These charts are now a fixed feature of our blog site.
2019 Best Selling Singles
Below full best sellers of the year.
Below them are all the years that I have for top 100 Best Sellers.
2018 Best Selling Singles
The forth and last chart of the year. The records in green are what is left over from 2017 though only 2018 sales are shown. Records that are still in the current chart show as magenta. Records using both colours entered in 2017, but fell out during 2018, only to return again and are still in on the 23 December 2018. The sales success of the Showman movie tracks has been incredible and most of them are in the top ten best sellers of the year. But in a way you would expect that since they have been in most of the year. It's also surprising that none reached the top spot and quite remarkable that a best seller of the year would outsell any that did make the number one spot too! Apart from the Showman, George Ezra had two singles that performed very well indeed. The number of tracks over the million has increased by five compared with 2017, but the number of tracks over two million has fallen by two. However the sales reduction has effected the end of the 100, with the 100 slot down by 12,000 sales. Those selling over 250K has fallen badly with 173 over the mark compared with last year's total of 182. The rest of the 173 can be found in the PDF of the year on the This Week's Chart Page.
2017 Best Selling Singles
The full chart of 2017 follows below. It features only those records that have sold over 250K. Any records that appear in green are the left over records from 2016, though only 2017 sales are recorded. Records shown coloured Magenta are still in the chart on the 24 December 2017. If they have both colours the record entered in 2016 and was still in the chart at the year end, though any that do so will have fallen out of the 100 during the course of the year.
Compared to 2016 sales seem to have increased in the top 100. But when you look at the number of million sellers, the figure has fallen to just 31 from 38. Plus there are only 182 records selling 250,000 this year, a fall of seven compared to last year.
What is interesting is the Ed Sheeran only just outsold Luis Fonsi, but they took a much shorter time period to achieve the sales. At the moment Ed is still outselling them, but wherever he continues to do so is now a question of time.
The rest of the best seller chart can be found in the PDF of the year on This Week's Chart page.
2016 Best Selling Singles
2019 Best Selling Singles
Below full best sellers of the year.
Below them are all the years that I have for top 100 Best Sellers.
2018 Best Selling Singles
The forth and last chart of the year. The records in green are what is left over from 2017 though only 2018 sales are shown. Records that are still in the current chart show as magenta. Records using both colours entered in 2017, but fell out during 2018, only to return again and are still in on the 23 December 2018. The sales success of the Showman movie tracks has been incredible and most of them are in the top ten best sellers of the year. But in a way you would expect that since they have been in most of the year. It's also surprising that none reached the top spot and quite remarkable that a best seller of the year would outsell any that did make the number one spot too! Apart from the Showman, George Ezra had two singles that performed very well indeed. The number of tracks over the million has increased by five compared with 2017, but the number of tracks over two million has fallen by two. However the sales reduction has effected the end of the 100, with the 100 slot down by 12,000 sales. Those selling over 250K has fallen badly with 173 over the mark compared with last year's total of 182. The rest of the 173 can be found in the PDF of the year on the This Week's Chart Page.
2017 Best Selling Singles
The full chart of 2017 follows below. It features only those records that have sold over 250K. Any records that appear in green are the left over records from 2016, though only 2017 sales are recorded. Records shown coloured Magenta are still in the chart on the 24 December 2017. If they have both colours the record entered in 2016 and was still in the chart at the year end, though any that do so will have fallen out of the 100 during the course of the year.
Compared to 2016 sales seem to have increased in the top 100. But when you look at the number of million sellers, the figure has fallen to just 31 from 38. Plus there are only 182 records selling 250,000 this year, a fall of seven compared to last year.
What is interesting is the Ed Sheeran only just outsold Luis Fonsi, but they took a much shorter time period to achieve the sales. At the moment Ed is still outselling them, but wherever he continues to do so is now a question of time.
The rest of the best seller chart can be found in the PDF of the year on This Week's Chart page.
2016 Best Selling Singles
The final chart of the year for 2016 is below. It contains all the records that have dropped out this year, it is bigger than that and extends to 189. This further part is available as part of the PDF of the year. See This Week's Chart Page.
Compared with 2015 there are two more million sellers than last year, but both are from records left over from 2015. As far as the others are concerned the totals for those already dropped out and those that are still in the chart are the same as 2015. There is also one less two million seller compared to 2015. The bottom of the 100 is lower than last time too. However it only falls off when you get past 90. So the decline is only small. The rest of the best seller list drops down to 189. The same as last year! As always we take it down to any record that has sold 250,000 or more.
The higher sales level does however contradict what the Official Charts Company is saying about downloads and physical sales being in steep decline. As always the Record Industry are a bunch of liars. And should be ignored!!!...
With no streaming in the chart, Drake falls from the top of the chart to seven and the Real Chart best seller is Calum Scott.
Compared with 2015 there are two more million sellers than last year, but both are from records left over from 2015. As far as the others are concerned the totals for those already dropped out and those that are still in the chart are the same as 2015. There is also one less two million seller compared to 2015. The bottom of the 100 is lower than last time too. However it only falls off when you get past 90. So the decline is only small. The rest of the best seller list drops down to 189. The same as last year! As always we take it down to any record that has sold 250,000 or more.
