Rolling Stones sales data

Just thought this was interesting. Goes 64 pages into the Stones' sales data from the beginning to now.



CSPC: The Rolling Stones Popularity Analysis – Page 64 – ChartMasters »

Their biggest selling album of all time, however, is the compilation from 1971, Hot Rocks.

Original sales - not taking into account digital or re-releases.
"1964 The Rolling Stones – 2,500,000
1964 12 X 5 – 1,700,000
1965 The Rolling Stones No. 2 – 1,000,000
1965 The Rolling Stones, Now! – 1,300,000
1965 Out of Our Heads – 2,850,000
1965 December’s Children (And Everybody’s) – 1,300,000
1966 Aftermath – 3,900,000
1967 Between the Buttons – 2,200,000
1967 Their Satanic Majesties Request – 2,450,000
1968 Beggars Banquet – 4,000,000
1969 Let It Bleed – 7,000,000
1971 Sticky Fingers – 9,350,000
1972 Exile on Main St – 8,100,000
1973 Goats Head Soup – 6,350,000
1974 It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll – 3,700,000
1976 Black and Blue – 4,100,000
1978 Some Girls – 11,300,000
1980 Emotional Rescue – 5,700,000
1981 Tattoo You – 8,500,000
1983 Undercover – 3,400,000
1986 Dirty Work – 3,850,000
1989 Steel Wheels – 5,600,000
1994 Voodoo Lounge – 6,400,000
1997 Bridges to Babylon – 4,700,000
2005 A Bigger Bang – 2,550,000

Some Girls is the band top selling studio album at 11,3 million copies sold. Nevertheless, the is barely one tenth of the massive 113,8 million units sold cumulatively by their studio albums.

At their, just like the Beatles, the band issued similar but differently titled and packaged albums. I merged their debut US record The Rolling Stones (England’s Newest Hit Makers) with their UK debut The Rolling Stones due to their very similar track list and identical role in the band discography. Several following albums got UK-axed or US-axed releases, which explain their lower sales as they weren’t available globally. In fact, the only four albums under 2 million units are very exactly the four albums that weren’t issued worldwide.

This concludes on an amazing fact. In spite of topping 10 million only one time during their career, the band sold well past 2 million units of each and every album they issued everywhere. This may not seem like that much but during the 60s the market was awfully low, each million copies sold was a miracle. As an example, 1965 effort Out Of Our Heads appears with a modest 2,85 million copies sold. In reality it was everything except modest. In the US, the album was a huge #2 set blocked only by the Beatles. In the UK, it was an impressive 8 weeks #1 album. It managed exactly the same performance in Germany and was huge everywhere.

If the market was so low at that point it was because the population was lower, that not everyone had record players but also because the main format of that era was the single. Let review within’ the next pages how the band performed on that category."

Physical Singles Sales Part 1 – 64-65 Storm
From late 1964, the Rolling Stones dropped 5 consecutive #1 singles in the UK. Soon, they were also topping charts in most countries, including in the US. The main example of that situation is the ground breaking global hit (I Can’t Get Know) Satisfaction which remains their best seller to date in physical single format at 5,2 million.

In total, those singles sold a combined 18,4 million copies within’ a couple of years. This isn’t even counting with singles from that era that come as singles of compilations which will be reviewed at the end of this category.

The Rolling Stones (1964) – 591,000 equivalent albums
Not Fade Away – 950,000
Route 66 – 20,000
Tell Me – 1,000,000

12 X 5 (1964) – 742,500 equivalent albums
It’s All Over Now – 1,400,000
Time is on My Side – 1,000,000
Under the Boardwalk – 75,000

The Rolling Stones No. 2 (1965) – 0 equivalent albums
No single released

The Rolling Stones, Now! (1965) – 450,000 equivalent albums
Little Red Roaster – 1,000,000
Heart of Stone – 500,000

Out of Our Heads (1965) – 2,385,000 equivalent albums
The Last Time – 2,750,000
(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction – 5,200,000

December’s Children (1965) – 1,350,000 equivalent albums
As Tears Go By – 1,250,000
Get Off of My Cloud – 3,250,000

Physical Singles Sales Part 2 – 60s Mature Act
If you check studio album sales, you will notice an upward trend of their albums at the end of the 60s with Let It Bleed selling 7 million units, more than three times as much as Between The Buttons. In terms of single sales, it is the exact opposite with each album era generating less and less movement. This is the typical case of an act that saw its image mature within’ the general public, after a few years of convincing hits, their albums started to be rated higher and higher.

Combined, those singles sold 7,8 million units with 40% of them coming from Paint It Black.

