Lea Michele, Darren Criss and the other 'Glee' cast score big milestone by being ranked eighth on the best selling digital artist of all time.
- Feb 29, 2012
AceShowbiz - "Glee" cast, which include Lea Michele, Chris Colfer, Darren Criss and Amber Riley, have impressively made a speedy progress on the list of best selling digital artists of all time. They missed the all-time list last January when Nielsen SoundScan released its "2011 Music Industry Report", but now they jump to the eighth place.
Since 2009, the cast have got over 42 million songs sold worldwide and more than 32 million songs downloaded in the U.S. alone. In the past few weeks, they gained huge boost mainly through Riley's rendition of Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" and the covers of Michael Jackson's "Bad" and "Smooth Criminal".
The re-recorded version of the Dolly Parton-penned smash hit rakes in nearly 45,300 tracks, according to The Hollywood Reporter. The covers of MJ's singles become the big sellers for the TV series, with the "Bad" version being downloaded for more than 48,700 times and the "Smooth Criminal" version being purchased by 161,400 fans.
On the album sales, the cast has sold more than 12 million albums worldwide. They have two Platinum-certified CDs for selling more than 1 million copies and three Gold albums for selling 500,000 copies. They additionally scored three No. 1 consecutive albums and a Grammy nomination for best compilation soundtrack for visual media.
"There has never been anything like Glee," Columbia Records soundtrack executive Glen Brunman sang praise for the series. "The idea that 58 episodes of a television show can generate sales of 32 million downloads is simply staggering. We are deeply indebted to the artists and songwriters whose music inspires us all."
By rising to the eighth position, "Glee" cast have likely kicked one of the fillers out of the top 10 in all-time list. It's unclear who get the boot, but THR learns that the likes of Rihanna, Lady GaGa, Katy Perry and Black Eyed Peas are still on the list.
