The Artist Who Sold the Most CDs in 2016 Was Not Drake, Rihanna or Kanye West
You’ll never guess.
Without going on tour, releasing any promos, or being alive in the past two centuries, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has topped the list of the best-selling CDs of 2016 with a disc released just five weeks ago. According to Billboard, Mozart sold a total of 1.25 million CDs in 2016, beating Drake, Kanye West and Beyoncé. The CD that caused the success is Mozart 225: The New Complete Edition, a whopping 200-CD collection that spans over 240 hours of music and includes additional hours worth of reading material bundled in. Released on the 225th anniversary of the Mozart’s death, the project has been declared as the “most authoritative, complete and scholarly box set ever devoted to the work of a single composer.” Each individual CD of the box set counts as a sale, technically making Mozart the best-selling CD release of the year, even though only about 6,000 people bought the box sets.
