Metallica: Best sellers of SoundScan era

Metallica has been named the fifth best-selling album act of the SoundScan era, which began in May of 1991 with the first electronic scanning of record store sales. According to Yahoo! Music, the band has sold 48,867,000 records in the U.S. and will hit the 50 million mark sometime around the summer of 2009. The top four artists ahead of Metallica on the list are Garth Brooks with nearly 68 million copies, the Beatles with 56 million, Mariah Carey with 50 million and Celine Dion with just under 50 million.

Rounding out the Top 10 are George Strait, Tim McGraw, Alan Jackson, Pink Floyd and Shania Twain. All are country acts except for Pink Floyd.

Metallica's self-titled fifth album, also known as "the black album," is the second best-selling record of the SoundScan era, with total sales of just over 15 million. The disc may overtake the Number One best-seller, Twain's Come On Over, in 2009.

Sales prior to the SoundScan era were not counted in the survey.

Metallica has scheduled a slew of European festival dates for May, June, July and August in addition to two U.S. shows on May 16th at a radio festival in Tucson, Arizona and mid-June at the Bonnaroo Festival in Tennessee.

For one gig in Bulgaria on July 25th, the group will be paid what's being called a "record fee" of $1.6 million, according to News.bg.
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