ABBA Gold becomes first album to reach 1000 weeks on the Official Albums Chart

The weeks of the year in a Gregorian calendar are numbered from week 1 to week 52 or 53, depending on several varying factors. Most years have 52 weeks, but if the year starts on a Thursday or is a leap year that starts on a Wednesday, that particular year will have 53 numbered weeks.

2006, 2012, and 2017 were all 53-week years. So not 1040 weeks. Depends also on the date of publication of the chart.

722 weeks on the Top 75. And there's an ongoing assertion in some quarters that "official" statistics are based only on activity in the Top 75, which would make 722 weeks its "proper" tally, so to speak. The OCC sadly don't do much to clarify whether the "official" chart is a Top 75 or a Top 100, seeming to switch between the two listings. And even if the "official" chart is only a Top 75, they also seem to overlook the fact that between 8th August 1981 and 14th January 1989, ALL 100 places were "canon" positions. By that measure, "Rumours" by Fleetwood Mac, for example, is down as having 701 weeks in the Top 75 and 895 in the Top 100, whereas its "official" tally would be all 701 weeks in the Top 75 PLUS an additional 112 weeks between Nos.76 and 100 between August 1981 and January 1989, making 813 weeks in total. Yet nowhere on the OCC site will you find this figure. And my brain is now hurting!

Includes sales from GH I & II, and GH Platinum edition (GH I, II, & III) too.

I am talking about the album not albums: Greatest Hits by Queen which has sold over 6 million copies.

You don't combine the albums, like they haven't for ABBA so you are right, Greatest Hits by Queen has outsold ABBA despite having less weeks on the charts.

Haha Thanks. I got it right for once:)

No.... Incorrect... Queen's GH has the other sales I mentioned added to its tally. Official.

Yes the OCC do and have combined sales for Queens GHs, with sales from a 1990s double package of GHI/GHII, GH receives half of those sales and from The Platinum collection, it receives a third of it's sales.

They have also done exactly the same for Queens GHII.

I don't agree with this but it is true, they have. So yes GH has an inflated total, not based solely on it's own sales.

I am now confused? I know Queen has maybe two greatest hits Albums. I thought the "ONE ALBUM" by Queen, being the greatest hits, has sold over 6 million copies. If this is not true then why is it classified as the biggest selling ALBUM of all time.

You'll have to ask those at the OCC. It all started in 2006, when they published their Best Selling Albums list.

From that point onwards, GH has been given half of the sales from a 1990s released double packaging of GHI & GHII and a third of the sales from The Platinum Collection.

They have also done exactly the same with GHII. Both are fantastic sellers in their own right but unfortunately due to the OCC, the figures they give for them are both heavily inflated.

I know what you mean. Can never get a true reading on anything as alot of the times many things are exaggerated, or a certain artist(s) is given credit for being the first to do something but failing to mention that they have no records on past artists achievements on the very same thing. I don't live in the UK so unaware when a recycle Album suddenly pops up into the top 20 whether its been heavly promoted by an event or the artist is doing some gig or whatever.

Queen GH has its pure sales about 6 millions.
Over the last years Platimum have its own sales and the added sales in 2006 have been excluded from the total of GH.
Each collection has its own total. Also on year end chart each collection has its own sales.
Thus Queen's GH its a really top seller.

I've tried on 4 or 5 occasions to post a reply, that goes into depth about what the OCC added to Queens GH and GHII but they will not allow it to be posted. They are effectively censoring me because they do not want people to see the truth about how the totals of these two albums have been arrived at.

If you take the official album sales of Queen's Greatest Hits ONLY, the actual sales it clocked up are 5.4 million copies.
However, as part of a Greatest Hits package called The Platinum Collection, it achieved some additional sales of just over 0.8 million bringing its overall sales total to 6.25 million.

It will e very nice, If OCC clarify, the whole thing with sales, weeks on charts, number one spots (during 50s & 60s,) not only for GH, but all the artists - bands.
However in charts masters org, Queen GH has its own sales separated from Platinum & Gold
The charts experts of the above site are very good.

lol Yes, I'm one of them and as you'll see, we do not have it as 22xs Platinum (6.6m) we have it at 5,370,000. (Probably around 5.6m now) I've also provided in depth analysis of the album and UK shipment figures to retail and music clubs for it, between 1992-2009.over on UKMIX.

