What amazed me was how long Elvis and the Beatles continued to be in the top ten selling artists. Elvis was still in the top ten 30 years after he began having hits. He was still on that chart a decade after he died. The Beatles were still on that list 15 years after they broke up. The rest of the folks on there entered that chart and fell off of it in just a few years.
Elvis had a pretty incredible chart run. For the longest time, he held the record for the longest string of years in which an artist had at least 1 Top 40 single on the Billboard Singles Chart at 23 years (1955-1977), and I'm pretty sure that record was only cut there because he died that year. Though Elton John broke that record in 1993, and exceeded it to a total of 30 years (1970-1999), it's still an amazing accomplishment.
Not exactly all the rest; Elton John, Barbra Streisand, Garth Brooks and Rihanna stand out in my mind. I once looked it up and found that the biggest sellers of all time are (wait for it); Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Michael Jackson and Garth Brooks (debate around how to count Presley's double albums, the Beatles double albums count as two due to run time, while Presley using older tech count as one). The biggest woman at that time was Barbra Streisand, but Rihanna may have displaced her since then.
@@kenhorlor5674 Yah, RIAA accounting really hurt Presley's numbers. The easy test is walking into Graceland and seeing the amount of gold and platinum albums that were awarded to Elvis. No other artist or band comes close. I believe he was in Guinness for having the most.
Excellent points on the comments regarding Elvis and The Beatles! And yes, the data only shows from 1969! Imagine starting the data from 1950, before Rock n Roll’s Big Bang! That would be really interesting to see! Elvis and The Beatles continues to entertain us long after they’ve gone! Their gift is their music and it transcends time! It’s everlasting! ☮️🖖🏽
The media always promoted Beyonce and tried to make her seem more popular than she really was. I always noticed the disconnect between the hype and the reality. If you trusted the hype, you would think she was bigger than Rhianna when in fact she didn't even come close to her sales and popularity.
@@elizabethtorrales7170 her best album was with single ladies, halo etc back in 2009/2010. If she wasn’t even on the list for that. , I don’t see why he expected her to be on there the years afterwards . I loved her Sasha fierce era and I was so disappointed with the next album she released after that called 4. It felt so outdated already when it was released and didn’t go with the times.
Plus they didn't show from the 1950's and up to where this started in 1969 3rd quarter ,that's another 2 decades= an additional 20 years on top for Elvis.
@@maccoy5620 Yep, this video jumped {started} right to the end of 1969 3rd quarter which is a year after Elvis 1968 special. which was HUGE and Elvis also dominated the 1950's.
@@daniellysohirka5079 They actually did invent videos after they saw Elvis sending his pink Cadillac on tour. So the Beatles started sending filmed performances to TV shows instead of having to show up to perform.
The amazing thing about Michael Jackson’s run at the top was from 1979-1997 he only released 6 albums which is insane. His revenue compared to minimal album output was phenomenal. The King of 💵
@@JamesHall-gc3yd Michael Jackson had the biggest sales for 1 album but The Beatles had about 240 million sold total. Michael had about 169 million. Elvis about 200 million.
@@raghuvansh1293 I've got Spotify, and I own all their Anthology catalogs. And Mono Box set, which is the way to go. I've listened to the new remixes on my speaker setups like the 2021 releases, and I prefer the 2009 ones the best or Japan 1982.
Thriller - Best selling album of all time 100M+ with records of 8 Grammy Bad - First album to produce 5 number 1 single and MJ iconic anti gravity lean 35M + Dengerous - 500M live viewers for Black or white song 32M+ History - You are not alone first ever song to debut at no 1 22M+ Blood on the dance floor - Best selling remix album of all time 6.1M copies In short Michael Jackson is most successful entertainer of all time. Nobody touching him.
1969: Jim Morrison predicts electro & rap "[…] it might rely heavily on electronics, tapes, I can kind of envision maybe one person with a lot of machines, tapes, and electronics set up, singing or speaking and using machines.”
