Top Album Sales

This article is about Billboard's top selling albums in the United States. For Top Albums Sales in Japan, see Billboard Japan § Albums.

Top Album Sales is a music chart published by Billboard magazine starting in May 1991,[1] and has existed in its current form since December 2014. It is a weekly chart documenting the best-selling albums on a weekly basis in the United States. Up until December 2014, this had been documented by the Billboard 200 chart, but that chart was altered to factor in music streaming by accounting for album-equivalent units in its tallies to document the effect of the rise of music streaming outlet such as Apple Music and Spotify. Starting in the Top Album Sales chart's debut week of May 25, 1991, Billboard began tabulating charts with electronically monitored piece count information from Soundscan, now known as Luminate.[1] During the week of December 6, 2014, the chart switched to a methodology that blends album sales with track equivalent album units and streaming equivalent album units.[1] The Top Album Sales chart was created to preserve the older methodology of counting pure album sales.[2][3][4][5]

In December 2023, Taylor Swift became the first act to simultaneously occupy the top 4 positions of the chart.[6] In January 2024, Swift also became the first act to simultaneously occupy 7 of the top 10 positions.[7]

  1. ^ a b c Caulfield, Keith (November 27, 2023). "Dolly Parton's 'Rockstar' Debuts at No. 1 on Top Album Sales Chart With Her Biggest Sales Week in Modern Era". Billboard. Retrieved December 12, 2023.
  2. ^ "Billboard 200 Makeover: Album Chart to Incorporate Streams & Track Sales". The Hollywood Reporter. 19 November 2014.
  3. ^ Molanphy, Chris (25 November 2014). "Commerce Vs. Consumption: A Revolutionary Rethink of Billboard's Album Chart". NPR.
  4. ^ "Billboard's charts used to be our barometer for music success. Are they meaningless in the streaming age? - The Washington Post". The Washington Post.
  5. ^ "Billboard 200 Makeover: Album Chart to Incorporate Streams & Track Sales". Billboard. 20 November 2014.
  6. ^ Cite error: The named reference TSTop4 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  7. ^ Caulfield, Keith (2024-01-03). "Taylor Swift Has 7 of the Top 10 on Billboard's Album Sales Chart". Billboard. Retrieved 2024-01-03.