One thing I found interesting Smoothcriminal05, is that you stated in a previous post that Elvis outsold MJ, but not by much.
I was always under the impression that MJ had outsold Elvis. The Beatles we know for a fact have far outsold MJ and Elvis.
The majority of Elvis's sales are in the US, which does not say much. Most of MJ's sales on the other hand are abroad. In fact, MJ was the first American artist certified for selling more than 100 million albums abroad. The problem with the Beatles and Elvis are that the sources and information surrounding their sales are poor and incomplete. A lot of the numbers were also purely fabricated to generate interest. What we know FOR SURE is that either the Beatles, MJ, or Elvis is the greatest selling act of all time, but we don't know which one it is exactly. The thing that's important to realize here is that numbers for MJ are much more solid and documented whereas those for Elvis are up to wild speculation and sometimes downright fabrication. This is because Elvis lived at a time when people weren't quite so obsessed with numbers as they are now. During Elvis' peak, not all the markets were opened like they are now. And thats also due to MJ and the Beatles. The Beatles boosted sales in already established markets like the US, UK, Australia, Etc. While MJ opened up basically every other sales market with Thriller. But just look at world charts and I honestly can't see Elvis possibly have sold anything over 400 million; the figures just don't add up. He doesn't have any albums in the top of....anything. He's sold many albums (second most all time in the United States), but that's because he produced so many as well. Singles sales were bigger back then, and those are the ones that have been puffed up, to say the least.
But I think you were talking about units when you mentioned Elvis' sales.
But going back to the whole MJ V.S. Elvis thing. For as long as I can remember(since the late 80s), MJ has been said to have been the top record seller ever. Solo artist of coarse. Like he was given a plaque for it, Guinness World records claimed it, The world music awards claimed it, and even in the HIStory booklet it was claimed.
I just don't see how Elvis outsold MJ, when MJ opened up all these markets and had all these blockbuster albums. Where during his peak, there were very few markets available. Even during his death, Elvis sold many records, but not as much as Mj did when he died.
unk: Awesome, thanks for all the updates SC