This list contains some of the best-selling songs in terms of
sheet music sales in
music publishinghistory with reportedly copies of over 3 million. Figures on sheet music —as with
record sales— reported by publishing firms were not always reliable.[1]
In the United States, before "
Oh! Susanna" (1848) no American song had sold more than five thousand copies of sheet music.[2]Stephen Foster's "Massa's in the Cold Ground" sales of 75,000 copies by 1852, was considered "phenomenal" since music publishers did not try to
promote songs.[3] The first song to became "popular" through a national
advertising campaign was "
My Grandfather's Clock" in 1876.[3] Mass production of
piano in the late-19th century helped boost sheet music sales.[3] Toward the end of the century, during the
Tin Pan Alley era, sheet music was sold by dozens and even hundreds of publishing companies.[4][5][6] Sheet music industry also suffered of
music piracy with pirated reprints,[7][8][9] as well various
fake books rose considerable amount of copies sold.[5]
Reports widely vary to confirm the first million-seller song in sheet music; examples include "
When This Cruel War Is Over" (1863),[10] "
After the Ball" (by 1892 or 1893),[11][12][13][a] and "
Funiculì, Funiculà" in 1880.[15][b] From 1900 to 1910, over one hundred songs sold more than a million copies.[5] Various "
hit songs" sold as many as two or three million copies in print.[11][17] With the advent of the
radio broadcasting, sheet music sales of popular songs decreased and print figures failed to make a significant recovery after the
World War II (1940s).[11] Exact figures are lacking, but in the next decade, in the 1950s, sheet music sales averaged 300,000 annually.[18] By 1966, the
United States House Committee on the Judiciary informed 100,000 copies of a title were "rares".[19] "
(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" (1953) is believed to be the last song to sell one million of sheet music,[20] from that era. American musicologist
Barry Kernfeld, said that in the 1950s, "a million-selling sheet-music title was entirely a thing of the past".[9]
From the
album era, "
Stairway to Heaven" (1971) by
Led Zeppelin is the biggest selling piece of sheet music in
rock history, with over one million copies sold, selling 15,000 units per year at some point.[21] In the
digital era,
"My Immortal" became an early example of sizable sheet music downloads, becoming the all-time best-selling sheet music download at Musicnotes, with over 8,350 copies, outpacing "
A Thousand Miles"'s 7,137 sales by 2004.[22] Occasionally, Billboard reported the best-selling
folios and singles sheet yearly,[23] or by music publishing companies.[24][25]