The biggest selling X Factor singles and albums acts revealed!

X Factor acts have clocked up nearly 50 million UK record sales over the last decade as Simon Cowell's reality TV singing contest gears up for its tenth series.

According to new Official Charts Company sales data published in today’s edition of Music Week, it has been revealed that X Factor has been responsible for nearly 50 million UK record sales over the last decade.

Acts who have appeared on Simon Cowell’s hit reality TV show, which is set to return for a tenth series next Saturday night (August 31), have clocked up 29.6 million UK singles sales and 18.3 million UK albums sales to date.

Leona Lewis, who won the third series in 2006, remains the biggest selling artist to emerge from X Factor with 4.4 million singles sales and 3.9 million albums sales to her name.  

Surprisingly, after bringing London’s Leicester Square to a standstill when they premiered their new film, This Is Us, on Tuesday night (August 20), 2010 runners up One Direction lag behind the likes of Olly Murs and JLS in UK singles and albums sales.

Olly Murs (who came second in 2009) and 2008 runners-up JLS are the second and third biggest singles acts with 3.9 million and 3.4 million singles sales, respectively. Their positions are reversed in the biggest selling X Factor albums acts Top 10, with JLS on 2.7 million album sales and Olly on 2.6 million album sales.

Meanwhile, One Direction are both the fourth biggest selling X Factor singles act (3.2 million sales) and albums act (1.7 million). Alexandra Burke is the fifth biggest selling X Factor singles act over-all. However, with more than 1.25 million sales, her 2008 winner’s single, Hallelujah, is the show’s biggest selling single to date.  2004 runners up, G4, are X Factor’s fifth biggest selling albums act. The vocal troupe clocked up more than 1.2 million sales across their three studio albums.

Despite only releasing one single, 2012 winner James Arthur is X Factor's eighth biggest singles artist. His debut hit, Impossible, is less than 30,000 copies from becoming X Factor's biggest selling single.

Simon Cowell's still the daddy!

When father-to-be Simon Cowell was asked by news agency Reuters if he’d be happy to let his unborn child become a pop star, the music mogul quipped: "If they were signed to me, yes, because I'd look after them."

This could indeed be a shrewd move for Baby Cowell;  despite Simon quitting the show in 2010 to launch a US version X Factor, he remains as the programme’s most commercially successful judge. Simon Cowell-mentored acts Leona Lewis, Olly Murs and One Direction, alone account for more than 43% of all X Factor single and album sales to date!

The Official Top 10 Biggest Selling X Factor Singles Acts

© 2013 Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.

The Official Top 10 Biggest Selling X Factor Albums Acts

© 2013 Official Charts Company. All rights reserved.