The Numbers of Wikipedia

A recent article on OndaRock examined the false myth surrounding the sales of the album "La vita è adesso" by Claudio Baglioni. The unreal figure of four million copies emerged online around 2014-2015 and has since spread like wildfire, making its way into newspapers, television and, above all, Wikipedia, where it appears on several pages, including the one dedicated to the album itself, the general one on Baglioni, and the one concerning the Fimi album chart.

In this second installment devoted to the disinformation surrounding the size of the music industry, we examine two Wikipedia pages packed with erroneous data passed off as official. The first is the aforementioned page on the Fimi chart, and the second is the one titled "Best-selling Italian music artists".

The Italian Wikipedia, sad to say, is far less reliable in this respect than its English counterpart (which nonetheless has its own share of problems, and to which the third and final part of this series will be devoted).

Why the Italian version is so problematic is not easy to say: we will refrain from blaming the incompetence of those who run it, since such accusations can only be made by knowing the actual editors and moderators of its specific sections, which is not the case here.

One might be tempted to say that, as often happens, we Italians like to slap things together in a slapdash way, throw something out there any old how and then, once it has taken root, wait for it to start feeding itself, as happened with the Baglioni album. That would, however, risk being a populist explanation, unfairly judgmental toward our culture, which has been - and in certain fields still remains - capable of producing excellence. The search for possible explanations will therefore be left to the reader's judgement: this article will limit itself to laying out the data.

For those unfamiliar with the subject, it should first be clarified that Fimi stands for Federazione Industria Musicale Italiana (the Italian Music Industry Federation). Its weekly chart of the best-selling albums in Italy is published every Friday and is currently compiled together with the company GfK Italy. Yet, even though this partnership is an established fact, as of November 2024 it is still flagged as uncertain, being "unsourced", on Wikipedia. And the source would be easy enough to find, and reliable too: Fimi's official website, "About us" ("About us") section.

Paradoxically, a host of incorrect figures are reported as certain on the Wikipedia page under examination, based on sources that carry no official standing whatsoever. Before delving into them, though, it is worth explaining the context we'll be working within.

A brief history of album charts in Italy

The Fimi album chart was born in March 1995: it is from that moment on that we can speak of an official chart in Italy. Does this mean we have no information on album sales before that date? Yes and no: or rather, we do have it, but it doesn't necessarily add up to a unanimous picture.

To be clear, numerous publications have published album sales charts in Italy: the most important were those of "Musica e Dischi" (or "M&D" for short), "Tv Sorrisi e Canzoni" and Rai (the rest will not be taken into consideration, either because they were published by fairly minor outlets or because they showed figures too wildly at odds with the rival charts - take "Ciao 2001", whose chart, given the magazine's editorial slant, was heavily skewed in favour of rock records and foreign albums more generally).

The "M&D" chart was born in November 1964. The "Sorrisi" chart followed in March 1971. The Rai chart finally arrived in October 1973.

Although the latter was compiled by the public broadcaster and could therefore boast great prestige, its historical value is greatly undermined by its lack of continuity: besides arriving later than the other two major charts, it was suspended for a full two years (in 1977-78), and then permanently discontinued in January 1994.

Between the remaining two, there is no real reason to prefer one over the other: however, when the Fimi chart was born, "Sorrisi" snapped up the rights to publish it, while "M&D" carried on publishing its own, which no longer had any real reason to exist, to the point that the magazine was swiftly reduced to irrelevance (print publication ceased in 2009, digital publication in 2014).

From March 1995 onward, the "Sorrisi" chart became the most accurate of all, since it also factored various-artists compilations into its tally, still based on data supplied by Fimi. For some reason, on Fimi's own website compilations were counted separately, and the chart only considered albums released by artists and bands in their own right - a method that, however, failed to reflect an album's real impact. It could happen, in fact, that once compilations were excluded, an artist would jump from number 5 to number 1, giving the impression of a bigger hit than the one actually achieved.

From March 2016 onward, the "Sorrisi" chart also excludes compilations: this shift makes it identical in every respect to the Fimi chart (on whose data it already depended anyway, it's worth restating) and therefore redundant. It is no coincidence that it was discontinued a few years later, while starting in January 2020 the Fimi chart would for the first time include compilations in its tally.

In short, from March 1995 onward Fimi has been the reference authority for sales on the Italian market, whether at one remove (the "Sorrisi" chart) or directly.

The Wikipedia page "Classifica Fimi Album": part 1

The section of the offending page where the errors are concentrated is the one about statistics, whose first subsection is titled "Best-selling albums in Italy".

