The Billboard 200 is a record chart ranking the 200 most popular music albums and EPs in the United States. It is published weekly by Billboard magazine. It is frequently used to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Often, a recording act will be remembered by its "number ones", those of their albums that outperformed all others during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 in May 1967, and acquired its present title in March 1992. Its previous names include the Billboard Top LPs (1961–1972), Billboard Top LPs & Tape (1972–1984), Billboard Top 200 Albums (1984–1985), and Billboard Top Pop Albums (1985–1992).
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 and every Monday to subscribers, which include record companies, publishing firms, music retailers, independent promoters, film and TV companies, and artist managers. It is the source of sales information for the Billboard music charts.
The Billboard charts tabulate the relative weekly popularity of songs and albums in the United States and elsewhere. The results are published in Billboard magazine. Billboard biz, the online extension of the Billboard charts, provides additional weekly charts, as well as year-end charts. The charts may be dedicated to a specific genre such as R&B, country, or rock, or they may cover all genres. The charts can be ranked according to sales, streams, or airplay, and for main song charts such as the Hot 100 song chart, all three data are used to compile the charts. For the Billboard 200 album chart, streams and track sales are included in addition to album sales.
The Bodyguard: Original Soundtrack Album is a soundtrack album from the film of the same name, released on November 17, 1992, by Arista Records. The album's first side features songs recorded by American singer Whitney Houston, who starred in the film, while side two features the work of various artists. Houston and Clive Davis were co-executive producers of the record.
American singer Mariah Carey has released fifteen studio albums, two soundtrack albums, eight compilation albums, two extended plays, and one remix album. Carey is one of the best-selling music artists of all-time, having sold over 220 million records globally. She was presented with the Millennium Award at the 2000 World Music Awards for becoming the best-selling female artist of the millennium. According to the RIAA, she is the highest-certified female artist and twelfth overall recording artist with shipments of 68.5 million albums in the US. She is also ranked as the best-selling female artist of the US Nielsen SoundScan era (1991–present) with album sales of 55.5 million.
The discography of Metallica includes ten studio albums, eight live albums, three extended plays, 43 singles, ten video albums, 42 music videos, one soundtrack album, one collaboration album and three box sets. They are a San Francisco-based metal band formed in 1981 by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich (drums). After several bassist and lead guitarist changes, the band settled on Cliff Burton and Kirk Hammett, respectively. Metallica started playing locally, releasing their first widely circulated demo, No Life 'til Leather, in 1982. The demo caught the attention of Johny Zazula, who signed Metallica to Megaforce Records. The band released Kill 'Em All in 1983, and the following year they released Ride the Lightning. After Ride the Lightning was released, Metallica left Megaforce and signed to Elektra Records. In March 1986, the band released its third studio album, Master of Puppets, which was Metallica's first album to be certified gold by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). While promoting the album, Burton was killed in a bus accident. Jason Newsted was hired as a replacement. The band's first release to feature the new member was The $5.98 E.P. – Garage Days Re-Revisited, and then followed by ...And Justice for All in August 1988, which peaked at number six on the Billboard 200.
American singer Katy Perry has released six studio albums, one live album, six extended plays (EP), 42 singles, and nine promotional singles. She is referred as the "Queen of Pop" of her time. According to Recording Industry Association of America, Perry has sold 106 million digital singles and 11 million albums in the United States. She is also the sixth best-selling digital singles artist in the United States. Throughout her career, Perry has sold over 143 million records worldwide. Billboard listed her as the 4th Top Female Artist of the 2010s decade and the 61st Greatest Artist of all time. Perry has scored 9 No. 1 hits on Billboard Hot 100 and 3 No. 1 albums on Billboard 200 respectively.
Regional Mexican Albums is a genre-specific record chart published weekly by Billboard magazine in the United States. The chart was established in June 1985 and originally listed the top twenty-five best-selling albums of mariachi, tejano, norteño, banda and duranguense, which are all sub genres of regional Mexican music. The genre is considered by musicologist as being "the biggest-selling Latin music genre in the United States", and represented the fastest ever growing Latin genre in the United States after tejano music entered the mainstream market during its 1990s golden age. Originally, Billboard based their methodology on sales surveys it sent out to record stores across the United States and by 1991 began monitoring point-of-sales compiled from Nielsen Soundscan. Musicologist and critics have since criticized the sales data compiled from Nielsen, finding that the company only provides sales from larger music chains than from small shops that specialized in Latin music—where the majority of Latin music sales are generated. The magazine decided to rank Latin music recordings in August 1970 under the title Hot Latin LPs, which only ranked the best-selling Latin albums in Los Angeles (Pop) and the East Coast (Salsa). Before the chart's inception, musicians' only chart success was the Texas Latin LPs section where regional Mexican music was more prominent. Beginning in November 1993, Billboard lowered the rankings from twenty-five to fifteen positions on its Latin genre-specific charts, while the Top Latin Albums expanded to fifty titles. From July 2001 until April 2005, the chart increased to twenty titles and then lowered back to fifteen titles. Since 2009, the Regional Mexican Albums chart list the top twenty best-selling albums determined by sales data compiled from Neilsen Soundscan.
American singer Selena Gomez has released three studio albums, two compilation albums, four extended plays (EPs), thirty-two singles and four promotional singles. According to the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), as of February 2021, Gomez has had cumulative single certifications of 36 million digital downloads and on-demand streaming, and a further 15 million as part of Selena Gomez & the Scene. As of May 2017, she has sold 24.3 million songs and 3.4 million albums in the United States. As of April 2021, she has more than 5 billion U.S. song streams. As of October 2015, Gomez has sold 6.7 million albums and 22 million singles worldwide. She has amassed 37 chart entries on the US Billboard Hot 100, including a number-one single and 8 top tens.
Record sales or music sales are activities related to selling music recordings through record shops or online music store. Record sales reached the peak in 1999, when 600 million people spent an average of $64 in buying records, bringing a total of $40 billion sales of recorded music. Sales continued declining in the 21st century. The collapse of record sales also made artists rely on touring for most of their income. By 2019, record sales had accounted for less than half of global recorded music revenue, overtaken by streaming. Following the inclusion of streaming into record charts in the mid-2010s, record sales are also referred to as traditional sales or pure sales.
