Beatles forums > Remasters
Remastered CDs sales figures
peterbell1:
I saw a story at the Examiner website which gave the sales figures for the remastered CDs from their release on 9th September through to 6th December - a period of just under three months.
The figures come from SoundScan, so I assume they are just for the US (the original article doesn't say).
Here's the list, in order of sales ....
1 Abbey Road 272,220
2 Sgt Peppers 211,856
3 The Beatles (White Album) 203,452
4 Rubber Soul 160,642
5 Revolver 138,380
6 Past Masters 111,184
7 Help! 106,568
8 Let It Be 98,599
9 Magical Mystery Tour 96,081
10 A Hard Day's Night 93,245
11 Please Please Me 73,489
12 With The Beatles 67,405
13 Beatles For Sale 64,373
14 Yellow Submarine 46,460
The Beatles' stereo box set (16 CDs + DVD) 112,564
The Beatles in Mono' mono box set (13 CDs) 38,219
Some interesting figures there, I thought. For example .....
I was surprised to see that Abbey Road outsold Revolver almost two-to-one. I thought Revolver would have been one of the biggest sellers.
And A Hard Days Night only makes it to number 10 on the list.
The White Album is obviously a popular one - it made it to number 3 in the chart even though it is priced higher than the single CDs.
And ignoring YS - which is really only half a Beatles album - the most unpopular of the bunch is BFS.
The Beatles first four LPs are at the bottom of the list (again ignoring YS). The early period is obviously not that popular with record buyers.
I was also surprised at how high up the list Let It Be is (especially given that Let It Be ... Naked was not released all that long ago).
And the pre-release rumours which suggested that the mono box was limited to 10,000 units were obviously wrong, since it sold almost four times that number!!
What are your thoughts on the figures? Are there any that have surprised you?
peterbell1:
Here's a link to the Examiner article ...
http://www.examiner.com/x-2082-Beatles-Examiner~y2010m1d7-Just-for-reference-Beatles-CD-sales-through-early-December?cid=examiner-email
Mairi:
Thanks for the info.
AngeloMysterioso:
Interesting information. Although, overall, I am not surprised.
Mainly because – provided one had the opportunity to listen before buying, the remastering effect is more easily audible on Abbey Road and the White albums. Probably because – for most of the albums before 1968; the source tapes technology did not allow that much flexibility for remastering purposes (these were basically two track, until the mid-60’s; then four track; and ultimately eight track, beginning with White Album and all over Abbey Road).
Beatles For Sale? Again, I am not surprised. Notwithstanding the fact that it is far from being one of my favourites, this specific album does not contain any big hit(s) whatsoever – perhaps only Eight Days a Week,.
About Yellow Submarine… as you already put it, half of it is not Beatles’ stuff. Plus the fact that it was quite recently remixed (a bit) and marketed as Yellow Submarine Songtrack in 1999. I guess that The Beatles fan archetype was generally much less eager to spend hard earned bucks – in financially difficult times, to have in hand quite another version of that (half) album of sorts.
The big surprise to me is the relative low sale figures of the Mono mixes. Soundwise, I do somewhat think that these should have deserved more interest than these sale figures show.
What would be of interest? To compare these new figures against the former 33 RPM sales for each album issue (obviously excluding the Past Masters consolidation) – before CD’s were made available somewhere in the mid-1980’s.
dr marvalo:
I'm a little surprised that Magical Mystery Tour didn't come in at #3. Its by far the most improved sound-wise, and the booklet hasn't been published since the early 1970's.
That being said, if you haven't purchased MMT yet, do it. It really sounds great.
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