Digital Singles Sales – Part 3
As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between albums and digital singles.
Dangerous (1991) – 1,037,000 equivalent albums
Black Or White – 2,580,000
Remember The Time – 870,000
In The Closet – 300,000
Jam – 280,000
Who Is It – 220,000
Heal The World – 1,180,000
Give In To Me – 260,000
Will You Be There – 750,000
Gone Too Soon – 140,000
Dangerous – 200,000
Remaining tracks – 130,000
HIStory (1995) – 903,000 equivalent albums
Scream – 610,000
You Are Not Alone – 2,160,000
Earth Song – 1,020,000
They Don’t Care About Us – 1,340,000
Stranger In Moscow – 280,000
Smile – 210,000
Remaining tracks – 400,000
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.
“Beat It” is the 2nd track from “Thriller” to pass 500M streams on Spotify! It’s the 6th pre-2000 album to achieve this. Here are the top 5 albums based on their 2nd biggest track, all 5 are Hard Rock albums btw. Biggest 2nd track race: 1. Nirvana “Come As You Are” (“Nevermind” – 1991) – 617.2M 2. Metallica “Nothing Else Matters” (“Metallica” – 1991) – 595.2M 3. Guns ‘N Roses “Welcome to the Jungle” (“Appetite for Destruction” – 1987) – 578.6M 4. Bon Jovi “You Give Love A Bad Name” (“Slippery When Wet” – 1986) – 509.9M 5. AC/DC “You… Read more »
Maybe you’re wondering why Queen are missing from these lists, after all they are arguably the true streaming masters among 20th century artists. But the reason is that their top SEVEN tracks on Spotify are from seven different albums! Amazing actually. Their #8 track “We are the Champions” is the 2nd biggest track on “News of the World” with 480.7M, and rank #9 in the “Biggest 2nd track race”. And what about other 20th century artists with huge Spotify tracks, like Oasis, Mariah Carey, Journey, Toto, A-ha, the Eagles, Earth Wind & Fire and the Police? Well, while hardly one-hit-wonders,… Read more »
Thanks! I love these lists!
thanks!!!
Will you do an update soon? This article was over 3 years ago.
His sales in Japan seem relatively weak for his overall Asai sales ..any reason?
It’s not that they’re weak there, he’s among the very top international sellers in Japan. It’s just that his sales in places like China, India, Taiwan and South Korea were utter massive and unmatched by any other western act at his time. You could argue he was the first western artist to ever break into the mainstream in some of these countries.
How did Madonna issue albums in a much more favourable era?
She had her peak with him and they both released albums in late 90s and early 2000s, Madonna released more.
Hi Jake!
The Stones too released albums in the 90s / early 00s, it isn’t that much relevant when we look at the sales environment they had. Invincible is far and away Jackson’s weakest album. What makes a difference is the period when an artist enjoys his hey-days. He peaked (obviously) in 1983 and the barycenter of his success through the years isn’t that much later. Madonna’s one is 6-8 years later, and the market in early 90s was already way bigger than in mid-80s.
Didn’t most of Madonna albums flop in the 90s? She just had one successful album with Ray of Light!
I don’t think an average of 10.3 million in the 90’s (without Ray of Light) is a flop 😗. Don’t confuse a flop with not being as ridiculously huge she was in the 80’s.