The higher sales level does however contradict what the Official Charts Company is saying about downloads and physical sales being in steep decline. As always the Record Industry are a bunch of liars. And should be ignored!!!...
With no streaming in the chart, Drake falls from the top of the chart to seven and the Real Chart best seller is Calum Scott.
2015 Best Selling Singles
The full best sellers for 2015!
Mark Ronson featuring Bruno Mars with Uptown Funk. originally entered in 2014, but as it still has not dropped out it easily becomes the best seller for this year. It's total sales amount to 3,242K as of 20 December 2015. Altogether 36 tracks sold a million copies easily beating last year's 25. But this has come at the expense of those that sold smaller amounts as the grand total of records selling more the 250,000 has fallen from 198 to 189. The bottom of the 100 is also up slightly as it only took 490K to hit the target last year. But do these figures actually show a decrease in record sales for the year? I actually can't say from these figures. What it does show is that if you can stay in the chart for a long time you can easily pass the million selling mark, but then you would with 30K sales a week and 40 plus weeks on the chart. You could say that the best seller of 2015 that was released in that year was Ellie Goulding. Looking at the current charts and those produced by the OCC you would think the top artist of the year was Justin Bieber! However he limps in at just 33 with sales for just 17 weeks in the charts. If you compare him to Adele's track at 24, she has done that amount of sales in just 9 weeks. The person that really has really done well is Taylor Swift. Is that because she has kept her music away from the streaming sites?
You can see the rest of the best sellers on the PDF below.
2014 Best Selling Singles
This is the fully updated chart of the year. This year's chart is 198 records strong and if you compare it with the 2013 chart below you can see that sales are up. Several records will cross over into 2015 that started life in the 2013 charts, these are indicated by the use of two colours. Pharrell's grand total is 3,317K and there looks no sign of him dropping out early in 2015. The Idina Menzel track despite never getting higher than number 7 is still selling well and as accumulated in total 2,069K.
However these kinds of tracks are the exceptions to the rule, since most of these acts failed to follow up these records with top ten hits. It doesn't take a genius to work out the top selling acts that year were three male singers. In the form of Ed Sheeran, Sam Smith and George Ezra.
The rest of the chart can be viewed along with all the top 100 charts of the year in the PDF file below.
2013 Best Selling Singles
The chart below is the final update for 2013.
Though sales look healthy with 27 records passing over a million sales, they are actually down when compared to 2012. Though you might think by not much since the best sellers last year had 28 million sellers. It's not until you get lower down that the fall off bites in. For in 2012 the figure for the 100 slot was twice what it is this year. As the best seller charts include all records that sell 250K (while in the charts) it extends down to a total of 193 records. However last year that figure was 205.
So what can we make of this? It could be that a lot more records are entering the charts, which means that records hang around for shorty times never making the 250K needed to make the chart. It's likely that if you have a big hit you will sell a lot of copies and stay around a long time, with the added benefit of Now That's What I Call Music adding to your continuing run. But even those, as can be seen, haven't done that well. There are two records that have sold 2 million records each, with a third from Passenger which will get that in the new year. But there were two last year, so even that is not extraordinary.
As with all these best selling charts they are compiled by me from the chart each week. They can therefore contain errors. Especially those that keep returning to the chart. I can therefore miss a track which might just slip over the threshold to make the chart. These errors are my fault alone and are nothing to do with the Compilers. If I come across them the chart will be updated.
The full list can be found on the PDF file below.
2012 Best Selling Tracks
2012 BEST SELLERS
These are the top 100 best sellers for 2012. If you compare it with last year then there are 3 less million sellers tracks to make the chart, plus also at the bottom of the 100 it is 22,000 less than last year. This probably represents the loss in sales whereby the 40K section of each week's chart stopped inside the top 40 instead of outside it like last year. It's not all bad news sales wise as we now have 205 records that passed over the 250K mark. This compares to only 197 in 2011. You can see the rest of the 205 records in the full year PDF below. Another fact is there are more of 2011 remains of sales, than there were 2010 sales in 2011 best sellers. Again reflecting the slide in sales this year. Meaning it was harder for this year's crop of best sellers to push out the left overs. Current chart hits are also less than in the 2011 chart. Showing that things have not improved sales wise.
