List of million-selling singles in the United Kingdom

Prior to the formation of the British Phonographic Industry in 1973, the only way to know if a record had sold a million copies in the United Kingdom was if the record company alerted the press. In addition, in many cases the record company would present the artist or group with Gold Records to commemorate the million sales. However, there was some controversy over whether certain singles had actually reached sales of one million copies in the United Kingdom. In April 1973, the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) began classifying singles and albums by the number of units sold to dealers. The highest threshold is "Platinum record" and was then awarded to singles that sold more than 1 million units. In February 1987, the BPI introduced multi-Platinum awards so that if a single sold 1,200,000 units it was classified as double Platinum, 1,800,000 units as triple Platinum, etc. the first single to achieve a million digital sales was "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas. Additionally, audio streaming has been included in the official chart and BPI awards since 30 June 2014, at a rate of 100 streams representing one unit sale; This record was broken in 1977 when Paul McCartney's subsequent band Wings surpassed it with "Mull of Kintyre", which also became the first song to sell 2 million copies in the UK. In 1984, Band Aid released the charity-record "Do They Know It's Christmas?" in response to the famine in Ethiopia; it sold 1 million copies in the first week and soon became the best-selling single. This record was broken in 1997, following the death of Diana, Princess of Wales, when Elton John released "Candle in the Wind 1997", a re-write of the Marilyn Monroe tribute released in 1973. Selling more than 650,000 copies on its first day on sale and more than 1.5 million in its first week, it quickly became the UK's best-selling single. It was classified by the BPI as 9× Platinum (5.4 million) in October 1997, but more recent reports by the OCC put its total sales at 4.93 million. ==Million-selling singles (paid-for sales)==

The following list is restricted to paid-for sales since the inception of a UK chart in 1952. Unless stated otherwise, sales figures from the OCC are correct as of 19 September 2017. Of these, 112 were originally released in the 20th century (70 of them selling 1 million before the year 2000) Although "Brown Girl in the Ring" was listed as the B-side, it received extensive airplay, which caused the single to peak in the charts for a second time. ==Artists with the most million-selling singles==

Twenty-five artists have had at least two million-selling singles in the UK (if John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John are counted as one artist), but only six artists have had more than two: The Beatles and Whitney Houston, who have six; Rihanna, who has four (including one as a featured artist); Adele, Bruno Mars and Pharrell Williams, who all have three (including one for Mars as a featured artist and two for Williams as a featured artist). • Includes featured performances • Duets ==Songs with one million combined sales==

This is a list of singles which have reached a million combined sales when streaming is taken into account (100 streams equivalent to one download or physical sale). In addition to those 175 listed above, at least 137 songs have achieved one million combined sales, according to a list published by the OCC in September 2017. Nineteen of these were released before 2000 and twenty-seven in 2015. The most combined sales (and only song with over 2 million streaming equivalent sales) without a million traditional sales, is "Shape of You" by Ed Sheeran. In the full list of 312 songs with combined sales of over a million, Rihanna features as a named artist on 10 and Sheeran features on 9. Since the publication of the 'millionaires' by the Official Charts Company in September 2017, many other songs have been revealed as 'millionaires' through announcements on their website as well as the announcement by the British Phonographic Industry (BPI) of BPI Brit Certified Awards. Songs which have been awarded a 2× Platinum award have combined sales in excess of 1.2 million copies. The following songs have achieved a multi-platinum certification from the BPI since September 2017: ==See also==