Worldwide, the English rock band The Beatles have released 12 studio albums (17 in the US), 5 live albums, 52 compilation albums, 36 extended plays (EPs), and 37 box sets. Their output also includes vault items, remixed mash-ups and anniversary box-sets. In their native United Kingdom, during their active existence as a band, they released 12 studio albums (including 1 double album), 1 compilation album, and 13 EPs (including 1 double EP). The band's first eight albums were released on Parlophone, a subsidiary label of EMI. From 1968, in both the UK and the US, starting with the single "Hey Jude" and the album The Beatles (better known as "the White Album"), new releases appeared on the Beatles' own Apple label, although Parlophone and Capitol (in the US) catalogue numbers continued to be used for contractual reasons. The Beatles' international discography is complicated due to different versions of their albums sometimes being released in other countries, particularly during their early years on Capitol in North America. Prior to 1967, it was common practice for British releases to be reconfigured for the American market. The first seven British Beatles albums were converted into ten LPs for the American market, adding material from singles and the UK EPs; the band were unhappy with these reconfigurations. With the exception of Magical Mystery Tour, studio releases from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band in 1967 forward were uniform in both the UK and the US. Magical Mystery Tour was expanded from an EP to an LP as there was no market for EPs in the US at the time.
With the first CD releases of their albums in 1987 and 1988, the Beatles' core catalogue was harmonised worldwide to encompass their 12 original UK studio albums, the US Magical Mystery Tour album, and the newly assembled Past Masters: Volumes One and Two compilation albums consisting of all the studio recordings released during 1962 to 1970 that are not present on the UK studio albums or Magical Mystery Tour (mainly non-album singles, B-sides and EP tracks). When the core catalogue was reissued in remastered editions in 2009, the two volumes of Past Masters were combined into one double album. This core catalogue contains all 217 tracks intended for commercial release, either as album tracks, EP tracks, or singles, that were put out by the Beatles from 1962 to 1970. Since the standardisation of the catalogue, there have been several significant, fully-authorised, additional releases, such as The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (first issued 1977, issued on CD in 2016), Live at the BBC (1994), the Anthology series, and greatest hits collections 1962–1966, 1967–1970 (both first issued 1973, issued on CD 1993) and 1 (2000). The catalogue is currently distributed by Universal Music Enterprises' Calderstone Productions. The Beatles are the biggest selling musical act of all time, selling over 500 million records.