Best Sellers 2010
Full Top 100 Best Sellers 2011
These are the best selling discs in total for 2011. As you can see this has been a good year for Adele holding both the top and runner up spots, plus a few lower down. She has also gone past the two million sales mark with both tracks and both are still selling well. But it's been a good year for million sellers with 31, compared to last year when there was just 24! It was a little harder to make this year's 100 as you had to sell an extra 34K to make just 100. However things are not as rosy overall. For the exclusive club of selling over 250K has increased by just one record this year to 197 tracks in total!! It seems if you have a big hit now you will sell a great deal of them. You can put this down to the download market. This may mean your track is not deleted, but it doesn't allow new material and acts to have small scale sellers of old. One only needs to look at the sales of records that were falling off the chart, quickly picking up the pace of selling again when the artist bring out the album that features the track. But the worse culprit of the lot is the Now album. Each one of these has the same popular records fill up the 100 charts (displayed on download sellers charts) so much so that a 100 chart can contain only 60 tracks, the rest being duplicates. Then this year I-Tunes decided to sell many ex top 40 tracks at just 59p. So the 99p new tracks were left in the computer vaults of these sellers. If you couple this with the fact that the days are gone when an album release would kill off the sales of the single. So in 2011 thanks to the above if you made the top four on the chart it became a lot easier to sell a million. Whilst selling a quarter to half a million records was a lot harder.
As before this chart is compiled by me and not the compilers who do each weekly chart. It does NOT include the sales whilst any record was outside the top 100. If any record returned to the chart those sales are added on.
The green coloured records are the remains of the sales from records that entered in 2010. The Red coloured ones records that are still in the chart at the end of the year.
The full charts and all 197 best sellers, plus list of drop outs and highest positions and weeks can be found as a PDF on the (Playlist) Chart Page.
Top 100 1970's
The best sellers of 1974
A grand total of 254 records past the 250,000 sales this year. And ten records achieved sales of one million plus. Thanks to a two sided single, the more popular being You Make Me Feel Brand New The Stylistics take the best seller title of the year. David Essex came a close second with his record still in the chart at the year end. I thought that Sylvia might have been a lot closer, but when the two chart runs were added together she lands at nine. Again she rolls over to 1975. The lowest sale for a number one record was Slade's The Bangin' Man at 161 on just 416,000 sales. While Barbra Streisand only reach 26 in the chart yet lands at 119.
Top 100 1960's
The Best Sellers of 1969
In total we had 237 records that year that passed the 250K mark. And 15 records achieved one million plus sales.
The other charts had different number one best sellers to ours, but at one million 654 thousand copies The Beatles topped the chart with the help of Billy Preston on Get Back. The controversial and banned by the BBC record by Jane Birkin and Serge Gainsbourg stands at two. It is a combined sales of two records basically, since the first record company pulled the plug on it with all the controversy. I have recently added it to the chart books and it only lasted in the charts for another three weeks after the last 1969 chart was done. Number three. In 1968 Don Kirshner made cartoon series for TV about the school rock band The Archies that had started life as a comic book. Don had worked on the Monkees TV series and the cartoon used the same format as that. The song Sugar Sugar was actually offered to The Monkees themselves. However they turned it down on the basis it was rubbish! In the end the track was given to some session musicians to record and a cartoon film was used to promote the track. This of course worked big time, appealing to both young kids and young teenagers with a catchy tune. The reason for it being top was Top of The Pops they played the cartoon clip featured on the number one page. Next some charts put Frank Sinatra has the best seller of the year. But I suspect these were based on the weeks in the chart, not actual sales. And with My Way staying in the BMRB top 50 all year that's why it was top. Even after all this time it's NOT listed as a million seller "officially". But since it was still in the Real Chart at the end of 1970, it by then was well over the two million mark. Now we descend to eight for our first hit that was not a number one. That goes to Stevie Wonder. The record was first issued as only I don't Know Why I Love You. But the more popular side was on the B side. Later when the first side dropped out the record company promoted the B side and that helped the record reached the number two slot. One place below that is Bobbie Gentry. She did make the other charts number one, but was stuck behind Jane and Serge on our chart. Left over from 1968 is Fleetwood Mac at number ten.
The rest of the top 100 features some interesting records like Max Romero's banned record is the only record in the top 50 not to make the top ten.
Top 100 1950's
Top 100 1980'S
1987 Best Sellers
Rick Astley, who is still in the chart at the year end, sold one million 118 thousand. However he's only one of two records that sold a million that year, the other being Starship. Compared to 1986, that's down by two records. In fact all the top ten sellers are down in sales compared to last year. But it's not all bad news for the sales figures. For the bottom 100 position is up by 25,000 sales. And it continues with the rest of the records selling over 250,000. This year we have 238 sold over that amount, compared to 215 in 1986. Of the 238, 23 are still in the chart at the end of the year. With 14 left over from 1986. Only reaching 13 for Wet Wet Wet's first single, but it still mangers to make 23 in the chart. The highest anyone manged to get in the chart and still sell over 250K was 30, going to two records from Sherrick at 215 and David Essex at 224. The low sales being in part due to youth unemployment and the home taping market, despite the fact that records came in more formats than just 45 rpm. With 12 inches, picture discs, cassette singles and the CD single. However CD players were not cheap at this point and the disc's more expensive. The growth area for these was the 60's and 70's records and those replacing the worn out vinyl with scratch free CD's. The increase in smaller selling records is probably down to the diversity in buying public. With a tendency not to go for the mainstream big sellers. It should be noted that although the top two records are the same as the Gallup best sellers of the year, on that chart neither topped the million mark.
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