What had the biggest impact on Thriller sales?

[JichaelMackson]

Was it the video for thriller or was it the Motown 25 BJ performance?
Maybe surprisingly the video and single for Beat it?
Did the album surge in sales during the Victory tour?

The album was the top seller for two straight years 83 and 84 and all of the above contributed to it but what made the biggest impact?

Also did "bad" have any similar effects on its sales? For example when the smooth criminal video dropped?
Does touring actually have a huge impact on album sales? The Bad tour was a tremendous worldwide success yet the bad sales never came close to the thriller sales while thriller didn't (directly) have a tour let alone a worldwide tour.

 

[Albion]

For me it was a mixture. People were going wild about the moonwalk during Motown 25 but the Thriller short film took things off the scale. All my friends and their families were talking about it. And it was also the songs. You have to remember that this turned into a greatest hits album as there was hit after hit after hit. There was no filler. The songs covered all bases. The radio played his songs all the time. And Michael was so damn cool. The Michael that we’re were seeing on Motown 25 and the shot films was someone the boys wanted to be and the girls wanted to be with. He was the most powerful voice in entertainment and it was a black voice.....and the white media we not going to stand for that.

 

[Nite Line]

Motown Billie Jean performance. When Michael did the moonwalk, he became a worldwide superstar. He became arguably the most famous person in the world. His name was on everyone's lips. Sure other factors such as the music videos for Thriller, Billie Jean and the quality of the Thriller album helped but without Michael doing the moonwalk at Motown 25 show, I don't think Thriller would have come close to becoming the best selling album of all time.

 

[NatureCriminal7896]

This is such a easy question. the thriller short film of course. after that short film release everybody or whose anybody wanted to see and watch that short film. while everything before that was great the thriller short film did it.

i don't have to talk about bad because it been talk about numbers of times. fake stories was coming out, people didn't like him because he was black etc. his race of people kind of left him because they felt he didn't want to be his race because he didn't tell people about his unknown diseases. he begin to tour around the world instead just the states.

in my opinion the 3 biggest albums are off the wall, thriller, and bad. these albums really help him come a long way as a solo adult artist.

 

[JichaelMackson]

And Michael was so damn cool.

This is probably the big difference indeed. Everybody loved Michael during the early 80s. By the time Bad came out he was already starting to lose his aura (slowly). the musical landscape had changed, Michael looked different and he became viewed as a weirdo. It all hampers the public view about a person which results in lower sales. The kids/teens who have always been the biggest record sellers looked up to other artists by now.

Thriller basically came at the right moment at the right time. Thriller took music videos to a different level it was a game changer. If thriller had been on the bad album I reckon the success would be less legendary.

Too bad there are no weekly sales figures available for the 80s, I always wondered how the hell he reached 26 million album sales in the US, Those weekly or monthly sales figures had to have been mind-blowing.

 

[NatureCriminal7896]

I agree with others who said Michael wait it kind of late to do thriller. the album came out 1982 he wait it the end of 1983 to release the short film. yeah, in someways he did wait it too late. but it still got him sales etc.

if michael never did the thriller short film i doubt he would had been as big. yeah people would have been doing the moonwalk and billie jean etc but most definitely not the thriller dance.

i'm glad that it happen. thanks michael and all the crew who worked with him.

 

[mj_frenzy]

The ‘Thriller’ music video had the biggest impact on the sales of the ‘Thriller’ album.

In actuality, sales of the ‘Thriller’ album started to decrease during the period before the release of the ‘Thriller’ music video.

Frank DiLeo stepped in and put forward the idea of releasing a third music video (‘Thriller’, in particular) because that would boost the album’s sales.

The ‘Thriller’ music video was released on December 2nd (1983), and here is the impact that it had on the album’s sales worldwide.

Worldwide sales of the ‘Thriller’ album regarding that particular period:

13 million by November 11th, 1983
14 million by December 4th, 1983
20 million by December 18th, 1983
21 million by December 20th, 1983
23 million by January 27th, 1984
25 million by February 7th, 1984

The above figures come from several reliable sources, such as EPIC/CBS, Billboard and other media outlets.

Due to the release of that music video, the album’s sales escalated considerably in the immediate following period.

But this did not happen to that extent some years later with the sales of the ‘BAD’ album because neither its released music videos nor the giant BAD Tour managed to boost the sales of the ‘BAD’ album in the way the ‘Thriller’ music video did to the sales of the ‘Thriller’ album.

 

[nextbigthing56]

Wasn’t Thriller already the biggest selling album ever before the short film even came out?

 

[Mikky Dee]

I think the Thriller video had the biggest impact on album sales. The album had already been out for a year before the video dropped and it was THAT that caused a major spike in sales which just continued on and on, unabated. In fact, the short film effectively doubled the sales of the Thriller album - in the three months immediately following the release of the video, an additional 7.5 million copies of the LP sold in the USA alone. It's also not well known, but over a million copies of Thriller were sold on VHS, making it the best selling videotape at the time. As we know, the "short film" transformed music videos into a serious art form, broke down racial barriers in entertainment and even popularized the idea of "the making-of" documentary, which has become common place in the music industry. The Thriller video made Michael into the dominant force in global pop culture that he still is, today and of course, it's the first music video to be selected for the National Film Registry by the Library of Congress.

 

[Mikky Dee]

Wasn’t Thriller already the biggest selling album ever before the short film even came out?

I don't believe so, but I also don't have any numbers to support this belief. I don't think it got there straight away. The album was released in December 1982 and had been certified Gold and Platinum by January 1983. Sales were starting to slow down just before Michael performed Billie Jean and unveiled the moonwalk at the Motown TV special.

 

[mj_frenzy]

Wasn’t Thriller already the biggest selling album ever before the short film even came out?

I don't believe so, but I also don't have any numbers to support this belief. I don't think it got there straight away. The album was released in December 1982 and had been certified Gold and Platinum by January 1983. Sales were starting to slow down just before Michael performed Billie Jean and unveiled the moonwalk at the Motown TV special.

‘Thriller’ was not already the biggest selling album ever before the ‘Thriller’ music video came out.

It did become the biggest selling album ever after the ‘Thriller’ music video came out, when it sold even more copies than the ‘Saturday Night Fever’ soundtrack album and thus it overtook that soundtrack album in the following year (1984).

“… In February 1984, it [the ‘Thriller’ album] would overtake the Bee Gees’ Saturday Night Fever and become the biggest selling album of all time…” (‘83 Minutes: The Doctor, The Damage, And The Shocking Death Of Michael Jackson’ book by Matt Richards and Mark Langthorne)

This fact can be corroborated by other sources, as well.