In first place stands "La vita è adesso" by Baglioni with four million copies: as for the inaccuracy of that figure, we refer back to what was already said in the article cited at the beginning of this piece, but it's worth pointing out that Fimi has never issued any certification on the matter, so even if the estimate were correct (and it isn't), why would it appear on a page dedicated to Fimi?

In second place, "Oro, incenso e birra" by Zucchero with two million copies: the sources cited are an article from Radio LatteMiele — it's unclear what authority it has or why it would be cited on a page about Fimi — and finally the Fimi website itself, which however only certifies that the album sold 25,000 copies between 2009 and 2019.

It was the best-selling album of 1989 in Italy (twenty weeks at number 1 on both "M&D" and "Sorrisi") and certainly sold above a million copies, as announced at the time by the record label itself, Polydor, which to celebrate the achievement released a gold-cover edition of the album at the end of 1990. Since then, though, it's unlikely the album has accumulated another million: it only returned to the charts for a couple of weeks in 2016, on the occasion of a reissue, and those weeks were already factored into the Fimi certification mentioned above. Could the remaining 975,000 copies have been sold between 1991 and 2008? Practically impossible: that would be a display of commercial staying power worthy of "The Dark Side Of The Moon" by Pink Floyd, which however, unlike Zucchero's record, kept returning to the charts again and again.

In third place is, in fact, the Pink Floyd album, credited with one million nine hundred thousand copies. The source, though, is once again external to Fimi and points to the Sprea Editori website, which obviously has no authority on the matter (not to mention that it's only accessible via subscription).

By a stroke of luck, the figure turns out to be plausible — if anything, it could be nudged even higher. From 2009 to 2023 the album was certified by Fimi for 350,000 copies, to which must be added the sales achieved during the 2000s (when it returned to the "Sorrisi" top 50 for a whopping 88 weeks), the sales from 1973 to 1989 (the year in which EMI officially confirmed it had reached the million mark), and those from the nineties (the album didn't chart again in that period, but it must have sold something given the band's enduring fame: "The Division Bell" was the best-selling album of 1994).

Its pull on the Italian market seems eternal (it was still holding on in the Fimi top 100 as recently as 2024), and based on the data examined, it can be considered the strongest candidate for the title of best-selling album of all time in Italy.

In fourth place is "Strada facendo" by Baglioni, with one million eight hundred fifty thousand copies. The source, once again, is not Fimi but an article from "La Stampa" dating back to December 1982 — opening it, however, reveals no trace of the figure reported on Wikipedia, only a mention of a platinum disc being awarded, with the added note that it wasn't clear how many copies sold that actually corresponded to.

The same article also mentions "His Master's Voice" by Franco Battiato, which "outclasses everyone" and in turn receives a platinum disc (the journalist, Marinella Venegoni, reports the figure whispered among industry insiders: 887,000 copies sold, in line with the historic milestone of one million copies usually attributed to the album, which at the time had not yet finished its run on the charts). Based on this very article, then, there's no way to see how Baglioni's record could have doubled Battiato's, and if it didn't manage that back then, it certainly didn't later on ("His Master's Voice" has been certified for over 50,000 copies from 2009 to today, while "Strada facendo" hasn't even reached the minimum threshold for a gold record, i.e. 25,000). Not only did "Strada facendo" not sell one million eight hundred fifty thousand copies, it's actually quite unlikely it even reached a million.

In fifth place is "Io non so parlar d'amore" by Adriano Celentano, with over one million eight hundred thousand copies, with no reference to Fimi. The figure, however, isn't exaggerated: the album dominated the "Sorrisi" chart during the period of peak expansion for the Italian record market, staying in the top 50 for 109 weeks (an absolute record at the time), eleven of which at number one.

At the end of 2000, when the album had not yet finished its chart run, people were already talking about one million eight hundred thousand copies sold: on this point, there's a traceable press release from AdnKronos dating back to November 2000. If it were a recent claim it would carry no weight at all (it's an unwritten rule: the further removed from an album's release date, the more unofficial sources tend to inflate the numbers at random), but going back to the actual period and relying on statements from the record labels themselves, it can be taken into consideration. That doesn't mean it's accurate (the labels in question, absent any certification, tend to exaggerate), yet in this specific case the figure is consistent with the album's two-year chart run (bear in mind that at the time it was possible to surpass a million copies while staying on the charts for even less than a year).

The evidence, in short, suggests the figure is realistic and could even be nudged higher: that would make it the best-selling Italian album of all time on the domestic market, outdone overall only by "The Dark Side Of The Moon".

