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The Michael Jackson Chart Watch

Taylor swift just sold 1 mil + copies with her album. I haven’t seen that done for a lot of time. The first spot is secured by her.
 
https://twitter.com/x/status/1586568662697254923

Excuse me, all the Billboard Challenge peeps. Just need to have a tiny Invincible moment. Don't wanna get arguments started re the accuracy of that claim that the album sold 8m. Or the claim that it's a masterpiece. Or any of that. Just wanted to go 'Yay!' for the release date anniversary and the fact that, earlier this year, HCW seemed to come out of nowhere and started trending on Tik Tok.

P.S. 13 tracks? No idea which edition this is.
 
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This is from chartmasters-analysis. The numbers are frrom 2017.Maybe there will be an update soon. But a impressive read.

chartmasters.org

Michael Jackson albums and songs sales - ChartMasters

How many units has Thriller sold? And Bad? And Dangerous? Find out the anwsers to these questions and an awful lot more about Michael Jackson right here!
chartmasters.org

Equivalent album sales of 116,732,000 copies. That isn’t a typo. Thriller is an insane selling machine that was activated on November 30, 1982 and never slowed down since.

We already knew it was the top selling album in pure sales format of all-time. At 40,5 million, it also generated the most compilations sales of all-time, leading both fundamental categories in spite of them cannibalizing each other. Among non-Soundtrack albums, Thriller is also the #1 ever in terms of physical singles sold, again challenging laws of gravity as this format also comes as an opposition to pure album sales. As for downloads of tracks, among pre-digital era albums, Thriller ranks… #1 of all-time.

With over 2 billion YouTube views, it also leads the comprehensive ranking for pre-2000 albums. At 766 million Spotify streams, Thriller misses a mythical 6-dimensions all-time domination as it is the runner up to Nirvana‘s Nevermind.

Those fabulous achievements are resumed by its overall tally of 116,7 million CSPC sales. To put it in perspective, it’s lead over the all-time #2, Saturday Night Fever at 67 million, is bigger than the total sales of U2‘s The Joshua Tree. Thriller is bigger than Pink Floyd‘s Dark Side of the Moon and Whitney Houston‘s Bodyguard combined, those are the #2 and #3 top selling albums ever in pure sales format. Merging all three absolute classics of the Beatles, Abbey Road, Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band and the White Album, would still not be enough to challenge Thriller alone.

It also tops the complete discographies of acts like Guns N’ Roses, George Michael plus Wham!, Britney Spears and Coldplay. You get the point, the success of this legendary album is quite simply unparalleled.

We tend to blame the lack of promotion, TV appearances or tours to explain why some albums sell poorly. Thriller had no re-issue in its first 15 years. It had no proper tour to support it. Michael Jackson did no interview, and no talk show during the entire run of the album. He did one, and only one performance, and it was a tribute to his former label rather than a real promotion of his current record. Songs and videos from Thriller were simply unstoppable by themselves.

With a steamroller of this magnitude we almost forget that Michael Jackson released more albums. The madness continues. At 62,9 million equivalent album sales, Bad takes over the #3 all-time ranking behind the aforementioned Thriller and the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack. It tops by millions albums like Rumours (Fleetwood Mac), IV (Led Zeppelin), Dark Side of the Moon (Pink Floyd), Grease, Nevermind (Nirvana) and Bodyguard (Whitney Houston). It is as big as the full catalogs of Taylor Swift and Usher.

At 45,4 million, Dangerous cracks Come On Over by Shania Twain and every album of the Beatles and Madonna. So-so albums for Michael Jackson like HIStory and Off The Wall are bigger than 90s bangers like Spice by the Spice Girls and Baby One More Time by Britney Spears. The degree of his success is on a completely different level than any other act. Interestingly, HIStory almost matches the singles performance of Dangerous in all categories, which shows it would have been an even stronger seller if it wasn’t for its very high price.

The rest of his catalog is made up of recordings from his teenage years, a couple of posthumous releases and an album widely regarded as an absolute bomb. Those albums still add for a strong 36,4 million equivalent album sales.

Overall, Michael Jackson is up to 323,7 million equivalent album sales. The greatness of the Beatles consistency still provides them the #1 spot but the King of Pop comes in as an impressive runner up. His catalog sales as well as his streams remain as buoyant as ever so this tally will never stop increasing.

The following pages list his most successful songs as well as his records and achievements. Do not forget to check our amazing cross-artists lists posted inside the CSPC: Data Collector which includes the full listing of all CSPC results compiled so far to better gauge his position in the history of the music industry.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, YouTube, Chartmasters.org.
 
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Dorian said:
Taylor swift just sold 1 mil + copies with her album. I haven’t seen that done for a lot of time. The first spot is secured by her.
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She has got all the critics and media people in her pocket.
 
Annita said:
We tend to blame the lack of promotion, TV appearances or tours to explain why some albums sell poorly. Thriller had no re-issue in its first 15 years. It had no proper tour to support it.
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I'm really interested in this aspect of the Thriller story. I found this quote in a piece from Vanity Fair in 2010:

"Executives at Epic pushed the LP tirelessly, pressuring a range of radio formats to play it and marketing it as a mainstream disc." (emphasis added)
(Nancy Griffin)

But I also read something recently which stated that, at least in comparison to *modern* marketing campaigns for albums, Thriller had an fairly modest campaign - as hinted at in this chartmasters.org quote which you've shared with us here.

