Talk:List of best-selling albums

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January 28, 2011	Articles for deletion	Kept

Current status: Former featured list candidate

Albums

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Albums, an attempt at building a useful resource on recordings from a variety of genres. If you would like to participate, visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.AlbumsWikipedia:WikiProject AlbumsTemplate:WikiProject AlbumsAlbum

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edit

It is essential to provide reliable sources when editing this article. For examples, see the references section. Unsourced or unreliably sourced additions will be removed immediately.

The list is frequently edited in good faith; however, sales figures published by reliable sources may need to be verified with certification databases to avoid inflated figures.

Albums without sufficient certifications to support published claimed figures may not be added to the list.

Editors should expect all albums' claimed figures be supported by the following specified amount of certified units.

To be on this list, albums must have:

Sold at at least 20 million copies
Certified at least 10 million units

Whilst we encourage editors to be bold, it is highly recommended to discuss changes on this talk page before editing.

USA RIAA
Japan RIAJ
UK BPI
Germany BVMI
France SNEP, Infodisc
Mexico Amprofon
Canada Music Canada
Brazil ABPD
Australia ARIA
Italy FIMI
Spain PROMUISCAE
The Netherlands NVPI
Sweden IFPI
Switzerland SwissCharts
Belgium Ultratop
Norway IFPI
Argentina CAPIF
Austria IFPI
Denmark IFPI
Poland ZPAV
Ireland IRMA
Finland IFPI
New Zealand RIANZ
Hong Kong IFPI
Hungary Mahasz

Let's skip to the facts, please!

Certified sells are the real deal, anything else is just pure speculation and it shouldn't even be referred. I can say I've heard this album sold like 50 million copies around the world, but without the certified proof, that's just rubbish!

Purple Rain

Purple Rain has over 32 million copies sold. The 25 million mark is outdated and needs to be changed to 32. Mistag1958 (talk) 07:00, 6 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

During the early 1990s, the media was reporting up to 14 million copies worldwide for Purple Rain [1][2][3]

By the end of the 2000s it's sales were estimated between 18-20 million copies, which would have been another 4-6 million units sold since then. I think 25 million seems appropriate at the moment. [4][5]

If it's certifications go up by 10M then it would justify a move to 32 million in my opinion Never17 (talk) 23:38, 4 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

'Aap Ka suroor' in the list?

There is this Indian album by Himesh Reshammiya called 'Aap Ka suroor' which sold 55M copies making it the 2nd best selling album. It is in the list in the simple english wiki article but not here,perhaps it should be added? Anonpriest (talk) 04:13, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Needs to be certified at least 10 million units. Erick (talk) 04:21, 16 February 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The Dark Side of the Moon exceeded 50 millions copies sold

This is the source https://www.pinkfloyd.com/tdsotm50/recordings/. I hope you can update the list. 201.182.80.26 (talk) 18:58, 14 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The certified sales of almost every album need to be updated

I was looking at this interesting page which at least for the estimated sales seems very accurate, however I can't say the same for the certified ones since they all seem quite dated

The first case I noticed is The Dark Side of the Moon, comparing it to its wikipedia page for example it sold 4.8M copies in UK instead of 4.5M, 2.5M in France instead of 400k, 1.5M in Germany instead of 1M, 1.35M in Italy instead of 300k etc, in some cases it could also be due to a different source but in any case that's more or less the same for most albums

Unfortunately I don't have permission to edit the page, so is there anyone with a lot of patience who can take a look and update them? Mg250 (talk) 17:16, 30 March 2025 (UTC)[reply]