Top Album Sales

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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. [1] Sales figures for the chart are tabulated by Billboard with electronically monitored piece count information from Nielsen SoundScan, now Luminate.

Contents

The first number-one album actually published under the Top Album Sales banner was 1989 by Taylor Swift. However, since Billboard also recognizes the history of the Billboard 200 chart since 1990 as part of this chart the magazine recognizes the first chart-topper as Time, Love & Tenderness by Michael Bolton. [2]

History

On May 25, 1991, Billboard began tabulating top-selling albums in the United States with electronically monitored piece count information from Nielsen Soundscan, now known as Luminate. [1] Up until December 2014, the weekly top-selling albums had been documented by the Billboard 200 chart, but that chart was altered to factor in music streaming by accounting for album-equivalent units in its tallies to document the effect of the rise of music streaming services such as Apple Music and Spotify. During the week of December 6, 2014, the chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units. [1] The Top Album Sales chart was created to preserve the older methodology of counting pure album sales. [3] [4] [5] [6]

The Top Album Sales and the Billboard 200 listed different number-one albums for the first time on February 8, 2015, when Now That's What I Call Music! 53 reached number one on the Top Album Sales (98,000 copies sold), while Taylor Swift's 1989 took the top spot on the Billboard 200 (77,000 copies sold). [7] As streaming became a major metric in music, the disparity between the Top Album Sales and the Billboard 200 grew larger. On October 8, 2016, Drake's Views became the first number-one album on the Billboard 200 to miss the Top 10 of the Top Album Sales, charting at number 22. [8] Meanwhile, We Are Superhuman by NCT 127 became the first album to reach number one on the Top Album Sales but fail to crack the Top 10 of the Billboard 200, peaking at number 11 on June 8, 2019. [9] As streaming continued to dominate, Hoodie SZN by A Boogie wit da Hoodie became the first Billboard 200 number one to miss the Top Album Sales entirely, not selling enough copies to rank within the Top 100 on January 19, 2019. [10] On October 28, 2023, the Top Streaming Albums chart was launched by Billboard and the Top Album Sales chart was reduced from 100 positions to 50. [11] [12]

Adele's 25 holds the record for biggest single-week performance on the Top Album Sales chart, selling 3.38 million on the week of December 12, 2015. [13] In December 2023, Swift became the first act to simultaneously occupy the top 4 positions of the chart. [14] In January 2024, Swift also became the first act to simultaneously occupy seven of the top-ten positions. [15] [16]

Achievements and milestones

Chart achievements listed below cover the Top Album Sales since its launch in December 2014, as well as the Billboard 200 data between May 1991 and December 2014, which Billboard retrospectively recognizes as part of the Top Album Sales statistics.

Most number-one albums

Taylor Swift has 14 number ones on the Top Album Sales (tie with Jay-Z), including 11 number ones since December 2014. 191125 Taylor Swift at the 2019 American Music Awards (cropped).png
Taylor Swift has 14 number ones on the Top Album Sales (tie with Jay-Z), including 11 number ones since December 2014.
Number of
albums
ArtistRef.
14 Jay-Z [17]
Taylor Swift [18]
12 Kenny Chesney [19]
10 Eminem [20]
9 Garth Brooks [21]
8 Drake [22]
Kanye West [23]
Bruce Springsteen [24]
Madonna [25]
7 The Beatles [26]

Most top-ten albums

Number of
albums
ArtistRef.
22 George Strait [27]
21 Prince [28]
Garth Brooks [21]
19 Mariah Carey [29]
Tim McGraw [30]
18 Taylor Swift [18]
Pearl Jam [31]
17 Kenny Chesney [19]
Bruce Springsteen [24]

See also

Related Research Articles

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).

The Digital Song Sales ranks the best-selling digital songs in the United States, as compiled by Nielsen SoundScan and published by Billboard magazine. Although it originally started tracking song sales the week of October 30, 2004, it officially debuted in the issue dated January 22, 2005, and merged all versions of a song sold from digital music distributors. Its data was incorporated in the Hot 100 three weeks later. Since October 2004, digital sales have been incorporated into many of Billboard's music singles charts. The decision was based on the dramatic increase of the digital market while commercial single sales in a physical format were becoming negligible.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kanye West albums discography</span>

American rapper Kanye West has released ten studio albums, four collaborative studio albums, one compilation album, one demo album, two live albums, one video album, and eight mixtapes. All ten of his studio albums have been certified at least gold in the United States. As of June 2021, West has certified 25 million equivalent solo albums units in the United States, placing him among the highest-certified music artists in the United States.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Taylor Swift albums discography</span>