Annita said:
Michael Jackson did no interview,
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Slightly inaccurate. He did do the Smash Hits interview in January 1983.

Annita said:
and no talk show during the entire run of the album.
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Hm, maybe but he did do that tiny ET interview in 1983. Not sure which month. This and the Smash Hits interview might have been his only press activity at that time. Which definitely qualifies as a 'modest' campaign. The ET interview is less than 6 minutes long but it counts.

Annita said:
He did one, and only one performance, and it was a tribute to his former label rather than a real promotion of his current record.
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Absolutely true but the impact!! My god, you couldn't buy that kind of publicity or that level of impact. We can't underestimate the importance of M25. Nobody was talking about Motown after Michael's performance. It was all him.

Annita said:
Songs and videos from Thriller were simply unstoppable by themselves.
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They were and I love that. The songs, the videos, the dance routines, Michael's star quality. That is what did it. Not a marketing department trying to decide how to 'position' him.

Anyway, thanks for posting this. I'll definitely be coming back to it.
 
Nite Line said:
She has got all the critics and media people in her pocket.
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Very true. And I definitely don't want to minimize her accomplishments at all. I like Taylor. I'm not a fan but I have nothing against her. She works harder than most people currently in the industry. BUT... there is a big difference to me between people having to go out to a store and physically buy an album... potentially having to go from store to store to find a copy when it's selling out... then being able to sit home and buy digital versions on multiple platforms and then buy physical versions online. It's still a huge accomplishment for her to hit these numbers and she is without a doubt probably the biggest artist in the world currently. But it's unfortunate how much perspective gets lost with time.

That said, the BB numbers that are going to be published this coming week are from last week when Taylor dropped her album. The Thriller challenge is focusing on the BB charts for the following week. I anticipate Taylor and Rhianna will be fighting for number 1. I'm still keeping fingers crossed and streaming insanely for a Top 10 spot. But who knows? Anything is possible
 
staywild23 said:
Very true. And I definitely don't want to minimize her accomplishments at all. I like Taylor. I'm not a fan but I have nothing against her. She works harder than most people currently in the industry. BUT... there is a big difference to me between people having to go out to a store and physically buy an album... potentially having to go from store to store to find a copy when it's selling out... then being able to sit home and buy digital versions on multiple platforms and then buy physical versions online. It's still a huge accomplishment for her to hit these numbers and she is without a doubt probably the biggest artist in the world currently. But it's unfortunate how much perspective gets lost with time.

That said, the BB numbers that are going to be published this coming week are from last week when Taylor dropped her album. The Thriller challenge is focusing on the BB charts for the following week. I anticipate Taylor and Rhianna will be fighting for number 1. I'm still keeping fingers crossed and streaming insanely for a Top 10 spot. But who knows? Anything is possible
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Like you said, people need to not lose sight of perspective. Taylor has released more than a dozen versions of her new album, which has no doubt helped to increase the sales. Michael never did that and only ever released the standard version and he still outsold her worldwide.
 
Nite Line said:
Like you said, people need to not lose sight of perspective. Taylor has released more than a dozen versions of her new album, which has no doubt helped to increase the sales. Michael never did that and only ever released the standard version and he still outsold her worldwide.
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THIS. This is exactly what I mean that perspective is lost with time.
 
BTW the new song "Face it alone" from Queen hat only a debut at 90 in the single-charts UK last week. This week it is out of the charts.
I really thought it would perform strong at least in the UK,
 
I have absolutely no idea what you guys mean with Taylor Swift releasing a dozen versions of her new album.
She has dozens of different versions of the same songs?
If that is the case I want ti become a fan

PS Invincible was released in different colors as well, Isn’t it somewhat the same?
 
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https://imgur.com/a/vO3oZaZ

Thriller music video on iTunes is at #3 and #7. Keep in mind, too, that every single music video in the top 15 or so (with the exception of Thriller and the Loretta Lynn vid) has been released in the last couple of weeks.
 
Annita said:
In this week chart Taylor Swift occupies the entire top ten. That is a new record.
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Imagine listening to the top 40 on the radio 🤪

It turned basically useless to have chart records because the rules keep changing. The download and streaming era has turned everything on its head.

Hardcore fanbases decide what is popular, it is not the radio or the general public anymore. I am fully aware this is also what MJ fans try to achieve during Halloween. A top 10 is supposed to be somethng special or sacred that a vast majority of a population knows and loves. People today can still sing along to the top 10s of decades ago because there was no chart manipulation (or at least not as blatant). How many people will be able to recognize todays top 10 even 6 months from now because these songs don’t all get airplay…

This is nothing against Taylor Swift (it looks like she is genuinely talented) or other current pop stars nor is it about jealousy but charts today seem to become irrelevant and are not a good representation of what is played on the radio or is part of a populations conscience.
 
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