How many albums have The Beatles sold?
The Beatles are perhaps the most celebrated British pop group of all time. While the Rolling Stones were busy absorbing and transmuting the sound of American R&B, The Beatles were curating a uniquely British form of pop, one that saw John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr take inspiration from everything from music hall and skiffle to blues and rock ‘n’ roll. The success of that era-defining sound made The Beatles very rich indeed, with the group selling millions of records worldwide.
Following the success of early singles like ‘Love Me Do’ and ‘Please Please Me’, The Beatles set their sights on the US, where they succeeded in pulling the people of America out of their grief (John F. Kennady was assassinated shortly before the release of ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’) with their first hit single state-side.
With the arrival of Beatlemania, the most intense demonstration of mass fan worship since Prelseymania, the British Invasion movement was set in motion, opening the floodgates for bands like The Kinks and The Rolling Stones.
While many of these groups went on to win larger, more devoted fanbases, few achieved the level of success The Beatles experienced. Below you’ll find a breakdown of exactly how many albums the Beatles sold over the course of their dizzying career.
How many studio albums have The Beatles sold?
The Beatles released 13 studio albums plus three anthologies in less than eight years. At that time, they had a total of 21 number-one albums in the US, with US album sales estimated at around 177 million. Outside the US, The Beatles sold in excess of 600 million albums, with 1968’s White Album, their best-selling LP, selling over 24 million copies.
Though these figures were later dwarfed by albums such as Michael Jackson’s Thriller, released at a time when stereo technology was much more affordable, The Beatles are unmatched when it comes to the longevity of their compilation albums, which were incredibly popular during the 1970s. At the end of 2015, the Red album had sold an estimated 1,360,000 copies worldwide, while Blue had sold an estimated 1,490,000 copies.
How many singles did The Beatles sell?
The Beatles always sold more singles than they did LPs. The single was relatively inexpensive, while the LP was more of a luxury item and thus beyond the reach of the group’s largely teenage fanbase. This remained the case until the early 1970s.
The Beatles released 63 singles worldwide, beginning with ‘Love Me Do’ in 1962 and concluding with ‘The Long And Winding Road’, which topped the charts for two weeks just two months after Paul McCartney announced The Beatles split in April 1970. By 2014, The Beatles had sold an estimated 1.6 billion singles in the US alone, with estimated world sales at over two billion. More recently, sales have become difficult to calculate as digital streams and downloads are added to traditional single and album sales. Of course, The Beatles remain more popular than ever.
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