The certified units for some artists/bands who have multi-disc albums can be higher than their listed claimed figures due to the RIAA counting each unit within set as one unit toward certification. The over certified figures, however, are often in millions of units for RIAA certifications, one such example is Rihanna's single ' We Found Love', which is certified at nine times Platinum by the RIAA, yet during the time of the certification, it had sold 5.4 million downloads. For this reason, some singles and even albums get over certified by hundreds of thousands of units. This is because Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) and almost all other certifying bodies count streaming towards Gold and Platinum thresholds required for Digital Single Award certification. The certified units of the newer artists may sometimes be higher than their listed claimed figures. Some of the 20th century artists can also have significant amount of streaming based certifications. Gold/Platinum certifications issued after 2016, especially on singles, are in some cases more than 50% streaming generated. Sales figures, such as those from SoundScan, which are sometimes published by Billboard magazine, have not been included in the certified units column.

The claimed sales figure and the total of certified units (for each country) within the provided sources include sales of albums, singles, compilation-albums, music videos as well as downloads of singles and full-length albums. If two or more artists have the same claimed sales, they are then ranked by certified units. The tables are listed with each artist's claimed sales figure(s) and their total independently certified units and are ranked in descending order by claimed sales.

This information cannot be listed officially, as there is no organization that has recorded global music sales. The following list of best-selling music artists includes those music acts from the 20th century to the present with claims of 75 million or more record sales worldwide.

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