From the course: Everyday Statistics, with Eddie Davila

Success in the music industry

From the course: Everyday Statistics, with Eddie Davila

Start my 1-month free trial Buy for my team

Success in the music industry

“

- [Instructor] The biggest selling music artists of all time, who are they? Well I guess it depends on how you're counting. Let's first look at the best-selling singles of all time. Actually, this is the list per physical singles, like tapes, vinyl and CDs, which is why nothing on this list is from after 1997. And yes, a Christmas song tops the list, also except for Elton John, none of these artists wrote the song that they sung. And even Elton John and Bernie Taupin 1997 version of 'Candle in the Wind' is a rewritten version of their own 1973 original. But who buys physical copies of music anymore? That's why digital downloads took over for those that wanted to buy songs. Not only do we see huge numbers for relatively recent songs, we also see a more global list of songs. But with streaming music services like Spotify, who needs to buy music? Here are some of the most streamed songs, streaming and digital downloads are still relatively new. So we can probably expect lots of changes in these top five lists in the years to come. When we look at entire albums, again, the list skews old. People today, don't consume music as albums the way they used to do in the 1970s and 80s. As a point of reference, take Taylor Swift, one of the most popular music artists of this century. As of 2020, she had only sold about 37 million albums in total and Ed Sheeran who showed up on the top digital lists, had only sold about 26 million albums. We've looked at great songs and great albums, but who is the top selling artist of all time? You probably guessed it, it's the Beatles. As of 2014, the estimates for Beatles sales worldwide included 2 billion sales of individual songs or singles and 600 million albums sold, but those numbers just keep growing. For example, Spotify reported that Beatles music was streamed 1.7 billion times in 2019 alone, that doesn't even include digital sales and physical sales of vinyl and CDs. Some folks had incredible hit songs, some put out hit albums, but the Beatles sales statistics are for the ages.

Contents