Jason Aldean was named as the all-time bestselling country male country performer in terms of digital sales this week. That's quite an accomplishment in the age of Luke Bryan, Kenny Chesney and more, but few have considered how irrelevant that will be by the end of 2014. One performer Aldean hasn't had to outsell was Garth Brooks, who currently stands with literally zero digital tracks sold under his name. That is, until GarthBrooks.com finally releases his digital catalogue by the end of 2014.
Brooks confirmed during a July press conference that he would be back for a tour, a new album, and most importantly, that his entire catalogue would become available digitally exclusively through his own site. Although that headline took a backseat to the other news, it marks huge forthcoming changes in the history of music—not just country music—in the digital era.
Brooks has claimed that his entire 18-album discography will be offered at a "stupid" price, and analysts are already projecting he'll sell at least the half million records needed to pass Elvis Presley on the RIAA all-time charts. Brooks stands at 134 million and Presley has 134.5 million, plus the country star is the all-time best-selling solo performer since 1991. Consider that each download of his discography actually would actually count as 18 albums sales. Therefore selling 2 million discography downloads would allow him to pass The Beatles as the bestselling act ever.
Aldean will still be able to claim the most digital track sales for a male country performer, as Brooks is only offering his products as whole albums, which don't count toward individual track sales. Still, Aldean "only" has 21.5 million track downloads to his name, whereas Brooks may soon have more than 20 million digital album sales to his.
Keep in mind that none of these numbers include consideration for Brooks' new album, due to be released during 2014. Aldean is a king to be sure, but in the words of Frank Ocean, what's a sales king to a sales god?
