JANET JACKSON CAREER CSPC RESULTS
So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each Janet Jackson album achieved? Well, at this point we don’t need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!
In the following results table, all categories display figures in equivalent album sales. If different, pure sales are listed between parentheses.
| # | Cover | Album | Total CSPC | Sales* | Streams | Total CSPC | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Studio Albums | Other LPs | Physical Singles | Digital Singles | Last verified | Auto update | Daily Increase | |||||
| 1 | Janet Jackson | 705,000 | 500,000 | 0 | 201,000(670,000) | 3,000(20,000) | 1,000 (04/17/17) | N/A | N/A | 705,000 | |
| 2 | Dream Street | 368,000 | 300,000 | 0 | 66,000(220,000) | 2,000(10,000) | 0 (04/17/17) | N/A | N/A | 368,000 | |
| 3 |  | Control | 15,063,000 | 9,200,000 | 3,427,000 | 2,118,000(7,060,000) | 195,000(1,300,000) | 23,000 (04/17/17) | 123,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 50LD: 60 | 15,063,000 |
| 4 |  | Rhythm Nation 1814 | 17,622,000 | 10,900,000 | 3,787,000 | 2,601,000(8,670,000) | 210,000(1,400,000) | 25,000 (04/17/17) | 124,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 50LD: 60 | 17,622,000 |
| 5 |  | Janet. | 19,471,000 | 12,600,000 | 3,794,000 | 2,448,000(8,160,000) | 360,000(2,400,000) | 49,000 (04/17/17) | 269,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 110LD: 120 | 19,471,000 |
| 6 |  | The Velvet Rope | 10,361,000 | 7,450,000 | 635,000 | 1,632,000(5,440,000) | 330,000(2,200,000) | 52,000 (04/17/17) | 314,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 130LD: 150 | 10,361,000 |
| 7 |  | All for You | 7,434,000 | 5,900,000 | 266,000 | 906,000(3,020,000) | 225,000(1,500,000) | 29,000 (04/17/17) | 137,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 50LD: 80 | 7,434,000 |
| 8 |  | Damita Jo | 1,712,000 | 1,550,000 | 12,000 | 36,000(120,000) | 83,000(550,000) | 9,000 (04/17/17) | 31,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 10LD: 10 | 1,712,000 |
| 9 |  | 20 Y.O. | 1,175,000 | 1,000,000 | 11,000 | 27,000(90,000) | 98,000(650,000) | 8,000 (04/17/17) | 39,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 20LD: 20 | 1,175,000 |
| 10 |  | Discipline | 997,000 | 700,000 | 16,000 | 9,000(30,000) | 248,000(1,650,000) | 10,000 (04/17/17) | 24,000 (09/28/22) | Av.: 10LD: 10 | 997,000 |
| 11 | Unbreakable | 505,000 | 400,000 | 0 | 0(0) | 68,000(450,000) | 37,000 (04/17/17) | N/A | N/A | 505,000 | |
| 12 | Orphan | 2,574,000 | 0 | 227,000 | 2,147,000(7,157,000) | 180,000(1,200,000) | 20,000 (04/17/17) | N/A | N/A | 2,574,000 | |
| *Pure sales figures updated on 04/17/17. 'Av.' stands for Average, 'LD' for Last Day. | |||||||||||
As a reminder:
- Studio Album: sales of the original album
- Other Releases: sales of compilations generated thanks to the album
- Physical Singles: sales of physical singles from the album (ratio 3/10)
- Download Singles: sales of digital singles from the album (ratio 1,5/10)
- Streaming: equivalent album sales of all the album tracks (ratio 1/1500 for Audio stream and 1/6750 for Video stream)
See where the artist ranks among remaining singers
In spite of lower than claimed album sales and bad digital results, Janet Jackson’s totals are still truly healthy. How many artists can claim they outperformed their previous album twice in a row from a nearly 15 million equivalent album sales starting point? With rounded totals of 15-17,5-19 million, Control, Rhythm Nation 1814 and Janet. have been strongly successful.
She hasn’t exactly collapsed after that with The Velvet Rope shifting 10 million overall sales and All For You 7,3 million. Damita Jo bombed hard though with less than a fourth of the sales of its immediate predecessor. The following three albums continued the decreasing trend and a rebound looks highly unlikely in the future.
