Best-Selling Movie Soundtracks of the 21st Century

WHO CARES OH MY GOD

Maybe no one! It's okay.

wow nutty professor 2 and romeo must die soundtrack and charlie's angels in the same year.

we didn't know how good we had it

One of these has a Mott The Hoople track on it.

In the latter half of the decade, Juno really stands out for not being connected to an existing property/franchise or to an individual artist.

Also the fact that it didn't have any actual hits on the record.

despite all the shit that gets thrown at juno and its soundtrack, i will rep for it for getting barry louis polisar $PAID$

what's the deal with the mission:impossible 2 soundtrack?

looks like a ton of shitty hard rock and nu-metal but no big hits

nu-Metallica

plus the limp bizkit song also a hit

A vote for Garden State is a vote for the world to end.

Zach Braff won a grammy for shoving paul simon perfection into the middle of dido and zero 7 terribleness. it's a sad world.

I was gonna be all "Pitch Perfect went platinum", but wiki sez "As of July 2013, the album has sold 821,693 copies in the US, making it the best selling soundtrack of 2013".

On that note, it seems like "Glee" soundtracks took over sales-wise for a couple years starting in late 2009: 14 albums (to date), 2 platinum, 3 gold (all from'09-'10).

Hey, remember when stuff like "The Lion King" went top 40?

Actually, I think seeing a recent sales figure for Pitch Perfect is what originally inspired this thread.

Here are the only soundtracks to be certified gold this decade:

Tron: Legacy
Pitch Perfect
Les Miserables

Feel like Pitch Perfect could get to platinum level eventually, as long as "Cups" kicks around on radio for a little while longer. And they're making a sequel, too.

this begs the question: wtf was on the coyote ugly soundtrack that people needed so badly?

ok quick google search reveals the people of the year 2000 were incredibly stupid

o brother where art thou is a wonderful soundtrack

coyote ugly soundtrack sure wasn't!

O Brother aside, are any of these considered definitive or essential by anyone? Seems as if as soundtracks got more plentiful, they got worse.

That said, at least Love Actually isn't on the list.

romeo must die soundtrack includes some great tracks, one of which is possibly the greatest r&b single of the surrounding ten year period, so yes. nutty professor 2 is uneven but it contains maybe four truly killer songs, including both definitive summer jams of that year, so also yes?

bad boys II soundtrack is pretty decent too.

2 fast 2 furious soundtrack was way better than the first, but only went gold.

voting romeo must die based solely on the 2 songs i actually know from it

did soundtrack albums actually become more plentiful? they've diminished in importance.

I don't recall there always being a soundtrack album for every movie that came out until the 90s onward. "Diminished in importance" might be more accurate, though: more and more of them just seem to be grab bags of previously released material, though of course I don't have the stats to support any of this.

hard to overstate the importance of the pulp fiction soundtrack to the cd generation

^^or The Bodyguard

i guess soundtrack _albums_ diminish in importance even more than normal albums, since the idea of buying a collection of disparate tracks makes even less sense in the mp3 era

"O Brother" is a legitimately great compilation. I've always thought it sold so well because the general public was hungry for something DIFFERENT than the crap that gets shoved down their throat, and it came along and scratched that itch.

it's baffling that some of the big 80s films didn't have official soundtracks; case in point being Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Yello! The Beatles!
Dream Academy!

in my mind "o brother" sdtk lined up with starbucks starting to sell music, which probably boosted its sales significantly

xpost

dunno if it's still the case, but beatles always used to decline p much every request to have one of their songs on a multi-artist compilation, soundtrack etc

xp that may be the case, but in 2000 people were still buying shit loads of cds iirc everywhere, borders, barnes and noble, etc

Interesting (n a little sad) that only one of these is an album of the actual film score.

O Brother being 8x platinum probably meant for Ralph Stanley's biggest payday after a lifetime of amazing music, and that's enough for me.

Also the fact that it didn't have any actual hits on the record.

Incorrect. Mott, BuddyH, Kinks..

You know what I mean. No one bought the Juno soundtrack because they heard one of those songs on the radio. I imagine that some sales of the Cars soundtrack, on the other hand, were driven (haha) by the fact that the Rascal Flatts cover of "Life Is a Highway" was on it.

Interesting (n a little sad) that only one of these is an album of the actual film score.

― Spot Lange (Jon Lewis), Friday, August 2, 2013 10:59 AM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark

i thought the same thing!

Frequently there's a songtrack release and a film score release (eg on this spiderman had both) but of course the score does not usually move big numbers. Besides lotr I suppose the best selling score albums of the last however many years would be... Titanic? A bunch of Hans zimmer things? J Williams Star Wars prequels? Tron reboot?

nightmare before christmas soundtrack which is a score kinda has to be a big seller right?

Yeah good point. It's a song score which is a good thing commercially. I wonder if it has outsold the batman score album cumulatively.

Besides lotr I suppose the best selling score albums of the last however many years would be... Titanic? A bunch of Hans zimmer things? J Williams Star Wars prequels? Tron reboot?

I *think* the only ones to go platinum in last 20 years are LOTR 1, Titanic, and Braveheart.

I'm also seeing gold certification for Phantom Menace, Gladiator, Harry Potter 1, LOTR 3, Pirates of the Caribbean 1, Tron: Legacy.

And then song scores for bunches of Disney movies, Nightmare Before Xmas, Les Miserables, etc.

Ha my guesses were pretty good!

I'm amazed (pleasantly) that shore's first lotr score went platinum. I would have guessed gold.

So just to break it down:

Howard Shore: LOTR
James Horner: Braveheart, Titanic
John Williams: Phantom Menace, Harry Potter
Hans Zimmer: Gladiator (w/Lisa Gerrard), Pirates (w/Klaus Badelt)
Daft Punk: TRON

this begs the question: wtf was on the coyote ugly soundtrack that people needed so badly?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F_RXq7T9p6s

I like the LOTR score, voted for that.

I thought The Matrix would be on here for sure

the matrix is so last century

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Ha, OK.

It was always going to win

strange #2 but it is ilm

didn't vote but would have thrown down for Mamma Mia

wow these results are depressing as shit

not a great selection.

a veritable smack in the face to sterling clover

i get a bit touchy when aaliyah is involved in things.

http://userserve-ak.last.fm/serve/300x300/90679523.jpg