You have been voting in your numbers on voting at Chartmasters.org for your favorite artist to be studied with the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept. The promise was that artists winning each category would be covered within a few weeks. On political campaigns, commitments aren’t always completed but our site is fully aiming to respect them! Among artists with a mid-sized discography, Janet Jackson received half of the votes – 297 out of 592 as of now – the highest total of any artists from all categories making it natural to start filling your wishes by working on her statistics!
It is a mystery to nobody that the American superstar hasn’t been doing headlines for many years. The little sister of Michael Jackson is more than a famous sibling or a faded rising star. Her discography spans 33 years from 1982 to 2015. Along the way she topped the US charts with 10 singles and 7 albums, proving a real selling power.
Albums like Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 are often claimed to be 14 million sellers each while 1993 set Janet. is supposed to be a 20 million seller. Regular readers of our website are certainly questioning those tallies though as they know how often inflated figures flood the internet, especially when the popular divas a la Madonna, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston or Celine Dion are concerned. Her chart toppers are completely legitimate so she must have sold a good chunk of units with various of her records. What is the truth then? Where does Janet Jackson rank inside the all-time divas list?
As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept in order to relevantly gauge her results. The concept will not only bring you sales information for all Janet Jackson albums, physical singles, download singles, music videos and streaming, it will also accurately weight all this information to conclude her true popularity. If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC idea, the next page explains it with a short video, I fully recommend you to watch it before getting onto the sales figures. Of course, if you are a regular visitor feel free to skip the video and get into the figures. Let’s go!
HI, The album “Discipline” doesn’t appear on her EAS total, Spotify tool… Do you know why?
I am surprised that the “Janet” album did not di better in UK. The album had 4 Top Ten Singles and 8 Top 20 singles in the UK. Despite that, the album is only 2x-Platinum in UK.
The Velvet Rope was certified 2x-Platinum in Japan. That’s 400,000. Not 275,000.
Hi Iris!
TVR is Plat in Japan, you check search for ジャネット・ジャクソン on cell アーティスト at https://www.riaj.or.jp/f/data/cert/gd_search.html and then press the left button.
Hello MJD,
The website below shows that Janet was given a 2x-Platinum cert January 1999 for Japan.
https://www.julienslive.com/m/lot-details/index/catalog/378/lot/154721?uact=2&aid=378&lid=154722¤t_page=136
That’s just an in-house record company award, to her kind of management company JDJ. It’s not an actual recording industry organisation award, given on the back of actual audited sales.
Looks like she received the plaque when sales were 200k=Platinum. Platinum was later changed to 250,000, so the updated cert on the website would have been only Platinum and not 2x. Platinum has gone back down to 200k nowadays. Is it possible she passed 400,000 in Japan with The Velvet Rope?
Hey MJD! Do you know how many copies Together Again sold in Germany and France?
Hello MJD why Janet doesn’t her totals album sales by country like the other artists? I would like to know please
Looks like there was a jump to around 62,700,000 albums sold.
What albums were changed if you don’t mind me asking?
Janet is making new music and new world tour. Hope she will be coming in France. I’m so happy 😍
Janet’s total record sales, when you don’t add in stream units, and add them all up, is impressive considering the genres she recorded under (dance pop, R&B, new jack swing, etc.) but if you considered her a pop diva in the same way as a Whitney or a Madonna or a Mariah Carey, then it definitely is disappointing she only sold that much. Still impressive for someone whose brother was at one time a monstrous seller in his heyday.
https://books.google.co.id/books?id=2AsEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA68&dq=janet+over+400,000+sold&hl=zh-CN&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjw5sfS64TkAhUk4XMBHZQgDm0Q6AEIKzAA#v=onepage&q=janet%20over%20400%2C000%20sold&f=false
The album janet. sold over 400k copies in Southeast Asia as early as in May 1995. I know most sales were done by then, but catalog sales could be a bit higher?
https://www.officialcharts.com/chart-news/janet-jacksons-official-top-10-biggest-albums-revealed__26915/
Official charts company have just released sales figures for Janet’s 5 biggest selling albums in the UK, don’t know if these are pure sales or SPS though.
EDIT: These are SPS according to them “To mark the occasion, we’re revealing Janet’s biggest albums in the UK, based on Official Charts Company sales and streaming data.”
DOAD – 529k
janet. – 437k
TVR – 367k
Control – 324k
RN – 281k
Hi DTM!
These numbers prove one more time that we can’t rely on the OCC. These figures are strict DUS + old panel sales, which are quite incomplete and severely inconsistent to each other. All pre-1994 albums sold much more.
So are you saying Janet sold much more than the sales figures released for those 5 albums in the UK? If the OCC is unreliable for the UK sales, then is the BPI certification a more reliable source? I’m not too familiar what they mean by pre-1994 panel sales.
I’m also suspecting that these figures from the OCC do not include the UK music club sales similar to how Soundscan in the US also excludes music club sales.
Hi DTM! Yes, albums pre-TVR are deflated by the OCC. The current panel used in the UK started in week 5 of 1994. At first a good share of the market was ignored, numbers are under-represented by about 25%. Through the years the market was better and better covered, by 1997 numbers were reliable. During 1994-1996 they used to add a multiplier to account for the whole market. Now the OCC is quoting raw “DUS” (Defined Universe of Sales) figures, contradicting their own numbers from mid-90s and ignoring that the entire market wasn’t accounted for. For pre-1994, there was a… Read more »