As part of their annual year-end music industry report, Billboard and the Nielsen Company recently tallied up the all-time sales totals for the Soundscan era, and their updated Top 10 list includes some of the heaviest hitters in the history of rock, pop, and country — including PopCrush favorites Mariah Carey and Eminem, who placed third and seventh, respectively.
Coming in at No. 1 on the list is Garth Brooks, with a whopping 68.5 million units sold, while Carey is the top-selling female artist, with 53.6 million in sales. (Second? The Beatles, at 63.3 million.) Meanwhile, Eminem — who, unlike many of the artists on the list, didn’t start releasing albums until after Soundscan was implemented — has moved a healthy 41.1 million units.
Billboard started using Soundscan in 1991, in an effort to take a more precise measure of sales by tallying point-of-sale scans instead of relying on more informal record store numbers. As a result, the totals on this most recent list only take sales from the last 20 years into account, but they’re still a pretty good measure of success for contemporary artists (and even a few who aren’t so contemporary). Take a look at the complete list below!
Top 10 Best-Selling Artists of the Soundscan Era
1. Garth Brooks (68,561,000)
2. The Beatles (63,299,000
3. Mariah Carey (53,612,000)
4. Metallica (53,170,000)
5. Celine Dion (51,492,000)
6. George Strait (43,310,000)
7. Eminem (41,166,000)
8. Tim McGraw (40,169,000)
9. Alan Jackson (38,860,000)
10. Pink Floyd (37,228,000)