Talk:Best-selling albums by year (USA)

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I think it's been cleaned up enough, so I'm removing the template. —User:ACupOfCoffee@ 17:31, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

Contents 1 Merge 2 Irrelevant information 3 Rework 4 Merge 2:The sequel 5 Should include Soundscan Album Sales 6 Moved down from the top

[edit] Merge

Yes, let's merge it. —User:ACupOfCoffee@ 00:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

I'd prefer not to merge it. This list (incomplete in its current form, although accurate and referenced) is not simply a duplication of the information on the target page, which is also a mess and needs to be turned into a group project. I'll be working backwards on this list to add all the years tracked by Billboard, dating back to 1956.

I'm not going to remove the merge tag yet, but it's been eight months without much in the way of discussion.

User:Horologium talk - contrib 21:02, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Irrelevant information

There's so much irrelevant information in this article. This should be a simple list of the best-selling albums in each year (with accurate and sourced sales figures), not a discussion of the second/third/fourth/whatever best-selling, or first-week sales, or whatever singles were released. Extraordinary Machine 16:26, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rework

This article was in really bad shape, with inconsistent formatting, loads of irrelevant information (as noted above), and more than half a dozen outright errors. I went to the Billboard site and pulled up the year-end charts to ensure that the entries were correct, made the entries consistent, and eliminated extraneous data on singles, sales totals, and other albums. I also added reference links to all the albums on the list.

User:Horologium talk - contrib 20:29, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

I find it odd that 50 Cent is listed as the best selling album of 2005 when Mariah Carey outsold him by more than 200k copies as reported by Billboard. And how Carrie Underwood isn't listed because she outsold HSM by nearly a half million in 2006 also reported by Billboard. ThisIsMyName 11:23, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't know where you got your figures, but I have a cite from Billboard saying that 50 cent was the stop selling album of 2005; it's that little (50) next to the album name. Mariah Carey's album was actually #4 on the list. I also have a cite for HSM; it's from E!, which is a reliable source, and it states that Carrie Underwood's album was #3, behind HSM and the Rascal Flatts album Me and My Gang. Underwood's album may have more total sales that HSM, but those sales were not all in 2006; in fact, her album was released in 2005, and had sales both before and after the 2006 calendar year. In 2006, HSM outsold Underwood's album by a not-insignificant 700,000 copies.

Horologium talk - contrib 15:51, 21 May 2007 (UTC)

Billboard reported that Mariah Carey's album out sold 50 Cent's several times at the end of 2005. Several other sources reported it too. You were right about Carrie Underwood's album. It's very difficult finding active links. None of Billboards work because they all have been replace by newer articles. Here are some on Mariah Carey outselling 50 Cent: [1][2][3][4][5]Hopefully all of the links work. I'm going to write to Billboard because 50 Cent and Mariah Carey were the only two albums everyone was talking about fighting to be the best selling album. There was no talk of Eminem and Green Day.

[edit] Merge 2:The sequel

Extraordinary Machine points out that this article duplicates material found at Billboard Year-End, so I suggest that we merge this in there, Of course, this article is now better-sourced than the destination, so any merge would preserve the data on this page, rather than the ill-cited material on the proposed destination page. Horologium talk - contrib 20:46, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

• Oppose - I am opposing this merge based on the methodology of Billboard year-end calculations prior to their use of NielsenSoundscan in 1991. Per the intro to the Billboard Year-End article, year-end charts were calculated by a point system based solely on chart positions - not sales.... there's really no way of knowing exact sales figures pre-1991, as far as I can see. The external links are good, but what was #1 for the year may not have been the "best selling". Aside from the above reason, I think this article is set up horribly; I'd suggest formatting it without a brand new header for each year, if only one album is going to be listed. - eo 21:02, 23 May 2007 (UTC)

OK, there are some serious issues with this whole thing (see the discussion below), but I have removed the merge tag for now. I also reformatted the page, breaking up the headers into decades, rather than single years, which addressed a peeve of yours and significantly improves the readability of the page. Eventually, something is going to have to be done with all of the myriad music lists out there, which seem to be a magnet for fancruft and outright vandalism. However, there are currently more than a dozen unsourced music lists up for AfD right now, so I am going to hold off on doing anything with this exhaustively sourced article until the dust settles a bit and everyone catches their breath. Horologium talk - contrib 01:16, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Should include Soundscan Album Sales