Aftermath (1966) – 1,305,000 equivalent albums
Paint It Black – 3,250,000
Mother’s Little Helper – 1,100,000

Between the Buttons (1967) – 420,000 equivalent albums
Let’s Spend the Night Together – 1,400,000

Their Satanic Majesties Request (1967) – 303,000 equivalent albums
She’s a Rainbow – 950,000
2000 Light Years from Home – 60,000

Beggars Banquet (1968) – 240,000 equivalent albums
Street Fighting Man – 650,000
Sympathy for the Devil – 150,000

Let It Bleed (1969) – 90,000 equivalent albums
You Can’t Always Get What You Want – 250,000
Remaining Singles – 50,000

Physical Singles Sales Part 3 – The 70s
With the album format taking more space as years passed in the 70s, the average single sales was often lower than in the previous decade. Time to time, the British cult band still registered impressive hit singles like Brown Sugar, Angie and Miss You which sold almost 10 million units combined, all three of which went #1 in the US.

All in alln their 70s singles reached nearly 17 million copies sold, continuing to build an impressive total in that format.

Sticky Fingers (1971) – 1,140,000 equivalent albums
Brown Sugar – 2,700,000
Let It Rock – 150,000
Wild Horses – 950,000

Exile on Main St (1972) – 510,000 equivalent albums
Tumbling Dice – 1,250,000
Happy – 400,000
Remaining Singles – 50,000

Goat Head Soup (1973) – 1,335,000 equivalent albums
Angie – 3,750,000
Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo (Heartbreaker) – 600,000
Star Star – 100,000

It’s Only Rock ‘n’ Roll (1974) – 390,000 equivalent albums
It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll (But I Like It) – 800,000
Ain’t Too Proud to Beg – 500,000

Black and Blue (1976) – 300,000 equivalent albums
Fool to Cry – 1,000,000

Some Girls (1978) – 1,410,000 equivalent albums
Miss You – 3,400,000
Beast of Burden – 700,000
Respectable – 300,000
Shattered – 300,000

Physical Singles Sales Part 4 – The 80s
Up to Dirty Work, all 80s albums of the band contained at least one million selling single. Considering by that record they were around for already more than 20 years, this feat is pretty unreal. Later days got harder though as since Harlem Shuffle they never got million sellers anymore.

At 11,1 million, their total single sales for their 80s singles is incredible so deep into their career.

Emotional Rescue (1980) – 915,000 equivalent albums
Emotional Rescue – 2,400,000
She’s So Cold – 650,000

Tattoo You (1981) – 1,185,000 equivalent albums
Start Me Up – 2,600,000
Waiting on a Friend – 900,000
Hang Fire – 450,000

Undercover (1983) – 420,000 equivalent albums
She Was Hot – 300,000
Undercover of the Night – 1,100,000

Dirty Work (1986) – 435,000 equivalent albums
Harlem Shuffle – 1,100,000
One Hit (To the Body) – 350,000

Steel Wheels (1989) – 382,500 equivalent albums
Mixed Emotions – 750,000
Rock and a Hard Place – 300,000
Almost Hear You Sigh – 225,000

Physical Singles Sales Part 5 – Closing & Re-opening
This next batch adds both later singles of the band as well as all hits that came out of best of albums, all packaged into the Orphan Album folder. This section includes various huge smashes led by the classic Honky Tonk Women.

This batch of singles sold an additional 18,4 million copies, bringing their cumulative tally to 72,8 million physical singles sold, one of the highest total an act ever achieved.

Voodoo Lounge (1994) – 247,500 equivalent albums
Love Is Strong – 300,000
You Got Me Rocking – 150,000
Out of Tears – 275,000
I Go Wild – 100,000

Bridges to Babylon (1997) – 142,500 equivalent albums
Anybody Seen My Baby? – 200,000
Saint of Me – 200,000
Out of Control – 75,000

A Bigger Bang (2005) – 60,000 equivalent albums
Streets of Love – 150,000
Remaining Singles – 50,000

Orphan album – 5,080,500 equivalent albums
19th Nervous Breakdown – 2,750,000
Have You Seen Your Mother, Baby, Standing in the Shadow? – 1,250,000
Come On – 250,000
Highwire – 325,000
Don’t Stop – 75,000
Little Queenie – 150,000
Fortune Teller – 50,000
I Don’t Know Why – 250,000
Out of Time – 200,000
I Wanna Be Your Man – 600,000
Sad Day – 60,000
Going to a Go-Go – 650,000
Like a Rolling Stone – 275,000
Dandelion – 550,000
Honky Tonk Women – 3,900,000
Jumpin’ Jack Flash – 2,800,000
We Love You – 2,400,000
Remaining Singles – 400,000

