Columbia quad sales figures from 1973 & 1975 issues of Billboard magazine

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steelydave

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As far as I know, sales totals for quad releases weren't publicly available, but in doing some research I found a couple of articles about quad in Billboard magazine (one from Nov. 10/73 and the other from Aug. 9/75) where Columbia gave some sales figures for (presumably) some of their better-selling quad titles, to show that sales were good. There's nothing earth-shattering here, but it gives you a ballpark idea of how many copies of some of these titles are out there. The 1975 article also mentioned that the split between LP and Q8 sales was roughly 60/40 in favour of LPs.

Given that some of these better-selling albums from the 'golden era' for quad (ie '72-'75) only moved 40,000 units, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the harder-to-find Columbia albums from '75-'77 (thinking of stuff like Chicago VIII and X, The Isley Brothers Go For Your Guns, etc.) had less than 10,000 copies made. Divide that in half based on your format of choice and there may only be 5 or 6 thousand copies of these albums out there on LP or Q8. Compare that with the millions of stereo copies pressed over the last 40 years and you can start to see why some of these albums are hard to find.

|||||
|ARTIST|TITLE|RELEASE DATE|SALES 11/73|SALES 08/75
1|Santana|Abraxas|01/72|90,000|131,000
2|Sly & The Family Stone|Greatest Hits|02/72|62,278|93,000
3|Edgar Winter|They Only Come Out At Night|01/73||76,000
4|Walter Carlos|Switched-On Bach|01/72||70,000
5|Simon & Garfunkel|Bridge Over Troubled Water|01/72|62,496
6|Janis Joplin|Pearl|01/72|55,398|
7|Charlie Rich|Behind Closed Doors|03/74||43,000
8|Peter Nero|Summer Of '42|04/72|40,233|
9|Loggins & Messina|Self-Titled|03/73|30,836|
 
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