h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Only those in the know E.G. Those who apreciate the masses of underground artists and lesser known bands and artists. Especially those who ignore pop altogether. Only they know that it is somewhat of a conspiracy going back decades!

There are plenty of artists that make a fine living out of music but are relatively obscure to most people. The fact is radio is brainwashing people , people believe because a song gets to number one that it sells a lot of records. This is not so. As lapses in the market can mean in general few records can be sold overall. A good market projection and good timing can help get you to number one remarkbly easily ( with the help of buying a lot of your own records! And this kind of behaviour is being performed by artists and record labels across the board.)
Iron Maiden had only one number one in the UK but that was somewhat helped out a little by "Extra forces at work".
All members of the band are quite well off to say the least and overall have sold A LOT of records.

What you're saying about number 1's versus actual record sales is very true. Radio 1 used to do (in fact, probably still do) a "Top 40" of the year, in which they run down the biggest selling singles of the whole year. Some number 1's are often far down the chart and many are not in it, whilst some songs that peaked at No.3 but were in the charts are high up in the yearly chart.