Here Are the Artists With the Most Digital Song Sales No. 1s in the 21st Century

“As the volume of digital distribution reaches new heights, a new Billboard chart will better detail how songs are competing in that emerging market,” read a story on page six of the Jan. 22, 2005, print issue, announcing the arrival of the Digital Song Sales chart.

Two weeks later — as we were fervently filling up our iPods with up to thousands of favorites, and taking music on-the-go more easily than ever before — paid downloads first contributed to the multimetric Billboard Hot 100.

Sales of songs had impacted the Hot 100 dating to the chart’s Aug. 4, 1958, start (then via retailers’ self-reported ranked lists. By the late 1990s and early 2000s, however, singles — which had evolved from 7-inch vinyl to cassettes and CDs — were disappearing from the marketplace, as labels began holding back song releases to entice consumers to buy (more expensive) full albums instead. The shift resulted in the Hot 100 in that period increasingly reflecting radio airplay reach.

The launch of the iTunes Store, among other digital retailers, brought single sales back, and by the mid-2000s, Billboard’s charts reflected the trend. For more than a decade beginning in the mid-2000s, the No. 1 sales hit each week regularly sold more than 100,000 downloads in the U.S., according to Luminate. In December 2015, Adele’s “Hello” ran up a weekly-record 1.1 million in digital sales.

While streaming has since taken over as the most accepted currency of on-demand song consumption — and vinyl, cassette and CD singles are again among consumer offerings — paid downloads remain a part of the Hot 100’s formula 20 years on.

As Billboard celebrates the top-performing artists, albums and songs of the first 25 years of the century since 2000, browse below, the acts with the most No. 1s on the Digital Song Sales chart in that span.

Plus, check out Top Artists of the 21st Century, Top Billboard 200 Albums of the 21st Century and Billboard’s Top Hot 100 Songs of the 21st Century charts, as well as all coverage of Billboard’s 21st Century charts here.

Billboard’s Top Artists, Top Billboard 200 Albums and Top Hot 100 Songs of the 21st Century recaps reflect performance on weekly charts dated Jan. 1, 2000, through Dec. 28, 2024. The Top Artists category ranks the best-performing acts in that span based on activity on the Billboard 200 and Billboard Hot 100. (Titles released prior to mid-1999 are excluded, although such entries that appeared on the Billboard 200 or Hot 100 in that span contribute to the calculation of the Top Artists chart.)

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