The total number of equivalent album sales managed by Janet Jackson is 77,1 million. This result puts her ahead of all post-2000 divas like Adele, Rihanna, Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. However, this is barely half the total managed by Whitney Houston who had a career that spanned the same era, less than half of Celine Dion too and less than a third of Madonna’s superb 241 million total. I started this study with a reference to politics – I’ll conclude it by saying that Janet Jackson is the perfect candidate of the centrism movement in the Diva’ scale.
The following pages list the most successful songs of Janet Jackson as well as the full listing of all CSPC results compiled so far to better gauge her position in the history of the music industry.
As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!
Of course, the poll to decide which artists you would like to be studied next is still active!
Sources: IFPI, Spotify, PolyGram, EMI, Chartmasters.org.
I find the estimates here for both janet. and The Velvet Rope to be overly conservative. Some totals are reasonable but many major markets are simply too low. Even in February 1995, media reported the janet. album as a “13 million seller”. It’s important to note this is before the release of janet.Remixed and her Australian, Asian and European tour. March 1995 also saw the release of final single Whoops Now which was a big radio and sales hit in various markets. See this news report of Janet arriving in Australia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEK4iQkE1CE&list=PL8J8yEW5Ps5YGlayX3SUr5eQ1-yU77qYk&index=152 Reissues of janet. from this period in Europe… Read more »
Hi datajam! I’ll have to contradict most of your message, but I would like to start to thank you for the constructive way in which you wrote your comment. About press quotes, we can’t take them at face value just like that. By experience, they are often grossly rounded, and as the paper used to come out weeks later, label representatives and managers used to take some “advance” on their claims. Put all this together, an album with 280k sales to consumers, 325k shipped to date, 350k ordered, 380k produced, would then be claimed as a 400k-seller. I’m exaggerating the… Read more »
According to the 1999 EMI report:
Garth Brooks’ “Double Live” shipped 6.1M copies April 1998-March 1999.
And yet the album was certified:
12x Platinum US (6,000,000 units) – December 17, 1998
6x Platinum Canada (600,000 units) – February 12, 1999
= 6.6M
So over 500,000 copies were officially “confirmed” which according to that EMI report didn’t exist?
Hi datajam!
In Canada, sales are “doubled” just like in the US, the 6xP certification represents 300,000 units shipped.
Then, while this situation may seem weird in the surface, it’s actually a very frequent case of Christmas cash-ins overshipment. The album had shipped 6m in the US by December 17, 1998, but in truth it sold over the counter barely 3.9 million by the end of the year, as scanned by Soundscan. That led to returns, and a net shipment value by March 31, 1999 which was indeed lower than by December 31, 1998!
one question: does this account for BMG and club sales as those were specifically never counted in other formatted tallies? I know in the 90searly aughts she had several millions related to the clubs..
Per capita based on amount of music released, press/marketing done, $$ collected/earned, ownership of masters, and yes – her music is extremely timeless due to avant garde innovative production from JJ & TL and its getting that recognition now bc well, the 2nd most powerful mogul sent out a hit on her and had her “erased” and barred from things – Janet might be tops. Id say the big females except Enya – have done maybe 2-3 – in madonna’s terms – 500x – of publicity, press, marketing, endorsements, interviews, products blah blah blah…madonna is the queen bc she damn… Read more »
ukmix + the rock n’ roll hall of fame seem more credible sorry. there’s no way people would just randomly lie about another 80 million sales especially for someone like a janet.
The janet. album sold 20 million worldwide Virgin Records themselves stated this it’s even on Janet Jackson website stating the claim and there is a 1998 article stating it sold 20 million.
Thanks to the fanatics! When Janet updated her website years ago, the sales of the albums in the discography section were very similar to the numbers here at Chartmasters, but a flurry of fanatics went to Twitter saying that sales were higher and mostly outdated. The sales were withdrawn and some time later in the news section the inflated sales began to appear. Unfortunately, the way the site was made at that time did not allow it to be archived on archive.org and the information became lost. Someone who managed to get a print should post it on Ukmix, even… Read more »