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Perhaps unsurprisingly, British rock band The Beatles are top of the list for best-selling artists worldwide, with 183 million units certified sales. Second is Garth Brooks with over 157 million units sales, followed by Elvis Presley with 139 million units. All the artists who made the top twenty list are internationally renowned for their contributions to music and range from British pop-icon Elton John to American rock legends like Metallica.
What do the top-selling artists have in common?
The artists in the top twenty ranking for worldwide certified sales all made their mark in music in their own unique way. However, what is notable is that many of the artists in the list achieved fame and success several decades ago and were fortunate enough to have a lasting impact. Most of the musicians in the list were born in the United States or the United Kingdom and began their musical career in the 1960s or 1970s.
The music of the 1960s is often considered revolutionary, with politically-minded music from the likes of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez achieving huge popularity and psychedelic rock becoming one of the musical hallmarks of the era. British psychedelic/progressive rock band Pink Floyd as well as rock groups The Rolling Stones and Led Zeppelin all formed in London in the 1960s, as well as The Beatles who began their career in Liverpool at the beginning of the decade.
Which artists are still active today?
As of 2022, only a few of the artists who made the list remain active. American band the Eagles have toured regularly throughout their long career.
Sadly though, several of the world’s top-selling musicians have now passed, including Elvis Presley, Whitney Houston and Michael Jackson. Certain groups are still musically active but few have retained their original line-up. Australian rock and roll band AC/DC have undergone multiple line-up changes over the years, the most recent being the replacement of vocalist Brian Johnson with Guns n’ Roses singer Axl Rose.
As of September 30, 2023, Mediterranean Shg Co and APM-Maersk operated 19.3 and 15 percent of the world liner fleet, respectively. The CMA CGM Group ranked third with a share of 12.6 percent of the global container fleet.
As of 2023, Sergio Garcia had won more points in the Ryder Cup than any other golfer, with a career total of 28.5. The Spaniard has also won the most Ryder Cup matches. Meanwhile, Nick Faldo's career points total amounted to 25.
In the second quarter of 2023, the top ten percent of earners in the United States held 69 percent of total wealth. This is consistent with the first quarter of 2023. Comparatively, the wealth of the bottom 50 percent of earners has been slowly increasing since the start of the 2010s, though remains low. Wealth distribution in the United States by generation can be found here.
The unit sales of the Sony PlayStation 5 gaming consoles in the United States are on the rise as more of the devices become available to consumers. In 2022, over 5.6 million PlayStation 5 units were sold in the United States.
In July 2023, Tencent’s instant messenger service WeChat remained the most popular mobile app in China with around 1.07 billion monthly active users (MAUs). Its older sibling QQ was the second placeholder with about 776 million MAUs. Messaging, e-commerce, utility, and video streaming apps occupied the most spots in the top 20 list.
What makes WeChat so attractive to users?
WeChat is a multi-functional app beyond messaging and social networking. From mobile payment and taxi-hailing to making appointments and holiday planning, it provides almost everything to every mobile user in China. WeChat users are from various age groups from teenagers to old adults. In general, most WeChat users spent at least 10 minutes per day on the app. In fact, many companies also use this "super app" to advertise their brands, and its business version Wecom to communicate internally.
The promising future of short video apps
The rise of short video entertainment is another important trend in the world’s most populous country, especially in rural regions. ByteDance’s Douyin, which TikTok was cloned from, is one of the key players in the Chinese short video arena. Founded in 2016, Douyin had overtaken its imminent rival Kuaishou (Kwai) as China’s top short video app within four years. As the demand for rural life live streaming has been accelerating, industry experts expected that Chinese short form video market would continue to grow to reach a total revenue of over 500 billion yuan by 2023.
In 2022, South Korea's growth rate of gross domestic product (GDP) was 2.6 percent, whereas North Korea saw negative growth of 0.2 percent. North Korea's economy has experienced negative growth in most years over the past three decades.
As of late September 2023, ASML from the Netherlands was the largest semiconductor company of European origin in terms of market capitalization, amounting to 233.05 billion U.S. dollars. XNP Semiconductors, also from the Netherlands, ranked second with a market cap of just over 50 billion U.S. dollars, followed by the likes of Infineon from Germany and STMicroelectronics from France.
Europe is home to the highest number of cultural and natural properties assigned UNESCO's World Heritage status in the world. In Italy alone there were 59 sites as of 2023, including the historical center of Rome and Venice with its lagoon. As of September 2023, there were a total of 1,199 properties on UNESCO's world heritage list.
The Emerging Markets Bond Index (EMBI), commonly known as "riesgo país" in Spanish speaking countries, is a weighted financial benchmark that measures the interest rates paid each day by a selected portfolio of government bonds from emerging countries. It is measured in base points, which reflect the difference between the return rates paid by emerging countries' government bonds and those offered by U.S. Treasury bills. This difference is defined as "spread".
Which Latin American country has the highest risk bonds?
As of September 26, 2023, Venezuela was the Latin American country with the greatest financial risk and highest expected returns of government bonds, with an EMBI spread of around 379 percent. This means that the annual interest rates paid by Venezuela's sovereign debt titles were estimated to be exponentially higher than those offered by the U.S. Treasury. On the other hand, Brazil's EMBI reached 207 index points at the end of August 2023. In 2023, Venezuela also had the highest average EMBI in Latin America, exceeding 40,000 base points.
The impact of COVID-19 on emerging market bonds
The economic crisis spawned by the coronavirus pandemic heavily affected the financial market's estimated risks of emerging governmental bonds. For instance, as of June 30, 2020, Argentina's EMBI spread had increased more than four percentage points in comparison to January 30, 2020. All the Latin American economies measured saw a significant increase of the EMBI spread in the first half of the year.
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