How many albums have The Beatles sold?
Before The Beatles broke up in 1970, their singles outsold their LPs.
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| Photo by Mick Haupt on Unsplash |
This was the standard pattern of record sales at that time. LPs were considered a luxury item and priced beyond the reach of most teenagers.
The Beatles did have an unusual multi-generational appeal. And the kids who bought their singles would later come back to buy not just the studio albums but various compilations.
From Statista
Studio Albums
- The Beatles officially released 13 studio albums between 1962 and their breakup.
- Over time, the biggest seller has been Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), with an estimated 32 million
- The first three Anthology albums have sold more than 13 million.
Compilations
Where the Beatles outshone all their competitors was in longevity.
- Two double albums summarising their career: The Beatles/1962-1966 and The Beatles/1967-1970 (often referred to as the Red and the Blue) sold very strongly throughout the 1970s.
- Number 1 - compilation of their chart-topping singles was released in 2000. It has sold north of 32 million copies
New formats
Sales were also helped by the mass switch from vinyl to CD in the 1980s. Ironically, the CD format has seen a rapid decline in this century, while vinyl has undergone a mini-revival.A new trend has been for special reissues and previously unreleased tracks. The Anthology series was a mass market example of this.
More recently, sales have become increasingly difficult to assess, as downloads of individual tracks are added to traditional singles & albums. But demand for the remastered albums and reissued films is higher than ever.
