Fenixnordic Group

As the Michael Jackson’s body is being prepared for transport to a public viewing at the Neverland Ranch, his music rules the charts once again.

Billboard’s latest sales charts show the king of pop as the first artist ever to sell more than a million downloads in a single week, among other firsts.

Fans flocked to the late popstar’s greatest hits, purchasing a record-breaking 2.6 million Jackson solo recordings and Jackson Five songs, according to Nielsen SoundScan data for the week ending June 28. Jackson also dominated Billboard’s “Comprehensive Album Chart,” which tracks both new albums and older catalog albums — the first time a catalog album has ever scanned more sales than any new album.

The “massively talented boy-man,” as his former collaborator Paul McCartney put it, posthumously claimed the top three spots with greatest hits collections and the legendary Thriller album:

1. Michael Jackson - Number Ones (108K album sales scanned)

2. Michael Jackson -  The Essential Michael Jackson (102K)

3.  Michael Jackson - Thriller (101K)

4. The Black Eyed Peas - The E.N.D. (88K)

Jackson may once more rule the charts, but times have changed since the ’80s heyday of cassette and vinyl retail sales. Last week, Billboard estimated that retailers sold 415,000 solo Michael Jackson albums (an increase of 4,150 percent from his total the previous week).  In the years following its release, Thriller alone regularly sold twice that.

Still, Jackson’s appearance on several other key charts (six of the top ten digital albums, 25 of the top 75 digital songs, nine of the top ten pop catalog albums) is a clear reminder of the sort of sales that were possible before technology and choice fractured the listening public into a million little niches, when the mainstream still ran strong.

It seemed like everyone tuned in to watch the 13-minute Thriller video when it debuted in 1983, even though that meant staying up past bedtime, for some, and wrangling with new-fangled VHS or Betamax recorders, for others. ABC estimates that 55 percent of US television sets were tuned to Jackson’s 1993 interview with Oprah Winfrey (over 62 million viewers total), while this year’s American Idol finale — arguably the biggest thing in music — drew only 32.5 million viewers, despite viewership having grown since ‘93.

Google thought it was under attack in the hours after Jackson passed away, causing some to speculate that he “almost [took] the internet with him.” The idea of one music superstar capturing the world’s attention could also perish with Jackson.

Thriller is the top-selling studio album in US history, with 28 million RIAA-tracked sales and well over 100 million copies sold worldwide. Given consumers’ growing preference for the single and the trajectory of the recorded music industry, those records are likely to stand for quite some time.





See Also:

• Michael Jackson, the ‘King of Pop,’ Dies at 50
• Jackson’s Death Puts Lucrative Beatles Copyrights in Play
• Sad: Michael Jackson Auctions Off Neverland Gadgets
• Remembering Michael Jackson in Videogames
• Google: Michael Jackson Search Spike Seemed Like an Attack
• Twitter Tributes to Michael Jackson Now 30% of Tweets: Mashable
• 3.02: The Man Who Stole Michael Jackson’s Face
• The Man Behind Scrambled Hackz

Photos courtesy of Kevin Mazur/AEG/Getty Images, via image.net; sales data from Nielsen SoundScan; chart data from Billboard (Nielsen owns Billboard)

Source: Eliot Van Buskirk

Leave a Reply

Name (required)

Mail (will not be published) (required)

Website