Here are the 20 Rolling Stones’ tracks that have generated the most sales:
1 1966 Paint It Black [Aftermath] – 15,370,000
2 1965 (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction [Out Of Our Heads] – 14,630,000
3 1981 Start Me Up [Tattoo You] – 13,570,000
4 1968 Sympathy For The Devil [Beggars Banquet] – 12,260,000
5 1978 Beast Of Burden [Some Girls] – 11,780,000
6 1973 Angie [Goats Head Soup] – 10,680,000
7 1971 Brown Sugar [Sticky Fingers] – 9,440,000
8 1969 Gimme Shelter [Let It Bleed] – 9,350,000
9 1971 Wild Horses [Sticky Fingers] – 8,150,000
10 1969 Honky Tonk Women [Let It Bleed] – 6,520,000
11 1969 Jumpin’ Jack Flash [Orphan] – 4,900,000
12 1969 You Can’t Always Get What You Want [Let It Bleed] – 4,240,000
13 1972 Tumbling Dice [Exile On Main St.] – 3,510,000
14 1980 Emotional Rescue [Emotional Rescue] – 3,240,000
15 1978 Miss You [Some Girls] – 3,140,000
16 1967 Ruby Tuesday [Between The Buttons] – 3,070,000
17 1967 She’s A Rainbow [Their Satanic Majesties Request] – 3,020,000
18 1986 Harlem Shuffle [Dirty Work] – 2,870,000
19 1974 It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll (But I Like It) [It’s Only Rock ‘N Roll] – 2,700,000
20 1967 Let’s Spend The Night Together [Between The Buttons] – 2,560,000

 

...number One this week in UK...LPs ..and singles...!!

 

Great information!

 

Generally, I am against formulas that try to translate singles sales into album sales and the like, but this formula seems to work and comport with reality.

For example, to my anecdotal personal understanding, even though I've never been a big fan of theirs, during my entire 40 years of listening to rock music, the Rolling Stones have always been near the very top of the heap in terms of "most popular music artist". Always. And yet, you look at the RIAA certifications for albums, and they are tied for 13th, with Aerosmith.

Now, I love Aerosmith, but as big as they have been, there has never been a minute where they were as overall-BIG as the Rolling Stones. Among groups, only the Beatles or Led Zeppelin qualify. That's why the Stones can still sell out 70,000 seat football stadiums and nobody else can. Other old acts like Aerosmith can't, and modern superstars like Beyonce can't. They are the only ones who can book and sell out multiple football stadium dates in the USA.

And this formula confirms that - the Stones are bigger overall sellers than anyone rated so far, well above acts like U2 and Billy Joel, who have higher RIAA certifications.

Whatever the formula is dong, it seems to capture overall historical popularity.

 

The Rolling Stones are my favorite band but if you look at the top selling albums of all time, Hot Rocks is pretty far down the list compared to some of the individual album releases by Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd and The Beatles.

 

"Some Girls" is their biggest hit album. I always tought it was "Sticky Fingers". I'm also surprised about the sales of "Exile on Main St". It's so ragged and dirty and not very commercial.

 

Interesting! Does it give a grand total CSPC for everything?

 

If you look at the RIAA figures Tattoo You has out sold albums like Sticky Fingers, Exile and Let It Bleed probably on the basis of Start Me Up and Waiting on a Friend being included. In addition, Goats Head Soup probably because of Angie being included has out sold Beggars Banquet, Let It Bleed and Exile and equalled Sticky Fingers. According to the last RIAA figures on Wikipedia Voodoo Lounge and Steel Wheels have even out sold Exile on Main Street and Beggars Banquet.

 

I'm surprised Undercover sold as little as it did. Or, I should say, I can't believe Dirty Work sold more than Undercover.

It's interesting (and no surprise) to see how Exile has surged in the digital era, which has dovetailed with the lionization of Exile as Masterpiece.

 

If you look at the sales figures Ophelia provided it seems to be a crime that Emotional Rescue and Bridges to Babylon have sold more than Aftermath and Beggars Banquet or even It's Only Rock 'N' Roll.

 

I've never been able to understand that either John.

 

Yes, the overall tally is 234,8 million equivalent album sales, making them 2nd overall out of 38 major artists studied so far - only Madonna is ahead at 244m. The full list is available here. Among artists covered are Led Zeppelin, U2, Celine Dion, Metallica, Fleetwood Mac, ABBA and Bob Dylan. The last addition from yesterday is Wham! & George Michael for obvious reasons.

 

No, their biggest hit album really is Sticky Fingers.

This is the whole point of the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC), to get rid of the old and limited "album sales" indicator, instead factoring in with appropriate weighting physical singles, downloads and streaming but also compilations, live albums and music videos sales generated by the studio album. This is what is called the "CSPC Total" which highlights that overall Sticky Fingers generated 21,5 million equivalent album sales for the Stones while Some Girls, although their biggest seller in original format thanks to a more LP-oriented market at its time, ends up being "only" their 4th most successful record at 18,2 million with Let It Bleed and Aftermath topping it too.

