Fluxtumblr: Top 10 Albums of the SoundScan Era
1. Metallica - Metallica [1991] (15,735,000)
2. Shania Twain - Come On Over [1997] (15,513,000)
3. Alanis Morrissette - Jagged Little Pill [1995] (14,714,000)
4. Backstreet Boys - Millennium [1999] (12,168,000)
5. The Beatles - 1 [2000] (11,985,000)
6. soundtrack - The Bodyguard [1992] (11,829,000)
7. Santana - Supernatural [1999] (11,772,000)
8. Creed - Human Clay [1999] (11,574,000)
9. ‘N Sync - No Strings Attached [2000] (11,122,000)
10. Celine Dion - Falling Into You [1996] (10,790,000)I feel like I go on about this all the time, but this is the definition of A BUBBLE. Records sold like this—millions of copies of in a very short period of time—because of technological and economic factors.* The recording industry had a lock on the technologies of distribution, radio promotion and MTV still existed (especially for rock music, which has died without them), the 90s were generally a positive economic climate with people investing money in speculative ventures (like signing bands for lots of money and promoting the fuck out of them). This started in the early 80s of course, but really peaked in the mid-to-late 90s, when the recording industry did away with singles and doubled-down on LPs. There’s something to be said for a period when you couldn’t hear a single in your own home, on your own terms (i.e. not waiting for radio to play it), without dropping nearly $20 for maybe 2 more singles and 14 other filler tracks.
What this means is that when you write a trend piece about current record sales, you can’t use this period as “how it used to be” without also offering significant caveats, or even adjusting sales for this sort of ridiculous inflationary period. Record sales are of course at an all-time low, but comparing today’s numbers to the Soundscan era alone is really super duper misleading.
*Aside from the early 80s MTV-fueled boom, the other 8+ digit all-time sellers took years, if not decades to get there: Back in Black, Eagles’ Greatest Hits, Rumours, Dark Side of the Moon, etc.
Two questions:
1) How’s Hootie And The Blowfish’s Cracked Rear View not on this list? Supposedly it sold 16 million in 1994.
2) Record sales are at an ALL-TIME low? Really? No “modern era” caveat? Really? Because it is hard as fuck for me to believe that records were selling better in the 30s than they are now.
Records were cheaper in the 30s than they are now — particularly when you factor in that the 30s was primarily a singles market. And they didn’t have much to compete with in terms of entertainment dollars. But it’s also hard to compare record sales before the LP era with the post-album market, as both live music and sheet music ate up a far greater portion of the popular-music dollar than they do today.
Finally, although the messianic aspects of the “long-tail” theory of the entertainment economy haven’t panned out, it’s still true that even though individual record sales are down — million-selling records are a rare breed — that doesn’t necessarily mean that the total amount of money made on record sales has decreased. There were plenty of million-selling records in the 30s (especially if you believe label publicity), but there are millions more records being made and (theoretically) sold today.