Spoken word was a thing before Jim Morrison ever said a word. Hip hop correlates to spoken word and black spoken word artists had a huge influence on hip hop. If the point of this comment is negative, then why? This was a pointless quote from an artist that "talent" is way overhyped by a specific group of people. This completely erases the talent and artistry in hip hop because it's something that strange people constantly do when it comes to black music. The amount of music knowledge that so many hip hop artists and producers have, can fill the world. It's a tiring thought to constantly try to erase the art in an art form that you do not understand. It's odd to belittle black music and then use artists who wouldn't have had a career without black music, to do so. Remember, rock music is a black art form. I'm not sure what the point of your comment was.
I loved this format. Kudos to the creator. It basically shows when rock/metal wasn’t wiped off the planet when it came to hot charts. Rock isn’t dead, but they’ve just been shutting down radio stations and replacing them with country and pop.
Yeah it's pretty cool and I've only watched about half of it so far. There's a documentary that I saw about up and coming rock bands and Wyatt so freaking hard for touring newer rock bands to get over the hump these days. Can't remember the name of the documentary but it was just a couple years back. You may have watched it. The title might have been something like rock is not dead or is Rock dead? I can't remember but it was good. One of the things that they kind of complained about was how a band touring on a bus and trying to just get a decent record deal is not too easy these days. It might have been the death of rock and roll or the fall of rock and roll. I can't remember but if you seen it maybe you can refresh my memory cuz then I'll go watch it again. People don't realize rock is far from dead because there's people my age going to watch guns and roses and Metallica And so forth. And sometimes we're going with our uncles or dads. There's a whole new generation that has been introduced to these bands thanks to RU-vid for the most part. Guns n' roses is officially my favorite band and I pretty much grew up on hip hop and then my dad would play old school '70s rock. You should definitely check out the video I'm trying to remember the name of because I think you would enjoy. Metallica and then guns n' roses were selling the most tickets and making the most money on tour over anybody else and any genre. I'm not talking about 20 years ago but I'm talking about right before the virus came down. I think Metallica is number one and in guns and roses is right behind them on the money they made on tour. Ridiculous amounts of money. Sad thing is I'll never be able to see Axl Rose seeing like maybe you did or other people did when it was fresh off The shelf. His pipes are pretty much blown. Sorry so long and all I can say is I was using speech to text because I'm in a rush to get back to my job. I want to shout out to you the things I said above and that's about it. Yo, peace and long live rock and roll!
It's start with the kids. Grew up on rock. Heck that's all we had. Said it before I say it again. MTV and corporate radio made a concerted to effort to sway the youth from rock and it worked. Soon goodbye albums, goodbye independent radio and disc jockeys, etc.
You have to remember that Elvis's carer started in 1953. That's along time to be on any chart. If this started in 1969 that would have been 16 years from when his career started. I don't anyone has been on here longer.
Both the Beatles and Elvis were the most surprising, they dominated for decades!! Eminem and Rhianna were also surprising, they cleaned up. Whitney wasn't as dominant as I thought she would be and ht Beyonce barely showed up!! Very interesting!
Whitney was highly popular during the mid 80's to mid 90's, she was huge but Madonna was much more popular in the 80's and early 90's because of her controversy and sex appeal while Whitney was more recognize for her talent, so because of that Madonna was more pop plus the 80's was categorized by many talents that don't even show in these charts but they were many bands and artist hugely famous, and commercially successful but the era was rife with music an talent however MJ simply topped it off with two albums on the decade, Only Madonna ever got close or surpassed him for a bit. Though the 80's were a decade where the music industry really hit its peak, MJ was the most recognizable artist of that decade, a giant among giants, he was the celebrity of other celebrities. And Whitney was from that era so the fact that she hang on and hit the top if only for a little while wasn't because she wasn't popular or beloved it was just that the competition was fierce. Just like in the 50's for any artist to claim to surpassed Elvis' popularity would be insane, or in the 60's it was the Beatles. With that i am not saying the weren't other artists or bands that were good, very popular, and very successful but these eras were marked mostly by these figures. And the 80's was definitely MJ's reigned, so there's no dishonor for Whitney to have hang on there for as long as she did, but the material girl because of her scandalous life, sex appeal, and controversy also reached a sort of stardom and popularity uneasy to surpass plus her songs while simple were very fun. So yeah Whitney Houston was very talented also massively popular but these other guys had a different appeal that edge her out just a bit as in the case of Madonna.
