I read some year back that Jörgen Elofsson had received a plaquet from his record company celebrating the fact that his songs were present on 100 million sold albums. I recall thinking then that Max Martin should already have received two plaquets from his record company. I have never seen any statistics regarding his overall sales. Obviously it's a difference between guys like Jörgen and Max who often might have only one song on an album and guys like Per Gessle and Benny Andersson who mostly write for their own projects to which they supply all the songs. Therefore perhaps the number of single sales is a more just statistic when comparing the commercial success of the producers with the singer songwriters and composer/lyricist teams. Still even this statistic should be favourable towards the producers since they often supply the singles for many different artists. I believe that Per has sold between 70 and 100 million records (some 90 % of the sales should be Roxette although in Sweden i think his other work has sold more).
Hi, I've wondered that myself.
He must have sold well over 100 million albums. If you add Backstreet Boys first 5 albums which apparently total about 76 million, then Britney's first 3 albums which must be about 50 million etc etc
but yeah it's hard when there's others albums like Kelly Clarkson's where he only wrote 2 (though significant) songs.