Sixth place goes to "Canzoni" by Lucio Dalla, with one million eight hundred thousand copies. The source is not Fimi, but an article from "La Repubblica" dating back to September 1997: however, the figure appears exaggerated, considering the album stayed in the "Sorrisi" top 50 for 46 weeks, which wouldn't have allowed for such a sales volume. Moreover, a press release from December 2003, tied to the event "Una serata con... Lucio Dalla", organized by Radio Italy, gives the album's figure as one million three hundred thousand copies. Since Dalla himself was involved, that figure appears more reliable than the other and more consistent with the album's chart performance.

Seventh place goes to "...Squérez?" by Lunapop, with over one million six hundred thousand copies. The source is a statement by Cremonini himself dating back to 2016, and it seems plausible: like Celentano's album, this one came out during the period of peak market expansion and stayed on the "Sorrisi" chart for 96 weeks, five of them at number one.

In eighth place, "Io sono qui" by Baglioni with one million five hundred fifty thousand copies, sourced from a page on Hitparade.it: to begin with, that page has no connection to Fimi and carries no official standing whatsoever, having been put together by private individuals without ever citing any source. The tragicomic part, though, is that checking the very source in question shows "Io sono qui" ranking only seventh among albums released in 1995 — let alone being among the ten best-selling of all time. In reality, the album didn't even reach a million copies: on November 21, 1996, in an article in "La Stampa", accompanied by an interview with the artist himself, the figure given is 700,000 copies sold — a number consistent with the album's chart performance (31 weeks in the "Sorrisi" top 50, four of them at number one).

In ninth place, Zucchero pops up again with "Blue's," credited with over a million and a half copies, sourced from an unsigned short piece in "La Stampa" dated 1989: hardly a model of accuracy. It was the best-selling album of 1987 in Italy, yet the figure of a million and a half seems decidedly exaggerated, considering it stayed at number 1 on the "Sorrisi" and "M&D" charts for seven and eight weeks respectively — an excellent performance, but one matched by other albums of the era that never reached that sales figure.

In tenth place there's a cluster of thirteen albums estimated at around a million and a half copies each, which we'll refrain from analyzing one by one for reasons of space, though several of them have clearly been inflated, particularly Baglioni's, whose figures were already excellent to begin with (some particularly persuasive fan of his out there on the Web must be responsible for the constant overstating of his numbers).

The Wikipedia page "Classifica Fimi Album": part 2

The second statistics subsection is titled "Albums with the most total weeks at number 1 (10 or more)" and it too contains numerous errors. First of all, every album released before 1995 should be excluded, since the Fimi chart didn't exist before that date.

Instead, the list is packed with earlier records, drawing on — and often misreading — the pre-1995 charts of "Sorrisi" and "M&D," which Fimi has never recognized as official. They were prestigious charts, but there's no reason to include them on a page devoted to Fimi rankings, especially while switching arbitrarily between one and the other with no consistency whatsoever.

In first place is "La vita è adesso," with "27 consecutive weeks, 80 total." The sources cited are Discoteca Laziale, Uozzart and Sky Tg24, none of which carries any authority on the matter, and none of which even specifies which chart is being referenced.

The figure of 27 consecutive weeks at number 1 is correct, but it doesn't apply to the Fimi chart — since the album came out in 1985 — but rather to the "Sorrisi" chart. Moreover, the "80 total weeks" is made up out of thin air, or worse, stems from someone misreading the sources cited. Those sources actually state "27 weeks at number 1, a year and a half on the chart," meaning by the second figure the album's total time on the chart, not the time spent at the top. In any case, the album spent 73 weeks in the "Sorrisi" top 50, not 80.

In second place, Zucchero's "Oro, incenso e birra," with 22 weeks. Another album released before the Fimi chart existed, for which no source is given. The figure would also be wrong no matter which old chart one considers (as already mentioned, it spent 20 weeks at number 1 on both "Sorrisi" and "M&D").

In third place, "Sirio" by Lazza with 21 weeks: this figure belongs to the Fimi era and is therefore correct.

In fourth place, "Dalla" by Lucio Dalla, with 20 weeks. The album dates back fifteen years before Fimi's founding, and the figure refers to the "Sorrisi" chart (while on "M&D" it spent 22 weeks at number 1).

