Physical Singles Sales – Part 2
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.
Off The Wall (1979) – 2,283,000 equivalent albums
Don’t Stop ‘Till You Get Enough – 2,870,000
Rock With You – 2,650,000
Off The Wall – 970,000
She’s Out Of My Life – 1,090,000
Girlfriend – 30,000
Thriller (1982) – 5,229,000 equivalent albums
The Girl Is Mine – 1,970,000
Billie Jean – 4,870,000
Beat It – 4,410,000
Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’ – 1,450,000
Human Nature – 770,000
P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) – 930,000
Thriller – 3,030,000
Bad (1987) – 3,948,000 equivalent albums
I Just Can’t Stop Loving You – 2,180,000
Bad – 2,320,000
The Way You Make Me Feel – 2,030,000
Man In The Mirror – 1,600,000
Dirty Diana– 1,970,000
Another Part of Me – 950,000
Smooth Criminal – 1,390,000
Leave Me Alone – 500,000
Liberian Girl – 220,000
Artists selling a lot of albums are rarely good sellers of singles and vice versa. This kind of mechanical rule didn’t stop Michael Jackson from performing incredibly well. From 1979, his singles reached the million mark more often than not. The cult pairing of Billie Jean / Beat It sold more than 9 million together!
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.
Hi MJD, do you have any estimate of how many albums Michael sold since his passing in 2009? According to Soundscan he sold 16.1 million albums in the US alone as of 2019, is it possible to make a worldwide figure?
some of y’all need to shut up
michael had 6 studio albums and the beatles 13
the beatles did it in 7 years and mj in 22 years
the thing is that both found their own way into their success and there’s no excuse to invalidate the other, just SHUT UPPPPP
Not to mention that Michael has actually 10 studio albums. Anyway, they’re both icons
He had 6 albums as an adult. If we don’t add
The other four albums ,they won’t affect that
Much.
mj I a solo artist being compared to a band , I think that says enough
Just out of curiosity, there probably are good reasons, but is History the only album that is counted twice? Or are any of the other (double) albums also treated this way?
I hope this works so they could answer you soon @MJD @Al @Martin
Why number of sales are changing?
Do they update daily?
Streams are updated daily. The EAS from streams cause movement on their sales.
Alas, the question is probably too dumb/difficult or easy for me to search for
Well disc one of history is a compilation and disc two is a studio album and disc on is certified platinum in the us but disc two is certified 8 times platinum in the us so the compilation and studio album are considered like two separate things even though they are put together.