-selling albums of the 21st century to date based on IFPI certification and Nielsen SoundScan sales tracking. The criteria are that the album must have been published (including self-publishing by the artist), and the a ...
* List of best-selling films in the United States


References


External links


RIAA Website

RIAA "Top 100" Albums

''Billboard Magazine''
– a magazine that publishes weekly music rankings {{DEFAULTSORT:List Of Best-Selling Albums In The United States American music industry
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 Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...