There are lots of lists out there by total album sales, as that's a simple methodology, but personally I don't find those lists useful for discovering good musi

There are lots of lists out there by total album sales, as that's a simple methodology, but personally I don't find those lists useful for discovering good music or guiding me towards music I may already know about but haven't listened to in depth. Pretty much everything in at least the top 100 I'll already know about (because it's literally the bestselling music of all time), and to the extent I'm not listening to it already, it's because I know it's not my cup of tea. E.g. I know Michael Jackson has gotta be in the top 3, if not #1, but I also already know exactly my opinion on his music. So best album lists, while of course not objective, are actually useful to me in a way that sales rankings aren't, so long as I find myself roughly in accordance with the editorial judgment of the list makers. And that is very much the case with the Rolling Stone lists, though not the recent list as much as the previous lists. Meanwhile, I wouldn't get much use out of a ranking of modern country / rap (either best-selling or "best") simply because I tend not to like those genres generally. Rock (particularly classic/hard/blues/prog/experimental) is my favorite genre, and Rolling Stone is more a rock music magazine than anything else, although based on the way these lists are going that seems to be less so over time.