Best-selling Albums By Year in The United States

Best-selling Albums By Year In The United States

This is a list of the best-selling albums by year in the United States. Billboard magazine began publishing year-end lists for album sales in 1956. Until 1991, the Billboard album chart was based on a survey of representative retail outlets that determined a ranking, not a tally of actual sales. Likewise, the year-end chart was a measure of chart performance over the twelve months from December to November rather than total sales. Weekly surveys and year-end charts by Billboard and other publications such as Cash Box magazine sometimes differed. For instance, during the 1960s and 1970s, the number-one album as determined by these two publications differed in 10 out of 20 years. From 1991, Billboard year-end and weekly charts were calculated by Nielsen SoundScan.

Harry Belafonte's 1956 record entitled Calyspo was the first product to be recognized as a top-selling album for a year once Billboard magazine started tracking sales figures. Eminem's 2010 rap record Recovery currently holds the title for the US's top-selling digital album. British glam rock performer Elton John and rapper Eminem each have had two of their albums be top sellers in two separate years in the US. Pop singer Michael Jackson's 1982 Thriller became the best-selling record in the country for two consecutive years in the 1980s (and later became the best-selling album of all time). Other albums to achieve the same accomplishment included the My Fair Lady Original Cast Recording from the hit 1950s Broadway production between 1957–1958.