Michael Jackson Greatest Hits History Volume 1
Cecelia Seiner
Maybe the most amazing element is that he achieved this status with a mere six albums from the time he turning 18 in 1976 to his death in 2009. Obviously, it helps when those albums include blockbusters like Thriller, Bad and Dangerous.
This limited discography in volume raises some questions though. As popular as Michael Jackson has been it is hard to imagine him challenging artists like Madonna or Mariah Carey, who were massive too but issued far more albums and mostly during a more favorable time for record sales.
Additionally, artists with well-known elements like video clips, dance moves, widely covered / sampled and highly influential are often seen as bigger sellers than they really are. Since Michael Jackson assembles these elements better than anyone we may wonder even more how much he truly sold.
A lot of myths are well alive around him, from the 750 million record sales to the 100 million copies sold of Thriller. Those claims are clearly fake though, on par with the billion sales of the Beatles or Elvis Presley. Speaking of myths, most of them are related to Thriller. Is it so big that it eclipses everything else and asks the question, were the likes of Off The Wall and Bad less successful than often believed?
NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are factored in also.
The two posthumous albums disappointed at first, but finish up with pretty solid sales for this day and age with over 4 million combined. In total, Michael Jackson sold 182,6 million studio albums.
Even more impressive than the magnitude of each hit, the most striking fact is the number of such hits per era. With 4 US Top 10 hits, Off The Wall already set the all-time record for the most Top 10 hits from one album. He smashed his own record with 7 top 10 hits from Thriller. Never afraid of challenging himself, Michael went on to register 5 #1 smashes from Bad.
Every song released in the US for this period sold at least 770,000 units worldwide. This historical consistency concludes on combined singles sales from Off The Wall, Thriller and Bad totaling some 7,6 million, 17,4 million and 13,2 million units respectively.
HIStory is an atypical release. The presence of a greatest hits disc made the album incredibly expensive, especially since millions of people already owned most of the songs from the compilation CD. To answer this situation, many consumers decided to go buy the singles rather than the album.
Thriller at 8,44 million, Billie Jean at 6,62 million and Beat It at 5,49 million are absolute monsters. The whole Thriller track list is out of this world. To use again our point of reference, Madonna, 5 out of the 9 songs from the album have more downloads than her biggest catalog hit Like A Prayer.
Although lower than songs from Thriller and Bad, downloads from Dangerous and HIStory are extraordinary. Their pattern is very similar, both have one song over 2 million, Black or White on Dangerous and You Are Not Alone on HIStory, both have two songs around 1 million and both have close totals at 7 million and 6 million respectively.
While albums Invincible, Michael and Xscape enjoyed far less single releases than their predecessors, each of them have one million selling download. The biggest of the three is the 2014 hit Love Never Felt So Good that benefited from a strong Asian smash to amass 2,9 million sales.
Both #1 hits from Off The Wall have well over 50 million streams on Spotify and 100 million on YouTube. The remaining two Top 10 hits are over 14 million on both platforms. Those results are impressive, even more impressive are the insane streaming figures of every album track. All the songs are over 2,5 million on Spotify and Working Day And Night has a stunning 12 million, an album track with more streams than many #1s from its era. This great showing is worth 241,000 equivalent album sales for Off The Wall.
With Thriller, we enter uncharted territory. A territory where 3 35-years old songs can be well over 100 million streams on Spotify with one on 267 million. A territory where those 3 songs can combined for 1,9 billion views on YouTube. A territory where 4 more singles can average 48 million Spotify spins. A territory where both album tracks are on their way to hitting 10 million. If Thriller was the hottest album out there in 1983, it remains the hottest LP of its era up to this day with streams worth almost 1 million album sales.
Combining Spotify and YouTube streams, as many as 4 songs from Bad crack the 300 million mark. The remaining 5 songs issued as singles back in the day are in the 14-45 million range on Spotify. Speed Demon also continues the string of unbelievably strong album tracks at more than 10 million. The 8 outtakes added to the 25th anniversary edition all have over 1,5 million streams too. Those all-around golden numbers amount for 662,000 equivalent album sales.
At 1,25 million Spotify streams, Threatened is the lowest song of the entire adult-catalog of Michael Jackson which says a lot. As expected the biggest hit from the album is You Rock My World at 33 million and 181 million on Spotify and YouTube respectively. Invincible has 100,000 equivalent album sales from streams.
The album Michael was strongly rejected by fans when it came out. Called a cash-in and even a fraud on the back of conspiracy theories relating to who was actually singing on some of the songs, it suffered an incredible backlash. The surprise comes with its streaming numbers that are far from being low.
All its songs are comfortably over 2 million and Hold My Hand enjoys impressive catalog streams at over 50 million by now. Ironically, the 3 songs that fans call not legitimate from the album are all among the 5 most streamed songs from Michael, an album which adds for 103,000 equivalent album sales.
Xscape was the most shared album on Spotify during the year 2014. By then, streams were still relatively low. The record continues to get high rotation though and now all its songs are over 10 million. The leading hit is undoubtedly Love Never Felt So Good, the song recorded during the Thriller fever in 1983 has now around 200 million streams on both Spotify and YouTube. Xscape is up to 359,000 equivalent album sales.
All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the value originating from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued, this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge the worth of these releases, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all the compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains this method.
How to understand this table? If you check for example the The Best Of Michael Jackson compilation line, those figures mean it sold 2,500,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all the songs included on this package add for 82,000 equivalent album sales from streams of all types.
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