Yes it's too early to determine overall success. We'll wait and see the annual sales. With the documentary and holiday season there could be an interest in the album.
Pink sold 281,000 albums at USA this week. So 50% less estimate 140,000 seems to be okay for a re-release.
given that at the 86th week of its release Adele has sold 26,000 albums.
It's also a known fact that finished songs sell better than demos, new albums sell better than re-releases and of course a bigger target market is better than a smaller one.
@Bumper it's not correct to compare Michael to the 80s sales numbers. no album sells that much anymore. Top albums would be around 15 Million mark (Lady Gaga and Adele) but even the 3rd position would only be 5 Million range. For example Beyonce's 4 album sold 2.1 million copies last year worldwide and ranked as the 10th album. So Michael with it's overall 2.5 Million sales - as we last heard- is in today's sales numbers is a top 10 album.
there's no determining anything in sales fairly, with what you say. As Bumper indicated, we only know of sales by
available information. and by that, we cant really determine anything, as there may be a lot of unavailable markets..people buying or not buying, that we don't know about.
but one thing i have considered is looking on websites where people use background music while they're doing other things. Although buying music, i don't think, is really a cerebral thing, there's hope for music that people listen to, without skipping tracks. That's something only to be determined with big time observation. The reality is, I have been on a lot of websites, and I hear people use a lot of MJ background music..but never any from 'Michael'. I see people get a big pep in their step when they hear 'Billie Jean' or 'Heaven Can Wait', but not 'Breaking News'. I'd hazard a guess that Invincible and Thriller are doing a lot better than 'Michael', but that's not always admitted cerebrally, since i think music reaches people on a different level.(i'm not talking about people on MJ fan sites, that i know of, and i've been listening for a lot of years, now, so if i go to a random site and see someone being busy while showing a pep in step, after this, i'll know they saw my post. lol)
I think if people would take a good listen to the Invincible album, and then take a good listen to the 'Michael' album... Invincible is an excellent showcase of Michael's vocals.... perhaps some will admit the marked difference. Perhaps, some will not.
Also, Ivy, it's not necessarily true that different climates determine lesser or more sales...eg 1982 vs. now. If something has the right ingredients, it'll sell like hot cakes in any year, any environment. I know people made a definite determination that nothing could sell like Thriller, before Thriller came along. there are things i won't mention that do that, now..and other things, again, i say, that we cannot determine full sales figures on.
The greatest proof of Michael Jackson making the final decisions being the right thing, is his lasting power, featuring thriving websites like this..and the bandwagoners such as the Cascios. If the bandwagoners made the original decisions in MJ's career, i highly doubt we'd have thriving websites like this one, today. You don't usually bandwagon off of something, unless what you are bandwagoning off of is the true real deal.