As an Elton fan it was so good to see him get to the top, stay thee for ages, slip down and out - and then come back and make it to the top again. Well done, Sir.
@@lbj9023 Hopes she makes it, LBJ. I've got my ticket. Actually, I'm going twice. Just have to wait for next April. I saw Genesis the other week and there some people moaning afterwards about Phil Collins' voice, and my friend at work who loves Genesis decided not to go due to 'Phil Collins' voice'. But then I read somewhere just the other day, maybe on RU-vid, that we SHOULD go to see these amazing acts from our earlier years - if only to say thank you and goodbye. So that will be my approach. Thank you for everything, Elton, and best wishes for the future.
👍😎 That was cool. I think Elton had more time on the top of that list than anyone. He doesn’t get enough love from reaction channel’s. He was extremely popular. Beatles, Elvis then Elton.
Absolutely, when rock's downward spiral begun and quite honestly from 1990 there was nothing I cared for so I descended into just listening to old man rock 60's to 80's ish, until I found Band Maid six months ago and now I binge on their back catalogue.
It was due to all the rock and variety radio stations getting bought out and turning into hip-hop, top-20 pop, or Spanish radio, courtesy of Clear Channel radio. I remember switching between different stations in the mid to late 90's and hearing the same songs and ads slightly off by a few seconds on every station. The local Rock station got replaced with Spanish mariachi and had to bring back the DJ to plead with audiences to stop calling in death threats.
And not just rock music. All types of music took a massive plunge for the worse in the 90's. And it only gotten worse since then. Country music completely disappeared in the 90's.
This is best selling. But No one has ever been as popular as Michael Jackson. Because he became popular all over the world, including in small countries where his albums did not sell.
@@AlexSR__ Yeah, he said MJ was the most popular artist, I pointed out that he's not. The Beatles are the uncontested most popular band of all time, there are only distant second claims by others.
@@kensolar69 Michael is way more popular than the beatles, it's not that if they've sold more it means they're more famous. Sales ≠ popularity. He is known even in villages where there is no internet and he has probably the most recognizable face ever.
For real now. Elvis Presley crushed this list bigtime and it wasn't even his peak years, 1969 was 15 years after he even started. And still top 10 in the 90s, 2 DECADES AFTER HE DIED. Do y'all understand what legend/icon level we are talking about. And this summer the Elvis movie will came out and he will sell even more records after that. It's crazy y'all, peace out
Notice how pish music became around 2000, the names on the list deteriorated significantly, from legends to artists no one will remember in 20 years time
Pple aren't going to forget the top artists of a generation. The biggest thing that changed was Rock. Bc it died down. But you still have a lot of pop and rap artists that are icons. Just bc they aren't the music genre you listen too. They made it on the chart bc pple listen to them.
Psy is a Korean artist and producer who had a huge hit called "Gangnam Style". It's pretty much a novelty song with a very creative video. Someone can correct me but I believe the video was the first one to reach a billion views on RU-vid. It is very much worth checking out and reacting to because it's more or less the introduction of K-pop outside of South Korea. Psy mostly runs his own production company now, though I've heard he is putting out a new album soon. You might like one of his artists, Jessi, who is a Korean-American rapper who released her new song "Zoom" just this week.
@@robdaviesprogm Luis Fonsi also appeared. He had a huge global hit with "Despacito" and he is popular in Spanish-language music markets but I don't think any of his other hits have crossed over to have universal appeal. Psy is similar in that he is well known in Korea and has had several hit songs but only one song has made it big outside that market. Such is the global, fragmented, market of today.
Beyonce was always the product of hype not reality. Her husbands company buys her first million records before the songs come out so they can say it's a million seller. It was manipulation of a bad system and a well financed machine.
The Beatles, Elvis, Elton John, Eagles, Michael Jackson, Eminem and Rihanna all completely dominated over everybody else when they were up there - but it makes sense when you look at album sales.
Plus the artist's had a massive advantage with the internet and streaming being available. In the old days, artist's had to tour like crazy, spit albums out and hope radio stations would play their singles
funny how you say corparate posers when the real corparate posers were people who debuted before the digital era. it was so easy to pay for your song to be on radio if you had the right connections. so many artists back then came from rich families who payed their way into the industry. theres only a handful of artists before the 2000's who actually didnt buy their way through to get their music out there.