In fifth place, a trio of Baglioni albums: "Oltre," "Io sono qui" and "Viaggiatore sulla coda del tempo," all credited with 20 weeks at number 1 (for "Oltre" it specifies "20 consecutive, 40 total"). Once again, it's all wildly distorted: "Oltre" came out before the Fimi chart existed and spent three weeks at number 1 on both the "Sorrisi" and "M&D" charts. Those 20 consecutive weeks at the top have no source at all, while the 40 total weeks are drawn from Rtr99.it and Doremifasol.org, which first of all carry no authority on the subject and, second, in their own articles refer to weeks spent on the chart, not at the top. The figure is wrong regardless: the album spent 16 weeks in the "M&D" top 20 and 58 weeks in the "Sorrisi" top 50. "Io sono qui," as already mentioned, spent four weeks at number 1 on the "Sorrisi" chart, not 20 (an indisputable figure, since it belongs to the period when the magazine had already acknowledged Fimi's authority).

Finally, "Viaggiatore sulla coda del tempo" spent three weeks at number 1 (again, on the "Sorrisi" chart of the Fimi era).

The Wikipedia page "Classifica Fimi Album": conclusion

We won't go any further into the specific figures — the pattern should be clear by now: the section is completely unreliable. Still, at least one paragraph deserves separate mention, if only for how garbled it is.

At the top of the page, even before the various lists of incorrect data, it states: "Note that Lucio Battisti doesn't appear in this chart since he wasn't affiliated with FIMI, but the singer-songwriter holds the absolute record for number one spots and albums sold, with 10 albums that have shifted more than 1 million copies each and a total of 165 weeks at number one!".

It's impossible not to notice the grammatical sloppiness of the passage: no punctuation to speak of, random capital letters (“Cantautore,” “Detiene”), missing accents, a shower of typos (“assouluto,” “venuto” instead of “venduto”), and what about that exclamation mark at the end of the sentence? One can only assume whoever added the information wanted to sound especially punchy.

Though it would be more accurate to call it disinformation, since what's written makes no sense at all: if an album has official distribution in Italian stores and on Italian platforms, Fimi will count it regardless of any affiliation. Besides, how could it hold the record for weeks at number one if it weren't affiliated with Fimi in the first place? A total contradiction.

That said, Battisti did not spend 165 weeks at number 1 on the Fimi chart, since that chart was only created in 1995, long after his golden age. Since then he has topped the chart for four weeks (three in 1998 with the compilation “Pensieri, emozioni,” riding the wave of his death, and one in 2017 with the compilation “Masters”), a total that actually drops to three if you count the “Sorrisi” chart, which includes compilations.

The artist undoubtedly holds a crushing record on the historical “M&D” and “Sorrisi” charts, but that's a separate matter. Finally, his ten albums claimed to have sold over a million copies are entirely made up: no artist in the history of Italian music has come anywhere close to such a feat on the domestic market alone.

The Wikipedia page “Best-selling Italian music artists”

Equally clumsy, though thankfully limited to a handful of figures, is the Wikipedia page devoted to the total career sales of Italian artists, this time including the foreign market as well. In the list provided, eight artists are credited with over one hundred million records sold.

In first place is Mina, credited with 150 million records. How she could have sold that many is anyone's guess. Suffice it to say that not even David Bowie reached such a figure, which alone shows how far-fetched the claim is.

Certainly the Italian market alone couldn't get her anywhere near that number, and abroad she hasn't exactly racked up landmark results. In English-speaking countries she is essentially unknown. In Germany? A brief spell of fame in the early Sixties, tied mainly to the song “Heißer Sand,” and nothing since. In France there's no record of any major results, nor in Japan or the countries of Eastern Europe. As for the Ibero-American world: just three moderately successful 45s in Spain and as many in Argentina across her entire career.

Given that only a few crumbs come from abroad, the road to 150 million looks like an uphill battle: even counting the physical 45s, which she surely sold in large numbers up until the first half of the Seventies, to reach that figure she would have had to sell a million copies of each of her more than seventy studio albums and have at least a few dozen bestselling compilations to her name as well. Neither condition is anywhere close to true. Not just the 150 million, but even the 100 million mark looks far out of reach. The 50 million threshold is perhaps more plausible, but given the sheer volume of music she has released, it would need to be verified, and this isn't the place to undertake such a massive piece of work.

