wanted to bump this cause i was reading an article about Nirvana sales, and it correlates to the indeterminate nature of calculating album sales
according to RIAA - Nevermind was certified diamond (10 million units) in 1999, some reports say the album is at 13 mil in the US as of now
according to soundscan it has sold: 8,287,000 (recent number like no later then 2 years ago)
and this point was brought up:
Quote:
The dates for the RIAA are certification dates. Bands have to pay to certify each album gold, platinum, or multiplatinum. Actual shipment numbers are most likely higher than what you see here. For example, Nevermind hasn't been certified in over 7 years, even though it has most likely sold an additional million units during that time.
Both the RIAA and Soundscan have their problems. The RIAA counts all albums shipped from the factory to record stores, retail stores, music clubs, online stores, libraries, mom and pop stores, etc. The problem with the RIAA is that certifications often lag years behind what has actually been shipped. For example, Nevermind has definitely sold a million albums since 1999 if you look at yearly Soundscan figures and Unplugged and In Utero are close to 6 million if not already there.
Soundscan only counts what is actually sold at the cash register. The problem here is that in the past they did not include music clubs, which were big in the 1990’s. Nevermind alone sold 1,240,000 at BMG record club by 2002. They also do not include supermarket stores like Wal-Mart or Mom and Pop stores. Soundscan began in 1991 and it took a few years for their system to be implemented with a sense of accuracy. Today their analysis is more accurate, but in the early 90’s, when many Nirvana albums were released, it was not.
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if you take the number from the front page for Dirty (most likely the best selling one) it says: Dirty / 329,000
i remember reading somewhere it was in the mid 400k levels, and some have though it has sold over 500k going Gold
but as everyone knows, the band doesn't really care about those kinds of things, and isn't willing to pay to have them certify it even if it has, so it's hard to determine if we'll ever know, maybe geffen would care to up the money if SY get into the Rock Hall of Fame just to make them look good, but who knows
info like that even brings up the question if Jet Set has even sold 500k, it debuted at 34, a 4 star RS review, and an A from Christgau, so it's hard to say