The funny thing is that no one ever really sold that many copies of an album. The music industry, for all its reach and visibility, is tiny compared to a single

The funny thing is that no one ever really sold that many copies of an album. The music industry, for all its reach and visibility, is tiny compared to a single 'blockbuster' movie. I mean, a "gold record" which is pretty rare and often takes months or years for an album to reach is 500k sales. Compare that to movie tickets (which are now about the same price each, and are only a single viewing!), where 500k sales can be a disastrous failure.