Its taken along time for recertifaction. Back in the day this was an ongoing struggle as sony and the powers that be failed to do their job and mjs numbers were intentionally downplayed while eagles P.R was pushed down everyones throats. The question now is when will the other albums get their recerts as we all know their figures are way off aswell
EXACTLY.
I do remember that I read some article in the late 90s where the article was about Off The Wall album and in the late 90s the sales figure for the album was 20 million!
Now, its 2015, more than 15 years later, I would bet its 25 million now, but there is NO official source to confirm that, and I do believe it could reach 10 in the US (another diamond award)
Then BAD, by the official doc for BAD25, its stated that BAD sold 45 million, in the USA its for now certified with 8 million, but it was in 2007, I would bet its other 10 million - diamond award
Dangerous - officially 7 million by RIAA from 2007
What about HIStory? In the USA 7M=3.5M copies of the set, I would bet it could have 5=10 million units
... and so on... Number Ones.... As of November 8, 2014, the album has sold 5,106,357 copies in the US only.
MJ community just has to apply the MJ Estate and Sony for the updates...
Thriller sales have always confused me. Some say it sold over 100 million, and then others say the 100 million was a myth, and that it actually sold 60-70 million copies. So, which one is it?
The Guinness World Records certified Thriller with over 104 million copies sold in 2006. It should currently have over 110 millions at least.
You can see the certificate below on Michael's right.
I wonder why they always say 60-65 million total worldwide-I've read that repeatedly in news articles the last few days-when Guinness obviously says otherwise. I wonder if it's because they're not adding them together properly-I don't know.
The numbers the media want to believe are mostly sale figures that are here since mid 90's like the rest of Michael's global figures (for Off The Wall, Bad, Dangerous and HIStory).
For Thriller specifically we can see a lot happened since then. According to a report from 2007 the album sold every year around 100k copies every year just in USA. In 2007 Thriller already had 27x multi-platinum, Then you have the RIAA finally updating Thriller's figures two months after Michael passed: In August 2009 RIAA gave it the 29th platinum certification (The year-end sale figures for Thriller in 2009 were 1.47 million copies in US).
Then there is Thriller25 which sold around 4.5-5 million copies worldwide (688k in USA) in 2008.
While making sure I am getting my facts right I came across this article from 1999 Which is reporting about the Eagles outselling Michael's Thriller with their Greatest Hits albums (26 million copies). So up until 1999 Thriller sold 25 million copies in USA.
http://www.mtv.com/news/519962/beatles-garth-brooks-barbra-streisand-centurys-top-sellers/
A year later (2000) RIAA gave Thriller its 26th platinum certification:
https://rockhall.com/story-of-rock/timelines/michael-jackson/basic/
Now it's 30x multi-platinum, making it 4 million more copies sold in America only since 2000 (Average of around 266k copies sold every year in the USA).
We all know Michael is one of very few American artists who sell better outside the USA. It's easy to see with with Thriller25 - 4 million copies worldwide and 0.6 in USA. Thriller in the 90's - 20-25 million copies in USA and 45-55 copies worldwide. With other albums the gap is even bigger. At least twice of the American sales.
Even if we only add smaller worldwide sales figures to the American ones, it still sums up to many millions of copies in twenty years so one really has to wonder how come Thriller and other MJ albums carry the same figures for all these years.
for all of that written.... when you look at the Guinness records, there on one plaque it states that MJ was
THE FIRST ENTERTAINER TO HAVE OFFICIALLY RATIFIED SALES OF MORE THAN 100 MILLION ALBUMS OUTSIDE THE USA!
The question is since when was the "ratified sales" acknowledged or confirmed, since the late 80s? or the mid 90s?
That means that NO other artist from the USA before MJ sold more than 100 million albums, so Elvis by that could have never sold the billion whatever....
So... what was the date of the ratified thing?
Because the global sales outside the US was far higher than in the US, so after Thriller (1982) MJ sold with every album more than 100M in the late 90s - after BAD, Dangerous, HIStory or maybe including Invincible.
And btw, do you remember the time when in 2006 there was released the statement by at the time Baymone Bain that MJ had sold 750 million records, well 8 years later and 250M more...(?), but we do known by John Branca that since MJ died, more than 50 million albums and 50+ million singles (=100+M records + dvd, ringtones) have been sold globally