List of best-selling music artists

The world's best-selling music artists includes artists with claims of 50 million or more record sales in multiple third-party reliable sources. The sales figures within the provided sources include sales of albums, singles, compilation-albums, music videos as well as downloads of singles and full-length albums. The artists in the following tables are listed with both their claimed and certified sales figures and are ranked in descending order, with the highest claimed sales at the top. Artists with the same claimed sales are then ranked by certified units. Sales figures, such as those from Soundscan which are sometimes published by Billboard magazine, have not been included in the certified units column.
All artists included on this list have their lowest available claimed figure(s) supported by at least 15% in certified units. That is why Cliff Richard, Alla Pugacheva, Charles Aznavour, Bing Crosby, Nana Mouskouri, Deep Purple, The Jackson 5 and A. R. Rahman have not been included on this list. The percentage amount of certified sales needed increases the newer the artist is, so artists that started appearing on the charts before 1975 are only expected to have their claimed figures supported by at least 15% in certified units. However newer artists such as Lady Gaga and Rihanna are expected to have their claimed figures supported by at least 60% in certified units. Certified units are sourced from available online databases of local music industry associations.
Note: Although this list largely relies on claimed figures by highly reliable sources, some of the figures may need further examination to avoid inflated sales figures which is frequently practiced by record companies for promotional purposes.^[1][2] Sources must say records and not albums, unless no such sources are available.