I really think that the Soundscan should be used for the album best sellers of the year. Or use both Billboard and Soundscan. Mariah outsold 50 Cent and "High School Musical" outsold Carrie Underwood.72.94.46.100 22:57, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

The problem is that Billboard uses SoundScan, and has since 1991 when SoundScan was introduced (it wasn't developed by Billboard, but they were the ones who bought it after it was developed). However, Billboard is providing contradictory figures, since they list 50 cent as the top seller in the cite I provided, but apparently provided different data to all of the sources cited by User:ThisIsMyName. A similar situation arises with the 2006 data, in which there is a question of whether Carrie Underwood or High School Musical soundtrack was the biggest seller.

Since the list is based off Billboard's charts, unless someone knows of a reliable source to identify top-sellers prior to the SoundScan era, I would suggest merging this into the Billboard Year-End chart, since everything here is based on that. Horologium talk - contrib 23:39, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

I figured it all out now as I searched almost endless for an answer. Billboard's chart years are different from calender years. Billboard's chart years don't include sales for the month of December, because the chart year ends the last week of November. 50 Cent's album The Massacre is listed as the best-selling album because Mariah Carey's album out sold him the last week December 2005 according to SoundScan.[6] ThisIsMyName 11:48, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Ugh. That makes this almost totally untenable. That makes everything prior to 1991 suspect because of methodology (from what I have been able to figure out, Billboard's year-end chart positions were not based solely on sales before SoundScan was introduced), and everything after that suspect due to the variation between calendar year and chart year. We might be able to fix the Soundscan era stuff (due to the better documentation of sales), but it's going to require a lot more work than I, at least, am willing to put into this article (which I stumbled across while reverting some random vandalism inserted by an IP address user). Unless you know of a way to track actual sales, this article might be pointless. (No, RIAA sales are not a good proxy, because they only track shipments to retailers, not actual sales. A lot of those albums became cutouts after languishing on the shelves for quite a while, certainly more than year.)

BTW, please sign your posts; I can see who you are by looking at the history, but it's not readily apparent when viewing the talk page who is contributing without a signature. Use the four tilde string to sign and date, or use the signature button at the top of the editing box. Horologium talk - contrib 18:47, 25 May 2007 (UTC)

I understand what you mean. Billboard changes their rules and how they determine chart position all too often for me. I spent at least 3 hours reading articles from Billboard and the more I read, the more this article becomes pointless. I even read an article on Billboard saying that Carrie Underwood's album was the best selling album for 2006. I give up. ThisIsMyName 11:48, 26 May 2007 (UTC)

Yep, I think this is why we need to title articles correctly. Billboard has its chart year run from December-November because of printing schedules. Sometimes their year-rankings differ from a calendar year ranking - the Mariah Carey/50 Cent scenario being a perfect example. Prior to Soundscan, however, the only thing there is to go by is what Billboard printed at the time.... whether that represents the "real" best-seller of the year is anyone's guess - the technology simply didn't exist to track sales by barcoding and digital downloads. - eo 18:35, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

And there is already a page for the SoundScan figures: Best-selling albums in the United States since Nielsen SoundScan tracking began, which I want to merge in somewhere. There are multiple lists on that page, and the person who is responsible for most of the work is (somewhat understandably) upset by the thought of nuking/merging/redirecting it. I really would like to come up with a better name, though; the current name of that page makes my head hurt... Horologium talk - contrib 19:04, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

Funny you should say that, before I even got to your final sentence, I saw that wikilink and thought that is one of the worst article titles I've ever seen. Ugh. - eo 19:32, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Moved down from the top

PEOPLE --- BE CAREFUL that you don't cite Billboard's The Billboard 200 year-end chart for proof of what album was the best selling of the year. This is NOT necessarily the best seller of the year, but the album that stayed at top the most weeks, rather.

I know for a fact that in 2005, 50 Cents album was at #1 on the charts for longer than Mariah's, only because it came out a month before hers; but in less time, Mariah was able to overtake him. Some of these might need to be edited ... so whoever used the Billboard Top 200 list for this made a BIG mistake!

If you had read the entire talk page before posting, you would have realized that the people who edit this page regularly are aware of this issue. I'm not going to revert your edit, because it's now correct (at least as far as this article's title is concerned), but please read the entire talk page before adding breathless statements like this. Horologium t-c 05:45, 7 June 2007 (UTC)