@@Yhtbh A lot of the greatest songs never _made_ the radio. Very few real musicians now, not to say that some people don't enjoy that. If you're one of them then it's a great music era for you. I think there's still great music being made but I _really_ have to hunt it down now. The musicians certainly aren't well known.
@@Yhtbh it's so funny to me, because people forget that digital age brough a sense of equality when older stuff had rich people made into stars. Almost all the people before 2000 Era were from wealthy families lol
Although ABBA hit peaks on there through the 70's from the early 80's onwards their records continued to sell consistantly well both with ABBA Gold and Gold2. I terms of total global sales inc. now the Voyage album from 2021 they remain the 2nd biggest selling artist after the Beatles
Is this US sales? I’m not sure Eagles or Garth Brooks would be as high up otherwise. And I would guess ABBA might have been at least top 3 at some point internationally.
Michael was truly the king of pop! He ruled the 80's - from 1980 till 1989 and then again for a few years in the 90's! Wow!! It wasn't just Thriller but also Off the wall and Bad. He was also on three Jackson's albums, namely Triumph, Victory and Jacksons Live!
@@Milkers777 facts are facts. MJ was a great entertainer, Prince could write, play almost every instrument, sing, rap, play love songs, soul, rap, funk. He did everything, MJ didn’t.
keep in mind these numbers are just totals....now that there are 8 billion of us a few million records isnt that big of a deal anymore...back in the 80s(and before) it was, not just because there were 2 billion less....you have to remember there was no internet, nothing went viral it was word of mouth and only the western world really had acess to music like this....the 2 billion people in china and india didnt listen to American music so the number of people buying records was limited to the western world with a population of only a few hundred million or a billion or so. the percentages were much higher back then of total number of people listening to the music vs who had access than now.....if that makes sense.
@@JamesHall-gc3yd i loved the sunshine pop genre too. we bought the "get easy sunshine pop collection" album. introduced me to so much fun songs. mrs bluebird, we can fly, paisley window pane... so much memories
@@songsfortheworld8567 incorrect. My generation, kids and young teens in the 70s, only really began listening around the mid 70s, at the same time with Wings
I wonder where Elvis would finish up if a chart started with 1954 when his career began (15 years before the starting point for this chart). Also the U.S. population in 1954 was a lot less at 168 million, eventually growing to the 2019 population that was almost double at 328 million.
@@virginiadurant9954 yea, there’s still bands but it’s mostly the same ones who have sold out or grown old. The little ones like us don’t have a solid chance now a days, record companies look for hip hop and trending music not bands anymore. People have lost the appreciation for raw real sound made by people who spent time learning the instruments to create it. Who spent nights writing lyrics to fit with the music and most importantly their emotions. Now it’s just autotune crap always talking about offing someone or drugs and etc.
I was actually very shocked about Elvis and the Beatles, particularly Elvis. That was quite shocking to me. But the chart is really about how dominant MJ was for almost 20 years. Not "he's hanging in there" dominance. But like almost complete dominance.
The graphed #s are 12 month trailing averages from 1969 to 2019 - so it misses much of Elivis' career and a good chunk of the Beatles. So this graph shows the Beatles at a little more than 3.9 million per year with Michael Jackson and the Eagles hitting about 4.5 million per year. Eminem was well above 3 million per year for about 10 years. Drake and Rihanna got incredible #s but these include digital downloads which is not really comparable. As far as total sales worldwide the results are what you might guess (#1 through #8) Beatles, Elvis, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Madonna, Led Zeppelin, Rihanna and Pink Floyd.
These numbers are based on certified sales by RIAA (certified gold, platinum, diamond etc) which you have to pay for to be certified, Beyoncé has over 100 million records uncertified which is why she’s barely on here, for example Crazy in love is only certified Gold (500k copies) but it’s actually sold over 7 million.