 

Total equivalent album sales generated:
Aftermath - 19,369,000
Beggars Banquet - 15,473,000
Emotional Rescue - 6,848,000
Bridges to Babylon - 5,020,000

So there is truly no discussion, Aftermath / Beggars Banquet are way bigger than Emotional Rescue and Bridges to Babylon. It's the same logic - the last two got released when a large part of the music industry was made of album sales with healthy markets while the former two came out in a Singles era of very weak album sales. In following years, their popularity got cannibalized by various greatest hits packages, so the original format never matched pure album sales of later albums, but that is really only an irrelevant technicality, popularity-wise, money-wise or whatever you would like to use to gauge them they are clearly much bigger albums.

 

However. if I read that chart right they are counting single sales with the albums sales to get the figure in the last column which really isn't a fair comparison.

Comparing single sales with album sales is like comparing apples and oranges in my opinion.

 

Pre Sound Scan sales figures are basically the lowest numbers a record company thinks an artist will believe, though they tended to get higher if an artist hired a pit bull lawyer and accountant to credibly threaten a law suit.

Is this based on data other than what a record company reported?

 

You aren't reading it right though. All formats are weighted with one physical single being worth 0,3 album and one download single equaling 0,1 album. Basically, you can take the last number as the number of gross equivalent albums

In terms of function, albums and singles ain't that different, they are both music consumption. People buy songs they like. At times they do so by buying the single, in other days the album, but historically this had way more to do with the available market / worth vs price of the format than a real consumer desire to select one over the other.

 

There is more than 230 sources used. Soundscan is just one of them, with its limits as well as its benefits. All figures are aimed to be net shipments to date.

 

Combining singles sales with album sales is to arrive at 19 million copies sold for an album like Afternath is crazy. It totally distorts the picture of album sales as we have used that term for as long as long players have existed. As all long time collectors know, there are tons of copies of Some Girls out there, and comparatively few copies of Aftermath. I shudder to think of the sales totals for an album like Mariah Carey's #1's.

 

I still don't agree with combining album and single sales whether they are weighted in some way or not, because it is not a true comparison of like items.

Just because someone bought a single does not necessarily mean they would have bought the album that contained the single so why equate them.

Obviously, the early Stones were more of a singles band which is probably why Hot Rocks is their best selling album. However, when the Stones started out single sales were always higher than album sales and the trend did not reverse itself until later.

In addition, in the early years the U.S versions of the albums usually contained the singles while the U.K. versions did not which complicates matters even more.

 

Are you aware that the first Billboard Album ranking came out before LPs even existed? An album was just a box of 6 2-tracks singles as technically it wasn't possible to record 40/50 minutes of music within' a single disc. Nowadays, with streaming we are down to the same situation, we listen to singles only, not albums.

The real meaning of a format is just that - a format. That doesn't matter, a format will never tell an1ything about an artist popularity or not. Just take Aftermath and Black & Blue.

- Aftermath was way more successful upon release in album format (more weeks at 1 / Top 10 / on charts in the US/UK combined)
- Aftermath is a bigger catalog seller than Black & Blue in album format
- Aftermath singles in physical format were way bigger than Black & Blue singles
- Aftermath tracks sold more than 10 times more download singles format than Black & Blue tracks
- Aftermath tracks are streamed 16 times more on Spotify than Black & Blue tracks

Album sales -
- Aftermath = 3,9 million
- Black & Blue = 4,1 million

That's the clear example of what's obvious - album sales are a big lie in terms of relevance. The fact that Black & Blue sold more proves only 1 thing, that the album market was healthier in 1976 than in 1966 (in the UK for example it grow from 30m to 102m in the meantime), something we don't care about and that was already known anyway. This is completely irrelevant to identify which album of the Rolling Stones is the most popular.

Had albums been cheaper in relation to the average workers rent during the 60s, Paint It Black would have sold less copies and Aftermath much more, sales of both products are directly dependent, we can't just look at one part of the jigsaw and believe we are getting valuable answers, we are just getting limited pieces of the picture.

 

That "more of a singles band" is just complete nonsense. Your conception is getting distorted by irrelevant facts that you interpret badly. The Stones first four albums combined a gigantic 30 weeks at #1 in the UK album chart, in the US from 12/64 to 12/67 they amassed 96 weeks inside the Top 10 Album chart, if they were a singles band who was an album band then?

 

Summery:

Sales does not equal popularity and popularity or sales does not equal quality.

 

No. Summary:

Sales of one format only does not equal popularity, appropriately weighted sales of all formats does equal popularity.

Popularity / Sales do not equal to quality, we surely agree on that.

 

However , they sold more singles than albums during that time.