IT ALL ADDS UP:
AC/DC #1 IN COMBINED SALES

All the attention showered on AC/DC this year in anticipation of the Hall of Fame band’s first album of new material since 2000 appears to have fueled a widespread desire to pick up the band’s previous releases. The Aussie rockers’ combined sales around Black Ice made them the year’s top-selling act overall. The results are sure to generate all kinds of opinions about the effectiveness of AC/CD’s longstanding digital holdout. Some will attribute the winning total of 3.4 million units to the unavailability of the band’s catalog in downloadable form—make that legal downloadable form—while others will ask how many more sales on the current and past albums would have resulted from the band’s presence in the iTunes Store, Amazon MP3, et al. You’ll note that the most high-profile digital Grinches of all are represented here as well, at #17.

Top 20 Artists of 2008 by Combined Sales of All Releases (in Millions of Units):
1. AC/DC 3.4
2. Lil Wayne 3.3
3. Taylor Swift 3.2
4. Coldplay 2.5
5. Metallica 2.3
6. Kid Rock 2.2
7. Jonas Brothers 2.1
8. Sugarland 1.9
9. Jack Johnson 1.8
10. Mariah Carey 1.7
11. T.I. 1.6
12. Nickelback 1.5
13. Beyonce 1.4
14. Kenny Chesney 1.4
15. Michael Jackson 1.4
16. Elvis Presley 1.4
17. Beatles 1.4
18. Josh Groban 1.3
19. Journey 1.3
20. Leona Lewis 1.3