History
In 1959, British periodical Disc introduced an initiative to present a gold record to singles that sold over one million units. Information about when a record was classified gold by Disc is "not well documented", and the awards relied on record companies correctly compiling and supplying sales information. This led to errors, such as The Shadows instrumental, "Apache", and The Archies' "Sugar, Sugar" incorrectly being awarded a gold disc in January 1970. Such inaccuracies led to the instigation of an official classification system. In April 1973, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) began classifying singles and albums by the number of units sold. The highest threshold is "platinum record" and was then awarded to singles that sold over 1,000,000 units. For singles released after 1 January 1989, the number of sales required to qualify for platinum, gold and silver records was dropped to 600,000 units (platinum), 400,000 units (gold) and 200,000 units (silver). In February 1987, the BPI introduced multi-platinum awards so if a single sold 1,200,000 units it was classified as double-platinum, 1,800,000 units as triple-platinum, etc.
The Beatles' song "She Loves You" became the best-selling single of all time in 1963. This record was broken in 1977 when Paul McCartney's new band, Wings, surpassed it with "Mull of Kintyre", which also became the first song to sell two million copies. In 1984 Band Aid released the charity-record "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in response to the famine in Ethiopia; it sold one million copies in the first week and soon became the best-selling single. This record was broken in 1997, following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, when Elton John released "Candle in the Wind 1997", a re-write of the Marilyn Monroe tribute released in 1973. Selling over 650,000 copies on the first day and more than 1.5 million in the first week, it quickly became the best-selling single. It was classified by the BPI as nine-times platinum (5.4 million) in October 1997 but more recent estimates suggest approximately 4.9 million sales.
Read more about this topic: List Of Million-selling Singles In The United Kingdom
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“A man acquainted with history may, in some respect, be said to have lived from the beginning of the world, and to have been making continual additions to his stock of knowledge in every century.”
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