Metallica is the fifth studio album by American heavy metal band Metallica. It was released on August 12, 1991, by Elektra Records. Recording sessions took place at One on One Recording Studios in Los Angeles over an eight-month span that frequently found Metallica at odds with their new producer Bob Rock. The album marked a change in the band's music from the thrash metal style of their previous four albums to a slower, heavier, and more refined sound.
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 to convey the popularity of an artist or groups of artists. Sometimes, a recording act is remembered for its "number ones" that outperformed all other albums during at least one week. The chart grew from a weekly top 10 list in 1956 to become a top 200 list in May 1967, acquiring its existing name 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), Billboard Top Pop Albums (1985–1991), and Billboard 200 Top Albums (1991–1992).
Luminate Data, LLC is a provider of music and entertainment data. Established as a joint-venture in 2020, it brought together Nielsen Music, Alpha Data and Variety Business Intelligence.
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 two most important charts are the Billboard Hot 100 for songs and Billboard 200 for albums, and other 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.
American singer Mariah Carey has released fifteen studio albums, two soundtrack albums, eight compilation albums, four 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 tenth overall recording artist with shipments of 75 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.
Canadian singer Celine Dion has released 27 studio albums, 7 live albums, 20 compilation albums, and 25 box sets. Referred to as the "Queen of Power Ballads", Dion is the best-selling Canadian artist of all time and the best-selling artist in the Nielsen SoundScan era in Canada. Dion is also the second best-selling female artist in the United States since Nielsen began tracking sales in 1991 with over 53.2 million albums sold in the country. Guinness World Records recognises her as the Top Selling Album Act in Europe with 33 million certified album sales since 1996. In 2003, Dion was honored by International Federation of the Phonographic Industry for selling 50 million albums in Europe. Billboard placed her second among the best-selling female album artist of the 2000s Decade in the United States with 17.3 million albums sold via Soundscan. According to Billboard, Dion is the sixth Greatest Billboard 200 female solo artist of all time, as well as the eighth Greatest female solo artist of all time in Billboard's chart history.
Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums is a music chart published weekly by Billboard magazine that ranks R&B and hip-hop albums based on sales in the United States and is compiled by Luminate. The chart debuted as Hot R&B LPs in the issue dated January 30, 1965, in an effort by the magazine to further expand into the field of rhythm and blues music. It then went through several name changes, being known as Soul LPs in the 1970s and Top Black Albums in the 1980s, before returning to the R&B identification in 1990 and affixing a hip hop designation in 1999 to reflect the latter's growing sales and relationship to R&B during the decade.
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, and grupero, all subgenres of regional Mexican music. The genre is considered by musicologists as "the biggest-selling Latin music genre in the United States", and represented the fastest-growing Latin genre in the United States after tejano music entered the mainstream market during its 1990s golden age.
Record sales or music sales are activities related to selling music recordings through physical record shops or digital music stores. Record sales reached their peak in 1999, when 600 million people spent an average of $64 on records, achieving $40 billion in 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 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.
The Top Album Sales is a music chart released weekly by Billboard magazine listing each week's top-selling albums in the United States. The chart has been published since December 13, 2014, although the magazine also retrospectively recognizes the Billboard 200 charts from May 25, 1991, through December 6, 2014, as part of the history of the Top Album Sales listing. Sales figures for the chart are tabulated by Billboard with electronically monitored piece count information from Nielsen SoundScan, now Luminate.
The albums discography of American singer Janet Jackson consists of eleven studio albums, four compilation albums, and two remix albums. When she was fifteen, her father arranged a contract for her with A&M Records. Her debut album, Janet Jackson (1982), peaked at number 64 on the Billboard 200 chart and sold 250,000 copies in the United States. Her next album, Dream Street (1984), peaked at number 147 on the Billboard 200, a weaker effort than her previous album. Her third album, Control (1986), became known as her breakthrough album, topping the Billboard 200 and sold over 10 million copies worldwide. Her fourth album, Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989), topped the Billboard 200 for four consecutive weeks and sold three million copies within the first four months of its release. The album went on to produce seven consecutive top 5 hits, four of them reaching the top spot on the Billboard Hot 100 in three separate calendar years, a record yet to be broken. The album was certified 6× Platinum by RIAA, and sold over 12 million copies worldwide.
