How Many Records Have SY Sold?
 

i'm curious. anyone know?

You've made me curious too.

how do you make an infinity symbol?

8

just turn your head sideways

At a rough guess I'd say they've sold about 50 to me.

Around 1995 I read that their best selling records was Dirty, and that it had sold about 300.000 copies. Not a lot.

i read that as well... i wonder if that figure has been surpassed now...

thurston:
let's talk about some sonic business,
did we make any money lately?

lee:
what's going on?


they're still selling tho.....
yes, i'm wondering. how many do you think all together? hopefully for sy, lots of them

so, does anyone have a realistic guess? maybe a million?

Don’t quite no where to source this kind of info. Allmusic has highest chart positions but no sales tally’s.....

- Experimental Jet Set, Trash & No Star - 34 (The Billboard 200)
- Dirty - 83
- Washing Machine 58
- Sonic Nurse - 64

not enough.

those billboard charts were surprising. I've pondered this kind of info myself, and it seems impossible to find.

SONIC YOUTH:
Sonic Youth / 4,100
Bad Moon Rising / 33,000
Confusion Is Sex / 41,100
Starpower / 1,000
Evol / 48,400
Sister / 72,000
Sonic Death / 5,500
Made In The USA soundtrack / 21,000
Daydream Nation / 162,000
Goo / 169,000
Dirty / 329,000
Experimental Jet Set Trash & No Star / 246,000
Washing Machine / 159,000
A Thousand Leaves / 66,000
Nyc Ghosts & Flowers 46,000
Murray Street / 63,000
Sonic Nurse / 65,000

i do not know if xpressway 's numbers are dead on but the last time I read an artyicle where they talked about this it was those numbers.

this is why it is so amazing for me to be here oin the forum, because I get to talk to other sonic youth fns. even in houston texas, a city with about 4 million people in the metropolitan area, it is exceedingly hard to find someone who loves sonic youth.

we are a small group people.

treat each other right.

Yes indeed, stick together! But more importantly; in the words of Mr. T "Treat yr mother right"

I found those figures quite a while ago but can't remember from which site. They seem to be logical estimates to me though.

that totals up to roughly 1,529,700 albums sold.


now, factor in that many fans have multiple albums, o the entire collection,a nd that many fans have bought the older albums several times, due towear and tear or loss or breakage, and you have maybe, MAYBE
800 thousand people in the world (out of 7 BILLION) who own a sonic youth album

Same, I've always found people who like them, but not an obsessive fan like me. I did meet one person from the board that lives in the same city as me that loves SY, which is cool, but never met her in person

800, 000? That would explain all the lurkers.

Only other fan I know of round here is Hip Priest. Never met him in person though.... I keep hoping that I'll find some dude wearing an SY shirt in Birkenhead.

Also, for the curious maths freaks out there (i.e. me), assuming the figures calculated by Rob Instigator are correct:

0.011428571428571428571428571428571 % of the world's population own a sonic youth album.
Sellouts.

this seems innacurate

very low numbers for a major label.

are these numbers like the first month totals or something... i mean what they should do is have the number for the whole time the album is out til' the next album IMO

where did you get this info?

very low numbers, this is not correct...

These numbers are very close to the truth, given they are a few years old. Do you really think just being on a major label makes you sell more records?

These numbers are accually pretty good for an alternative band.

although most of those figures seem fair enough, there's no way "Experimental Jet Set..." has sold 85,000 more copies than "Daydream Nation", no fucking way!! you can't even buy it where I'm from (Melbourne).

this seems right to me. it was their first album after dirty (their best selling lp) and bullet in the heather was a popular single.

thos numbers are right. maybe off by a few hundred or so. daydream nation did not sell like EJST&NS because, as someone posted, EJST&NS had a "hit" single, bull in the heather.

sonic youth don;t sell that many records and like i said before, most get sold to the same fan base.

Are they worldwide figures or US?

It's kind of odd seeing EJT&NS selling more than Washing Machine, which was released in a similar time, and is a truely brilliant album.

I'd say that Washing Machine was released in a quite different time. Indie rock was over as far as MTV was concerned, and bands like SY definently got a lot less press. The qualities of the albums have little to do with sales.

Bullet? :confused:

I believe it. SY were more popular among the masses then than when they released DN like somebody here just said. But DN would of sold quite a bit more if there wasn't the distribution problems the album was having. Lot of people were reading and hearing about the album but couldn't find it in the stores. But those record sales numbers seem right to me though i would guess that they are for US sales only. Maybe i'm wrong though.

hahhahh. yeah, bullet. you know, in the head. :D

those numbers are worldwide!

and JSS is correct in saying that DDN did not sell because Blast First could not or would not keep it stocked on the shelves. The incredible buzz the album had died down without it being accessible to many people who wanted the album.

DAYDREAM NATION RULES ALL FOREVER!

:eek: wow. and i thought those numbers were low for US sales...

There was that period of several years in the mid 90s when their entire pre-DGC catalog was out of print. I remember having to wait for the reissues to get Evol and CIS on CD. Even with that, those numbers still seem low.
They also seem low because in the early 90s you could walk into any old Sam Goody or other mall-based music store and find all the 80s releases. SST must have had good distro.
I find it hard to believe that I'm one of only 4100 people that owns the first EP, or one of the 1000 to own Starpower.

starpower. I own that to. thatw as a 12" vinyl release only. I bet they only pressed 1500 copies of that.

The original EP was released on glen branca's label, a tiny independent label, and they only made around 10 thousand vinyl and caseettes. I own it on caseette and have ordered the re-issue on vinyl.

these numbers just seem wrong..
i remember clearly, in 1992 NME had reported goo selling around 500.000 copies and for dirty they estimated sales of nearly a million..

if i'm wrong in any way, i would feel depressed - not that sales figures are everything, but the members are making a living out of this..

*sigh*

well... since they haven't gotten ant gold records they surely haven't sold 500.000 copies in the US. Either that means that these numbers are not worldwide and NMEs are... or that NME was wrong.

NME is ALWAYS wrong.

the best selling sonic youth album is dirty and as of today it has not sold even 400 thousand copies WORLDWIDE

SONIC YOUTH IS UNDERGROUND!