Also, they do not actually possess all of what you request. They do not have pre 1994 sales, they do not have actual sales, they are all made up using multiplers or using DUS, they do not have music club sales and on top of that, they clearly do not want to be totally transparent about their figures or how they arrive at them.

Also, if you follow OCC, Music Week etc you'll see that their numbers sometmes go down, from previously stated figures, yet they never explain these changes. Unfortunately, they just don't feel inclined to explain any of this or even mention it most of the time.

The figures are essentially for the man in the street, who just likes a headline figures, they are not for people who dissect charts and sales and see their inconsistencies and seldom respond or answer any of these chart/sales fans questions about their sales, sales drops, how they've arrived at their figures etc

I'd probably have it a bit above that, if we were to include Music Club sales, where it shifted just over 300k between 1992 and 2007, when Britannia folded. They also add in around 100k+ from the GH/GHII package from the 90s.

Music Week 19/9/09
Alan Jones stated: The decision was made, right or wrong, to share out the sales pro rata. As Greatest Hits I, II, III together have sold 1,680,000 individual tallies for all three have been allocated an extra 560,000 sales. By the same token, Greatest Hits I and II’s combined sales of 132,000 have been split, with an extra 66,000 being added to each. Taking all this into consideration, Greatest Hits has sold a massive 5,780,000 copies. Greatest Hits II has sold 3,840,000.

This was not done with Abba's Gold/More Gold package. Apparently this practice for Queen albums was later abandoned. So the sales are over inflated.

This is interesting stuff Martin, speaking as not only both a chart nerd and a Queen fan, but also as a one-time member of Britannia Music Club in the late '90s. It had never occurred to me to question whether music club sales counted towards official charts – but given that I've never heard about such things being kept account of by Gallup/Official Charts Co/whoever, I assume they 'slipped through the cracks' chartwise, historically?

I can see the pros and cons of incorporating figures from things like the Platinum Collection. On the one hand, it seems unfair to allocate a third of the sales from that to Greatest Hits [I] and not give an equivalent allocation of half the sales of Abba Gold+More Abba Gold. On the other hand, one could say that arbitrarily allocating a full third of those sales to Greatest Hits III, an odds-and-sods assortment that few people are terribly interested in and which surely hasn't driven interest in the combined package to any notably greater heights, means that the 'role' of Greatest Hits (and Greatest Hits II) in those sales is frankly being undersold if anything.

Hi mate. Yes, they don't include them in their charts or in their sales totals.

When they carried out the Best selling albums list in November 2006, they had Madonnas Ray of Light at #101, with 1,677,925 sales, which was less than it's six times platinum (1.8m) award, from January 2003. As of June 2006 shipments were 1,674,000 to Retail and 239,000 to Clubs, which explains the certification and shows the OCC only states retail/over the counter sales.

With regards Queen/ABBA, they've done it with Queen because it is exactly the same album, exactly the same tracks and in the case of the double package from the 90s, it is an actual copy of GH, just packaged in a cardboard sleeve, with GHII.

Personally, I think each product should just keep it's own sales but I do understand the reasoning behind it. Saying that, if they are going to combine sales of the three products, they should give each the full sales, not just a third.

Ahh, that explains the discrepancy from looking at platinum awards figures then – they're counting the music clubs' proportion to arrive at their overall figure, yet the OCC don't. As these things always count(ed) units shipped rather than units sold, though, I guess the OCC's position makes sense. Are we any the wiser to what Ray of Light, say, actually sold through the music clubs?

I've seen you reference that two-disc Queen GH+GHII set in a couple of these comments. I'm trying to work out whether it's the one I own, which is in a gold cardboard sleeve with the GHII-style typeface and coat-of-arms logo – i.e. like the later three-disc GH+GHII+GHIII Platinum Collection set except for having one disc fewer and a different colourscheme from the latter's silvery cover. It's a conjoined double-size CD jewel case inside though (not two separate albums in that sense), again in gold but with the original GH and GHII cover art reproduced on the front and back respectively. Copyright date on the rear of the slipcase says 1994.

Yes, you're right, it is that gold one, I was getting it mixed up.

With regards to ROLs total club sales, it's pretty much the figure I posted of 239k. As of 2007 there were no Music Clubs left in the UK, when Britannia, the last and only one since the late 90s, went into liquidation, although even by then sales had dwindle to almost non existent. For example, in 1998 and 1999, ROL shipped 85k and 139k but by 2004 it was only managing to ship 17, rising slightly to 62 in 2005 and nothing in the first six months of 2006.!