Off of the latest issue of Billboard Magazine (Sept 1st Dave Mathews Band cover):
*right click to view full image*
The Top 25-Best Selling Artists by total unit volume in the Past 18 Months (album and track sales together) (Percentage is that of album sales):
1. Adele 33.5% (11.1M albums, 22.2M tracks)
2. Lady Antebellum 27.5% (2.9M albums, 7.5M tracks)
3. Justin Bieber 26.2% (4.3M albums, 12.2M tracks)
4. Jason Aldean 21.4% (2.4M albums, 9.0M tracks)
5. Zac Brown Band 20.4% (2.0M albums, 8.0M tracks)
6. Coldplay 18.1% (1.9M albums, 8.5M tracks)
7. Luke Bryan 18.1% (1.8M albums, 8.0M tracks)
8. Lady Gaga 17.0% (3.1M albums, 15.1M tracks)
9. Lil Wayne 16.0% (3.1M albums, 16.2M tracks)
10. Taylor Swift 15.0% (2.3M albums, 13.2M tracks)
11. Drake 13.9% (2.3M albums, 14.2M tracks)
12. Eminem 12.9% (2.0M albums, 13.5M tracks)
13. Glee Cast 10.9% (2.4M albums, 19.4M tracks)
14. Britney Spears 10.0% (1.0M albums, 8.8M tracks)
15. Nicki Minaj 9.6% (1.5M albums, 15.0M tracks)
16. Maroon 5 9.5% (1.5M albums, 14.0M tracks)
17. Rihanna 9.0% (2.1M albums, 21.1M tracks)
18. Chris Brown 8.6% (1.2M albums, 13.0M tracks)
19. Bruno Mars 8.5% (1.3M albums, 13.5M tracks)
20. Usher 8.2% (0.8M albums, 8.7M tracks)
21. Katy Perry 6.6% (1.6M albums, 22.5M tracks)
22. LMFAO 5.9% (1.0M albums, 15.9M tracks)
23. David Guetta 4.7% (0.4M albums, 9.2M tracks)
24. Pitbull 4.4% (0.6M albums, 13.3M tracks)
25. Flo Rida 1.1% (0.1M albums, 11.0M tracks)
Some stand out lines in the article:
Adele's album sales brought in 96.4M and track sales 19.95M
Perry and Flo Rida would be good examples of successful singles artists. Katy Perry's album sales at 13.5M and tracks sales 20.5M. Flo Rida album sales at $661,505 and tracks sales 9.94M.
The first part of the article if anyone wants to read it:
here