Madonna has outsold Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, Janet Jackson, Madonna and Whitney Houston

Top-selling downloads for the following acts since Nielsen SoundScan began tracking digital data: Madonna, Whitney Houston, Janet Jackson, Mariah Carey and Celine Dion. Madonna (two) and Carey (four) are the only artists of the quintet with songs that have each shifted more than a million downloads:

 

Madonna

2,814,000, "4 Minutes"

1,224,000, "Hung Up"

493,000, "Like a Prayer"

366,000, "Sorry"

347,000, "Material Girl"

Whitney Houston
739,000, "I Will Always Love You"
447,000, "I Wanna Dance With Somebody (Who Loves Me)"
267,000, "Greatest Love of All"
215,000, "How Will I Know"
206,000, "I Have Nothing"

Janet Jackson
242,000, "That's the Way Love Goes"
235,000, "All for You"
212,000, "If"
179,000, "Call on Me"
155,000, "All Nite (Don't Stop)"

Mariah Carey
1,591,000, "All I Want for Christmas Is You"
1,563,000, "Obsessed"
1,467,000, "Touch My Body"
1,362,000, "We Belong Together"
718,000, "Shake It Off"

Celine Dion
871,000, "My Heart Will Go On"
508,000, "Because You Loved Me"
462,000, "Taking Chances"
307,000, "A New Day Has Come"
300,000, "It's All Coming Back to Me Now"

But do you think sales are any indication of how good an artist is?