The 5 Best-Selling Artists In Pop History

"Pop" is short for popular, and to be among the greatest pop artists ever, one's pop music has to be more popular than all the other pop stars'. Definitely one of those "know it when you hear it" situations, pop music has wide appeal, is geared to the young, and it's either easy to dance to or is emotionally resonant. Pop gets crowds going, sounds great coming from speakers, and relies less on guitar and drums than it does on synthesizers, orchestral backing, and studio wizardry. Some of the most famous musicians to ever pick up a microphone — even some of the most famous people in history — are pop stars. But only a few were so universally accepted that they can call themselves one of the best-selling artists in pop history.

Those select few can be determined by a few factors: sales, downloads, and streaming. Take out the rockers, rappers, and country artists, and that leaves the biggest pop stars ever.

Michael Jackson devised his own nickname, "the King of Pop," but it's an accurate moniker. Trailing only the Beatles in terms of overall sales figures, Jackson is the bestselling solo artist ever, of any genre. He's the all-time leader in album sales, moving more than 188 million units of his studio LPs alone, which included "Off the Wall," "Thriller," and "Bad." Each of those '70s and '80s releases sold at least 10 million copies in the U.S., while "Thriller" was a cultural sensation — to date, 34 million Americans have bought the record.

Jackson is also one of the most prolific singles artists, too. He scored the most No. 1 hits of the '80s, with nine of his 13 peaking at the top in that decade; in 1995, "You Are Not Alone" debuted at No. 1, a Billboard Hot 100 first. Jackson's status as the King of Pop was confirmed with about 80 million in sales for singles in both digital and physical formats.

A lot of stars can't stand Taylor Swift, but there are vast numbers of devoted "Swifties" who support the singer-songwriter in her endeavors. Swift originated as a teenage country artist whose songs had such broad appeal that she bent the pop world to accept twangier music, and her first couple of 2000s albums were cross-genre smashes — 2008's "Fearless" sold 11 million copies in the U.S. and won Swift her first of four Grammy Awards for album of the year.

With "Red" and "1989" in the 2010s, Swift fully moved over to pop, and soon thereafter she became the most famous musician in the English-speaking world. She's charted more than 280 songs on the Hot 100, of which 74 reached the Top 10 and 16 went all the way to No. 1. A total of 15 Swift albums — including re-recorded versions of her first studio LPs released to offset the revenue earned when the masters to her catalog were sold off — have topped the Billboard 200. What's more, Swift's retrospective "Eras Tour" became the first concert tour to pull in $1 billion in ticket sales. Swift has sold nearly 100 million albums and 185 million singles, physical and digital combined.

With the No. 1 debut of her 2026 album "Confessions II," Madonna became the first artist to hit the peak in that decade who also went to No. 1 in three previous decades. Madonna, so associated with the 1980s and her various "Boy Toy," "Material Girl," and "Like a Prayer" phases, has enjoyed one of the longest and most consistent careers in pop music history. In addition to her 10 No. 1 albums, Madonna has 12 No. 1 singles to her credit, spanning from "Like a Virgin" in 1984 to "Music" in 2000, and plenty of dance-pop songs and tender ballads in between.

The single-named pop cultural icon — also an actor, director, author, Super Bowl performer, and all-around provocateur has the numbers to support her legacy. She's sold more than 200 million albums and more than 110 million singles. Of those LPs, 20 have been certified gold, platinum, or multi-platinum.

Before the advent of rock 'n' roll and modern pop, crooner Frank Sinatra was the biggest act in American music, and he endured for six decades. Emerging as the first singer in the teen idol template, he started routinely landing Top 10 hits in the early 1940s, and it's his versions of show tunes and standards that became the classic, most familiar takes for a generation. In the 1960s, he was still hitting No. 1 ("Strangers in the Night," 1966) and helping to develop the idea of the concept LP with themed records; he won the Grammy for album of the year three times. Perhaps his best-known song, "Theme from New York New York," came along surprisingly late, hitting the Top 40 in 1980.

More than 190 million copies of Sinatra's dozens of albums have collectively sold, as have 120 million singles in all formats. While he's only been streamed a fraction of the amount of the pop stars who followed and benefitted from his trailblazing, Sinatra remains an all-time Top 5 singer.

One of the most preeminent musical styles of the 21st century is partially sung, partially rapped pop-R&B. Drake helped pioneer that style and went on to be one of the first to do so. 

In 2009, Drake reached No. 2 with his first single, "Best I Ever Had," and he didn't leave the Hot 100 for eight years, setting a record with 431 straight weeks on the charts with 157 songs. As of 2026, he's the only performer to ever place more than 400 singles on the Billboard pop chart, of which 241 peaked in the Top 40. Because he's such a relative newcomer to the pop pantheon, arriving when physical media was in decline, he's only sold about 17 million physical albums. He makes up for that by being the most successful streamed musician, pop or otherwise, in the digital era. He's additionally Spotify's most dominant act and the record holder for digital single sales.