User talk:Never17

A belated welcome![edit]

Here's wishing you a belated welcome to Wikipedia, Never17! I see that you've already been around a while and wanted to thank you for your contributions. Though you seem to have been successful in finding your way around, you may still benefit from following some of the links below, which help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

Need some ideas of what kind of things need doing? Try the Task Center.

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Again, welcome! Lord Sjones23 (talk - contributions) 20:21, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you Never17 (talk) 20:30, 27 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

List of best-selling music artists[edit]

Hi Never17. Where we can talk about List of best-selling music artists and any other ideas or wiki projects? Paladium (talk) 18:23, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well there's Wikipedia:WikiProject Pop music which generally covers popular music, i'd start there. Never17 (talk) 19:30, 21 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey your account has the required number of edits needed to be extended protected, can't you just make the changes on the page? Never17 (talk) 17:44, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I have enough edits but i prefer that we find a consensus among a group of people. That's why i asked for more people. Paladium (talk) 16:44, 26 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Never17, made an attempt at a best-selling artist list article at this address User talk:Paladium/List of best-selling music artists How would you update it with the sales estimates of the artists who have sold the most units?

And do you have a web adress we could talk to that is external to Wikipedia? Paladium (talk) 12:43, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The first thing that needs to be done is replacing all of the outdated sources with more recent sources. Since a lot of the claimed figures aren't used anymore, we should look to purge the old claimed sales figures and replace them with new ones. In some cases we can simply add a newer certification alongside the currently used source.

Madonna - 2024 (Hollywood Reporter) - 400 Million, 2024 (Yahoo) - 400 Million

Elton John - 2024 (Yahoo) - 300 Million 2023 (SmoothRadio) - 300 Million

The Beatles - May 2024 (NME) - 500 Million, May 2024 (IheartRadio) - 500 Million

Celine Dion - 2023 (Business Insider) - 230 Million, 2024 (Yahoo) - 230 Million

Queen - 2023 (BBC) - 300 Million records

Tina Turner - 2023 (CBC) - 200 Million records, 2023 (Fox) - 150 Million records

For Bing Crosby we can use the reported number of sales given when he died since he wouldn't have sold very much since then.

Bing Crosby - New York Times - 300 Million, Los Angeles Times - 300 Million

There are also other older artists who are missing sales certifications that have been claimed to sell millions, we could add them as well or at least discuss with editors first before adding them to the page

Cliff Richard - BBC - 250 Million, 2023 (Smooth Radio) - 250 Million

The Jackson 5 - May 2024 (WNDU) - 150 Million, 1984 (New York Times) - 100 Million

There's also the subject of a international artist named Nana Mouskouri, we would need to come to a consensus on them too

Nana Mouskouri - NeoMagazine - 350 Million, UNICEF - 300 Million

We also need to come to a consensus on newer artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Drake. Since streaming distorts their sales figures. Never17 (talk) 19:30, 27 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Some of the claims are very flimsy or are only a statement with no proof. For example, the claim on 400 millions on Madonna is just a verbal statement of the artist herself. Is against the rules of the list to accept the word of the artist as enough proof to be on the list. Quoting your hollywood reporter-guiness link:

Madonna, 65, said during an interview on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon last year that she had sold over 400 million records – albums, singles and digital – during her career..

On Nana Mouskouri, could be a great thing to do a complete discography, and make an independent page covering her discography of more than 200 albums. We only have selected works on her wikipedia page. I am in favor of Nana being included in the list and that we work to include more of its albumes in Wikipedia.

About the streaming. My take is that i want to accept streaming as sales because the streaming company is paying the artist for each listening even if this is a millionth of a cent. It is a sale, independent of the price at which they are selling it. For me, the list should be about total sales and total impact and not only pure sales. If the list is pure sales only, that would have to be reflected in the title of the article. On the other hand, I believe that the consensus of the article and what is being applied now separates pure sales in "Claimed Sales" (pure) and "certifications" (combined sale). If that is the case i suggest changing the title "claimed sales" to "claimed pure sales" or "claimed total sales" to add clarity.

Quoting the article

The RIAA counts 10 downloads of individual track as well as 1,500 audio/video streams as an equivalent to one unit of album, including those from singles released prior to the album release. Theoretically, if one song were streamed 1.5 billion times on YouTube, the single would receive Diamond and the whole album could be certified Platinum, thus creating a combined total of 11 million certified units without any sales. Kanye West's album The Life of Pablo achieved Platinum without selling a single copy and was only available for streaming.

I think streaming has come here to stay. Streaming is tracked and you can decide if you use only pure sales or pure + digital sales + streaming. As I said before, if you want to use only pure sales, you can use Top Album Sales list but billboard and certifications are using Album equivanlent units on the main chart. Quoting the wiki article again:

Standards

To ensure the highest level of fact checking and editorial control, this list sources sales figures to news organizations and highly regarded music industry related organizations such as Billboard.

This section is saying that Billboard is a highly regarded source and is the one that uses the album equivalent chart as their main chart and that left the pure sales chart as a secondary chart. An even on pure sales some artists are still at the top. Quoting Top Album Sales.

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

That means she was topping the list of pure sales with several albums. Paladium (talk) 14:52, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

For Madonna i personally believe she's sold just around 350 million, not much more then that. 400 Million shouln't come from the artist, i agree with you it's no different from a record label.

Taylor Swift had claimed sales of 200 million in 2021 based on what we have listed here. Billboard reported over the last 3 years she sold 32 million in the United States. We don't have figures elsewhere but she could conservatively be listed at 250 million records however we'd need a reliable source to report it. [1] Never17 (talk) 20:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Michael Jackson recently gained 600,000 units with his latest certifications in the UK, his global certified sales should be 290.1 million. Can you add that to his total? list of best selling Never17 (talk) 19:37, 29 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A lengthy welcome[edit]

Hi Never17. Welcome to Wikipedia. I see you've been editing for a while not, and hope you don't mind if I share some of my thoughts on starting out as a new editor on Wikipedia: If I could get editors in your situation to follow just one piece of advice, it would be this: Learn Wikipedia by working only on non-contentious topics until you have a feel for the normal editing process and the policies that usually come up when editing casually. You'll find editing to be fun, easy, and rewarding. The rare disputes are resolved quickly and easily in collaboration.

Working on biographical information about living persons is far more difficult. Wikipedia's Biographies of living persons policy requires strict adherence to multiple content policies, and applies to all information about living persons including talk pages.

If you have a relationship with the topics you want to edit, then you will need to review Wikipedia's Conflict of interest policy, which may require you to disclose your relationship and restrict your editing depending upon how you are affiliated with the subject matter. Regardless, editing in a manner that promotes an entity or viewpoint over others can appear to be detrimental to the purpose of Wikipedia and the neutrality required in articles.

Some topic areas within Wikipedia have special editing restrictions that apply to all editors. It's best to avoid these topics until you are extremely familiar with all relevant policies and guidelines.

If you work from reliable, independent sources, you shouldn't go far wrong. WP:RSP and WP:RSN are helpful in determining if a source is reliable.

If you find yourself in a disagreement with another editor, it's best to discuss the matter on the relevant talk page.

I hope you find some useful information in all this, and welcome again. --Hipal (talk) 17:29, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Never17 (talk) 17:56, 2 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]