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Garth Brooks is considered by many who cite the RIAA to be the most successful solo artist, however this is not entirely true due to the criteria of the RIAA. The RIAA does not certify albums that have shipped less than 500,000. 500,000 is the requirement for an album to be tracked by the RIAA.

The problem here is due to the vast number of Elvis Presley records available, not all of them reach 500,000 sales for various reasons, however, invariably they sell a large amount for SONY/BMG to continue to release more albums. This however is not tracked by RIAA until an album reaches sales of 500,000.

Garth Brooks is a recording artist that releases studio albums regularly, however the market is not flooded with Garth Brooks albums and therefore any album released relating to him is guranteed excellent sales. Whereas Elvis' success will be split across several albums and therefore it maybe many years until various albums reach 500,000 sales to actually be counted, until then they don't count, and often some albums will not be released or will never sell and therefore the album sales will never count. This problem hampers anyone with a large catalog, and Elvis seems to have fallen into the hands of bad marketing and questionable sales tracking. That however is the issue in relation to USA only. Garth Brooks popularity worldwide is neglible compared to Elvis, and therefore the biggest solo artist in history remains Elvis Presley.

Sony/BMG also has numerous Elvis albums that don't qualify for technical reasons such as Alohah from Hawaii. Aloha from Hawaii is a 2 disc special released in the earth 70s and is one of Elvis' best sellers. Garth Brooks best selling album is Double Live because of the length of the album RIAA counts Garths album as 2 while Elvis' only counts as one do to Elvis's being shorter. There's a lot of Elvis albums out there that don't meat the specs for RIAA to count them, as well as the fact that people of Elvis era focused more on singles than albums.

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15y ago

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