$5 Billion the Quiet Way : Pop music: Some of the industry’s biggest sellers have been on the charts for years--the catalogue chart, not the Top 200. It’s a quiet industry gold mine.

Elektra Records sold 662,000 copies in the United States last year of an 18-year-old album, the Eagles’ “Greatest Hits 1971-75.”

That was almost 200,000 copies more than DGC Records sold of Hole’s “Live Through This,” which may have received more media attention than any other release of 1994.

The collection landed Hole’s lead singer Courtney Love on the cover of Rolling Stone and was named the best new record of the year by the nation’s pop critics.

But, while “Live Through This” reached as high as No. 55 last year on Billboard magazine’s weekly chart of the nation’s Top 200 best-selling albums, “Greatest Hits 1971-75” never appeared on the chart.

That’s because the weekly Top 200 does not include catalogue albums, defined by Billboard as material that is at least two years old and has not appeared on any other Billboard chart for a minimum of three months.

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Catalogue sales, which are listed in a separate Billboard chart, represent a hugely lucrative but little celebrated aspect of the record industry, which spends the bulk of its multimillion-dollar promotion budget trying to establish new artists and recently released albums.

“It’s my understanding that a (large percentage) of CD sales is actually catalogue sales, but it’s in the best interests of the industry to (downplay) this because they’re always trying to sell you the next thing,” said Warren Williams, program director at Los Angeles radio station KLSX-FM, which employs a classic-rock format.

Catalogue product accounted for as much as 45% of all U.S. album sales last year--or about $5 billion--reported Mike Shalett, chief operating officer of SoundScan, a New York firm that revolutionized the nation’s music charts in 1991 through its computerized sales monitoring system.

“I’m sure it’s not hidden to the record companies, and I’m sure it’s not hidden to the retailers,” Shalett said, “but it may be hidden sometimes from the public.”

Only 119 of the more than 5,000 albums released in 1994 sold better than the Eagles’ greatest-hits package, which was the champion of the catalogue chart.

Sales of the album got a boost, of course, when the band reunited for a tour last year.

But 14 other catalogue albums also fared well enough during 1994 to have ranked among the year’s overall 200 best sellers. The Top 10 catalogue sellers, in order: Bob Marley & the Wailers’ “Legend,” Pink Floyd’s “Dark Side of the Moon,” Pink Floyd’s “The Wall,” Jimmy Buffett’s “Songs You Know by Heart,” Journey’s “Greatest Hits,” the Eagles’ “Greatest Hits Vol. II,” Enya’s “Watermark,” Mannheim Steamroller’s “Christmas” and Mannheim Steamroller’s “Fresh Aire Christmas.”

All 10 had sales of at least 450,000 units. (By contrast, nearly 5 million copies were sold of the year’s biggest-selling album, the “Lion King” soundtrack.)

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“Having a very strong catalogue is a little bit like having a license to print money,” Shalett said.

Agreed Stan Goman, senior vice president of record and video retail operations for the Tower Records chain: “When an album becomes a catalogue item, that’s when the manufacturer really makes tons of money. They’ve recouped their recording costs, they’ve recouped their promotion cost, they’ve recouped their artwork cost. All they’re doing is just stamping them out. All their costs are gone.”

But David Simone, president of PolyGram Music Publishing Group and a former senior vice president at Capitol Records, said those statements aren’t entirely true.

“As a general overall comment, I don’t know that it holds water that you make more money from catalogue product than from front-line items,” said Simone, adding that most catalogue albums are listed at mid-range or budget prices. “If you’re really going to sell catalogue, you can’t be passive. You’ve got to be out there spending money marketing the product.”

Also, Simone said, profit from catalogue sales is often used by companies to sign and develop new acts. “It can give you a very significant cash flow,” he said.

What sparks catalogue sales?

“The same kinds of things that would create movement on our (new album) charts can create movement on our catalogue chart,” said Geoff Mayfield, director of charts for Billboard.

These include radio and television air play, touring, a television appearance, the use of a song in a commercial or a movie soundtrack, or record-company promotions.

On a more morbid level, the death of an artist is also often a big sales stimulus. Nirvana’s “Bleach,” which was released in 1989 on tiny Sub Pop Records, jumped onto the catalogue chart for the first time shortly after the death last year of the band’s Kurt Cobain, and it remains there a year later.

Catalogue sales can also receive a lift when an act comes up with a new hit. Two punk-influenced rock bands that broke big last year, Green Day and Offspring, saw their older albums subsequently jump onto the catalogue chart.

Also influential to catalogue sales is the classic-rock radio format, which has kept artists associated with the ‘60s and ‘70s on the air long into the ‘90s.

“Classic rock is turning on new people to these albums and reminding people who grew up with them that maybe they need a new copy,” KLSX’s Williams said.

But some artists have continued to sell without much push. Almost 550,000 copies of the Eagles’ first greatest-hits album were sold in the United States in 1993--the year before the band got back together.

Marley’s “Legend,” a greatest-hits package released three years after the singer’s death in 1981, is the champion catalogue seller since SoundScan started tracking sales figures in 1991. Estimated sales since then: about 2.6 million copies.

“The Marley album, to me, is the quintessential reggae record,” Tower’s Goman said. “If you’re going to have a reggae item in your collection, that’s the one to have. And if you want a Bob Marley record, that’s the one to have.

“ ‘Dark Side of the Moon’ is (also) a timeless record, like (the Beatles’) ‘Abbey Road.’ It’s a classic, like ‘Moby Dick’ or the Bible or ‘Catcher in the Rye’--something you have to have in your library.”

It was the success of albums such as “Dark Side of the Moon” that prompted Billboard to add a catalogue chart, eliminating catalogue product from the Top 200. The collection spent a record 741 weeks in the Top 200 after its 1973 release.

The catalogue chart was introduced by Billboard in May, 1991, with the adoption of the SoundScan monitoring system. For 30 years before that, Billboard had based its weekly charts on estimates of record-store employees. But those estimates were open to manipulation and error.

When the new system was implemented, record companies and retailers alike asked Billboard to separate catalogue sales from new album sales. One reason: It would give more exposure to new artists, who were being squeezed out of the Top 200. At that point, almost all of the 50 albums in the catalogue chart would have appeared in the Top 200.

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Since then, SoundScan has turned up some interesting data.

“We’ve learned not to be surprised,” said Billboard’s Mayfield. “I think it was a year before we saw the first Beatles title show up on the catalogue chart. And the Rolling Stones didn’t show up until last year. If you would have told me five years ago that would be the case, I would have been skeptical.”

Although the Beatles had four albums among the 50 top catalogue sellers of 1994, none ranked higher than 37th. The top Stones album finished at No. 48. And only about 750,000 copies of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller,” the biggest-selling album of all-time with 26 million units sold, have been purchased during the four years in which SoundScan has monitored sales.

Why?

“It’s hard to say,” said Mayfield. “Is it because people have some of the stuff memorized? If you listened to a record over and over in college, and you know every song and every note, maybe you don’t go out and buy that stuff because it’s ingrained in your brain.”

Meanwhile, the Eagles show no signs of letting up.

U.S. record buyers have snapped up more than 4 million copies of the group’s latest album, “Hell Freezes Over,” which includes live versions of several of their hits from the ‘70s. Since the collection is still in the Top 10, it probably will sell several million copies this year--and there’s no telling how much it’ll eventually sell as a catalogue album.