The American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift has released 11 original studio albums, 4 re-recorded albums, 5 extended plays (EPs), and 4 live albums. She has sold 114 million album-equivalent units worldwide, 57 million of which are certified in the United States. In terms of pure sales, she has tallied 46.6 million albums in the United States and 7 million albums in the United Kingdom. On the US Billboard 200, as of August 2024, she has accumulated 14 number-one albums—seven of which sold one million first-week copies, and 86 weeks at number one—more than any other solo act.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Album-equivalent unit</span> Measurement unit in the music industry

The album-equivalent unit, or album equivalent, is a measurement unit in music industry to define the consumption of music that equals the purchase of one album copy. This consumption includes streaming and song downloads in addition to traditional album sales. The album-equivalent unit was introduced in the mid-2010s as an answer to the drop of album sales in the 21st century. Album sales more than halved from 1999 to 2009, declining from a $14.6 to $6.3 billion industry, partly due to cheap digitally downloaded singles. For instance, the only albums that went platinum in the United States in 2014 were the Frozen soundtrack and Taylor Swift's 1989, whereas several artists' works had in 2013.

<i>Hoodie SZN</i> 2018 studio album by A Boogie wit da Hoodie

Hoodie SZN is the second studio album by American rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie. It was released on December 21, 2018. Features included Juice WRLD, 6ix9ine, Nav, Offset, Tyga, Young Thug, and Queen Naija, among others. The track "Odee" had originally been made available online on March 23, 2018. The track "Pull Up" was previously included on the EP International Artist. The album was preceded by single "Look Back at It".

<i>Artist 2.0</i> 2020 studio album by A Boogie wit da Hoodie

Artist 2.0 is the third studio album by American rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie. It was released on February 14, 2020, by Highbridge and Atlantic Records. and contains features from Young Thug, Roddy Ricch, Gunna, London on da Track, DaBaby, Trap Manny, Summer Walker, Khalid, and Lil Uzi Vert. The deluxe edition of the album was released on June 19, 2020. It features an additional guest appearance from his firstborn daughter, Melody Valentine Dubose.

References

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  2. "Top Album Sales". Billboard. May 25, 1991. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  3. "Billboard 200 Makeover: Album Chart to Incorporate Streams & Track Sales". The Hollywood Reporter . 19 November 2014.
  4. Molanphy, Chris (25 November 2014). "Commerce Vs. Consumption: A Revolutionary Rethink of Billboard's Album Chart". NPR.
  5. "Billboard's charts used to be our barometer for music success. Are they meaningless in the streaming age? - The Washington Post". The Washington Post .
  6. "Billboard 200 Makeover: Album Chart to Incorporate Streams & Track Sales". Billboard . 20 November 2014.
  7. Book, Ryan (February 12, 2015). "Now 53 Outsells Taylor Swift, Becomes First Record to Top Albums Chart but Not Billboard 200; Kid Ink Cracks Top 10". The Music Times. Retrieved July 2, 2016.
  8. "Drake's 'Views' Returns to No. 1 on Billboard 200 Chart for 13th Week". Billboard. September 25, 2016. Retrieved September 26, 2016.
  9. Caulfield, Keith (June 2, 2019). "Billie Eilish Returns to No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart". Billboard. Retrieved June 2, 2019.(subscription required)
  10. Caulfield, Keith (January 14, 2018). "A Boogie Wit Da Hoodie Scores First No. 1 on Billboard 200 Albums Chart With 'Hoodie SZN'". Billboard. Retrieved January 15, 2018.(subscription required)
  11. Caulfield, Keith (October 24, 2023). "Billboard's Top Streaming Albums Chart Launches: Bad Bunny's 'Nadie' Leads Inaugural List". Billboard. Archived from the original on November 3, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  12. "Top Album Sales". Billboard. May 25, 1991. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  13. Caulfield, Keith (November 30, 2015). "Adele's Historic '25' Debut: By the Numbers". Billboard. Retrieved January 3, 2025.
  14. Caulfield, Keith (December 29, 2023). "Taylor Swift Has the Top Four on the Album Sales Chart for the First Time". Billboard . Retrieved January 1, 2024.
  15. "Top Streaming Albums". Billboard. Archived from the original on November 3, 2023. Retrieved November 3, 2023.
  16. Caulfield, Keith (2024-01-03). "Taylor Swift Has 7 of the Top 10 on Billboard's Album Sales Chart". Billboard. Retrieved 2024-01-03.
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