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I read on https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Phats_%26_Small&oldid=1231722309:

The song debuted at number three in the UK Singles Chart, before climbing to number two, with career sales of this hit amassing them £5,000 in total due to their recording contract.

What does "career sales" mean? I don't know what career mean in that context. I read https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/career but that didn't help. Does that mean sales that took place over the group's entire career?

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    It looks like a misuse to me. An artist's "career sales" means the total sales value of that artist over their entire career. But songs don't have careers, so the cited usage is nonsense. On the other hand, the intended meaning is obvious - the relevant artist/band had a rubbish contract, so they only earned £5000 from that song (but I bet any money the actual sales were significantly more than that; the band don't normally get much of the sale price).
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 22 at 17:45
  • @FumbleFingers yeah it's so small so I thought that it may mean something else.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Sep 22 at 17:49
  • The fact that the song rose high in the charts means the total sales value must have been much higher than £5000 - unless it was sold for a ridiculously low price, which I seriously doubt.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 22 at 17:51
  • @FumbleFingers now I understand wheat "fat and small" refers to.
    – Franck Dernoncourt
    Commented Sep 22 at 17:53
  • That's Phats & Small - and neither of them are even "small", let alone "fat". They're just band member Jason Hayward's "stage name" and the surname of the other half of the duo, Russell Small. But obviously they didn't have a very good agent if they only earned £5k from an international hit.
    – FumbleFingers
    Commented Sep 22 at 18:56

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"career sales" means "total sales during their career".

Qualifying this with "of this hit" means it's only referring to the sales of the one song mentioned, "Turn Around".

"amassing them £5,000 in total" means that they only received a total of £5,000 in payments, even though it was a big hit. Maybe the contract specified a flat payment, or an extremely small percentage of sales. As new artists, they didn't have the clout necessary to negotiate better terms.

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