Was Billboard treating Michael unfair?

Doggone

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Billboard has lots of different lists of the best selling singles or albums. Every category has its own rules.

When Michael died in 2009 he sold 1.1 million albums in just 1 week. He had 9 albums in the Top 10 Top Pop Catalogs Albums chart. But unfortunately the albums were not allowed to enter the The Billboard 200 because the albums were older then 18 months. So an album named ''Sugarland'' was still on #1 on the Billboard 200. Michael even outsold Sugarland.

Several months later, in December, Billboard decided to change the rules. From then on all albums were allowed to enter the 200 list. Regardless of their age or something else.

Doesn't this seem unfair? If this Michael was scrapped when Michael died he would have got 1, or maybe even 2, more album on the top of 200 list.

Does the old rule apply for the Hot 100 too? Imagine if he had more singles on the first spot on the Hot 100 list...
 
Well, they probably changed it because of Michael in the first place.

I recall in May 2011, Amazon sold digital copies of Lady Gaga's then-new album Born This Way for 99c. Not as a promotion for Gaga's new album but instead to promote their new cloud service at the time (infact they had to pay Gaga's label the full amount, so Amazon lost over $3,000,000). Anyhow, these 99c digital copies were included in Billboard's count and many saw this unfair as it would potentially tempt record labels to sell future albums at a low price just so they could reach #1 or have a high number of first week sales. Therefore, a good six months over the album's release in November 2011, Billboard finally changed the rule and made it ineligible for albums sold below $3.49 to be included on the charts.

That's the only example I think off the top of my head, but it took roughly six months in both cases for Billboard to implement changes as a result. So while I admittedly don't know for real, I would assume Billboard do not immediately change their chart rules, instead giving it a rough six month time period to take effect.

Personally, I do think Michael should've been included on the normal charts but I can imagine Billboard getting some flak if they immediately altered charts to suit modern trends, not just for MJ but other instances in general ('Billboard is altering the charts rules to suit Michael Jackson!!!!' blah blah etc etc)
 
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I don't think it was aimed at MJ. After all Billboard could not know in advance MJ would die. It was exactly because of that anomaly after MJ's death why they changed the rules.
 
I agree that it was changed only because of Michaels death. But I think they should make the stats retroactive.
That doesn't seem fair.
 
When was people ever fair towards Michael Jackson? :(
 
When was people ever fair towards Michael Jackson? :(

True. Very true... :(

I agree that it was changed only because of Michaels death. But I think they should make the stats retroactive.
That doesn't seem fair.

I agree. They should have counted Michael's and other artist's albums too...

Personally, I do think Michael should've been included on the normal charts but I can imagine Billboard getting some flak if they immediately altered charts to suit modern trends, not just for MJ but other instances in general ('Billboard is altering the charts rules to suit Michael Jackson!!!!' blah blah etc etc)

Yeah they could get criticized for doing that. But it's only fair if they include MJ's songs and albums too. Because thanks to him they changed the rules... And now other artists can profit from the rule change..
 
^^and if they had made it retroactive, a lot of deceased artists could have been included. Think how many albums probably sold when John Lennon was killed or Elvis died.
I remember how shocked I was at the outpouring of grief for both of them.
I'm sure Sinatra and many others had a huge spike upon their deaths.
It didn't just have to benefit Michael.
 
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But it's only fair if they include MJ's songs and albums too.

But then it would be unfair to the hundreds of artists before him who had their catalogue albums reach numbers beyond those on the normal charts. Why should Michael be included but not the others? It doesn't matter if Michael was the cause.

It would be a huge pain in the ass for Billboard to go through their ~75? year history and recalculate everything to update the charts to include other artists such as Elvis Presley, John Lennon and Frank Sinatra (for example) who would've died and had a spike in their album sales. Not just that, but there would surely be the odd catalogue album from other artists that managed to seep it's way beyond the sales of the normal chart occupants.

This isn't to you specifically Doggone, more just to anyone in general, but I think it's ridiculous to believe Billboard were treating Michael Jackson unfairly because regardless of artist, they would've been treated the same. I do wish that Michael's albums counted but unfortunately that rule wasn't in place when he died and that's just the way it is. Either it applies to everyone in the chart's history (and becomes a massive task for Billboard, countless weeks have to be recalculated) or it is honestly just unfair to everyone else.

If it was the other way round ('Catalogue albums can no longer be part of normal charts as of Dec 2009') and people stated that Michael should therefore lose the chart positions he gained in June/July 2009, you would be making the same case that I am - that those were the rules when he died and therefore they should apply. Unpopular opinion maybe but that's just the way it is with music charts. In saying all of this, I remember loving how MJ was dominating the Top 20 albums on iTunes etc right after he passed away so at least there's that.
 
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