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gold, platinum, and multiplatinum records in the US and the world, as well as the most #1 singles. It's hard to tally his total sales, though, either domestically or worldwide, because of different ways records were kept in the '50s and '60s and also because the RIAA didn't monitor things as they do now (for example, a few years back he got awarded a lot more gold and platinum records officially vetted by the RIAA that had been overlooked before -- 110 of them, to be exact). The situation's similar with gold and platinum awards from other countries and, of course, there have been varying definitions of what is gold and what is polatinum. Regardless, Elvis wins, hands down, in number of gold-or-better awards and number one hits. Nobody knows how many records -- albums or singles -- Elvis really sold, but the generally accepted conservative minimum estimate is somewhere over a billion.
Also, it sounds like you're talking not about singles sales but solely about album sales...for the first half of his career, at least, up 'til the mid-sixties, Elvis was essentially a singles artist, as was pretty much everyone else. I'm sure the Beatles, with albums like "Rubber Soul," had a lot to do with pop/rock eventually becoming more album-oriented. And, of course, music sales in general boomed more and more in the late '60s and onward (Elvis and his peers started that, in the '50s, with unprecedented movement of the teen demographic into the music-marketplace).
So I'm not sure how he did in overall sales of albums, but I bet he's up there. I wouldn't be surprised if the Beatles remained his serious competition in the album arena, though it's just as likely to be some more recent and far less distinguished act that just moved a lot of units in a marketplace more massive than that of thirty or forty years ago. Just as long as it's not Michael Bolton.
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