Alongside Mina, at the top of the list, is Adriano Celentano, also credited with 150 million. “Il Molleggiato” certainly boasts greater success abroad than Mina: in France he sold decently throughout the Seventies, in Germany he was more erratic but still had a couple of bursts of success there too, as well as in Spanish-speaking countries. In Russia he's a star, particularly thanks to his films, but his records also sold very well, racking up six million copies during the Soviet era. On the English-speaking market, however, he too was essentially nonexistent, and overall, considering he released far less music than Mina, even counting 45s, to reach the figure stated on Wikipedia he would still have had to top a million copies on the domestic market with every single album as well as with countless compilations — something he obviously never managed to do (it was already something of a miracle when he pulled it off for four albums in a row around the turn of the Nineties and 2000s). For him too, one could venture a study to check whether he reached 50 million, but again, this isn't the place for it.

Dalida takes third place with 140 million copies. Now, the market where the artist was by far most popular was France, where she sold over 15 million records between albums and singles, according to InfoDisc (not an official source, but one that, for France's classic-era artists, reports figures more or less in line with what the local market could plausibly support). Excluding France, where she dominated the scene in a way she never managed anywhere else, that leaves 125 million copies to reach the Wikipedia figure: where would they even come from? On the English-speaking market she is essentially nonexistent; in Germany she had three huge hits between 1959 and 1961, but nothing after that; in Italy she had solid success from 1959 to 1969, but never truly dominated the scene; in the Soviet Union she sold around a million and a half records; in Turkey she was also fairly well known and still enjoys something of a cult following today — but no matter how hard you scrape the bottom of the barrel in every corner of the global market, 140 million is nowhere in sight, not even with a telescope. Even the 50 million threshold looks distant, especially considering how her success waned from a certain point onward and her untimely death in 1987.

In fourth place is Patty Pravo, with 110 million copies. The figure is nothing short of surreal, given that even within the Italian scene her period of intense success ran only from 1968 to 1975 — much shorter than that of Mina, Celentano and company. After that stretch, she can count barely a couple of hits (“Pensiero stupendo,” “...E dimmi che non vuoi morire”). Abroad she never achieved any particular success, aside from a few sporadic showings on the Spanish-speaking market. Her career sales likely amount to a small fraction of what's reported on Wikipedia.

Pooh have been credited with exactly 100 million. Their success was long-lasting and consistent, yet they remain unknown outside Italy, apart from a short-lived attempt to break them into the Japanese market in the Eighties. There is therefore no way they could have sold 100 million on the domestic market alone — a figure beyond anyone's reach. Even 50 million looks far off, for the usual reason: even counting 45s, each of their albums would have had to top a million copies, and that simply didn't happen.

Luciano Pavarotti and Giorgio Moroder are also estimated at 100 million, but they will be set aside here: their careers are too composite and too tied to other artists — one as a performer, the other as a producer — to calculate their real sales without bloating this article. The last artist on the list, also credited with 100 million, is Toto Cutugno. Where he might have sold them is anyone's guess. First of all, consider that on the domestic market, contrary to popular belief, he never sold much at all: across his entire career he managed to place only four albums in the “Sorrisi” top 50 (the highest, “Mediterraneo,” peaking at number 19), while among 45s he fared a bit better (several top 10s in the Eighties), but without ever dominating (even “L'italiano” itself never reached number one).

Abroad, “L'italiano” was a huge hit, achieving major results in many continental European countries: the two markets that rewarded him most were the Soviet one (more than 1.2 million copies of the album) and the French one (900,000 copies of the single). Even accounting for this extraordinary result, the road to 100 million looks like about as steep a climb as they come, especially considering that none of his other songs came anywhere close to a similar impact. Here too, the most realistic figure amounts to a small fraction of that hundred million.

What can be done?

We'll stop here, as enough has already been written, but keep in mind that beyond these two aggregator pages, the Italian Wikipedia contains a flood of incorrect data and misinformation regarding the pages of individual artists as well. A lifetime wouldn't be enough to correct them all: the only valid advice is to never trust particularly bloated figures, to cross-check multiple sources, to never trust any single source unconditionally (even one that has given you correct data on more than one occasion: every piece of data must be weighed on its own), to always favour official measurement bodies (which, unfortunately, aren't always up to date either, so even in that case due caution is needed), and to try to spot when various media outlets have all drawn from the same erroneous source... and very often, even doing all this, it might not be enough. This writer is aided in sorting through the material by decades of nerdism about charts and sales figures, but for those with less experience it could prove rather tricky to tell truth from fiction.

The purpose of everything written so far is precisely to offer a few extra analytical tools to anyone who wants them.

Final note – Of course, like any Wikipedia page, the ones discussed here are by their nature editable and open to improvement: however, the incorrect data they contained, even once deleted, has circulated for years and has been cited in the most varied contexts. So a series of corrective articles on the subject can hardly do any harm. The third and final instalment will be devoted to foreign artists.

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