Love you King MJ.. this year is Thriller's 40th album..can't wait so excited..gonna purchase again both CD and Vinyl with new unreleased tracks wooohooo
What a change going into the late 90's & 2000's. The talent level plummeted. From The Beatles, Elvis, Zeppelin, The Eagles to the likes of Britney Spears & Justin Bieber. And I'm not talking about individual taste, I'm talking about people with actual talent as opposed to manufactured "stars" who were picked by the industry & spoon fed to kids. Yikes. I knew it but how striking to see it laid out like that. Also striking to see how long The Beatles & Elvis stayed way up there, long after The Beatles disbanded & Elvis died. And they're still selling. And when the new Elvis movie comes out in June, he'll be right back up there again. It'll do for him what "Bohemian Rhapsody" did for Queen, a big boost right back up into the stratosphere. 💙☮💙
I enjoyed your reaction AND the info. I've gotta check out that channel. Unlike many people, I love at least a few songs from all of these people. However, I'm pretty sure I have a deeper connection with music than your average Joe! It was fun to watch their popularity on a moving graph. I was really into this!
This was of course the American sales list rather than the global list. The global one looks very different. Beyonce is largely a phenomenon in terms of her live impact and media impact. She hasn't had such impressive music sales as artists like Rihanna or even (in global sales terms) artists like Shakira. This method of presenting the data is great at seeing who was popular in sales terms at each period of time, but another way of looking at the data is to look at cumulative / combined total sales over their career rather than in-period sales. The latter method definitely highlights how older artists had the longevity of career or the huge sales impact that came with way the music industry was back in the day.
she’s the second best selling digital artist of all time behind rihanna. look at album sales alone, beyonce has outsold rihanna. she’s one of the best selling artists of all time but she’s doesn’t have impressive sells? she estimated to sell over 70M album units and has three diamond album in brazil alone…
@@butterflyszn2342 I'm not so familiar with the Brazilian market but with the USA market that the video was based on, digital album sales for artists such as Adele and Taylor Swift are higher than Beyonce in USA. Maybe Beyonce is just more popular in certain countries than others.
As I'm sure others have mentioned, the final results of that chart would have looked a whole lot different if its starting point was 1959. All the same, very interesting info.
If you wanted to start earlier, it should have started in 1955, the year music historians say was the year rock was born. Elvis came out in 1955 and that is the starting point. But that was awesome to see and well done.
@@Pulsar77 I believe this was based on data from RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America), so yes, it appears the list was primarily American artists but it also included any artist that sold in America. The RIAA was established in 1952, so they are the best source available. If there is an international equivalent to RIAA, I doubt their data would be as extensive.
This is a cool tool to find out all the artists from late 60's til now. I don't think I even saw the Rolling Stones once on there, I would have thought they were up there somewhere. thx for sharing Jamel :)
I see how you'd think that if you only knew the popular stuff. Kinda sad how people need music shoved down their throats to know what's out there instead of looking for it themselves.
@@Xeroforte, popular music is a cross-section of what's going on in the wider musical universe. It doesn't exist in a vacuum. If it's shit, it must be the case that music in the main is shit.
You're right that was fantabulous! I was born in the early 70's so that was like seeing my whole world flashing before my eyes. I know well at least some of the music of every last artist that popped up on the screen. I could almost predict when each one would appear next. My Mom loved all kinds of music. She either played it on the radio, went around the house singing it or played it instrumentally from the time I was in the womb until the day she passed. I can't sing or play an instrument but I do enjoy and appreciate at least a little something from every genre. I thoroughly enjoyed your reaction. Thanks for doing this. I'd probably never have found the original video otherwise.
...... Garth Brooks kind of cheated a little bit..... He released albums with three different covers.... So his fans bought all three covers and he gets credit for their sales..... The Beatles Elvis led Zeppelin Elton John Michael Jackson..... Made their cut with regular album sales no trickery
Or he would release albums with multiple CDs in one package every 1 sale counted as 2 if it had 2 disc or 3 sales if it had 3 disc. I think he even had a 10 disc set that sold at Wal-Mart rather cheap too.
Queen and Taylor Swift are my favorites so I'm happy to see that they stayed on the charts for a long time. I'm surprised Britney Spears didn't get higher up though. I feel like she was more famous than Eminem in the early 2000s.
