Remaining Long Format – Part 9 – Music Videos #2
In recent years, Michael Jackson continued to register history-making results with his videos. Number Ones is near 3 million while Live In Bucharest isn’t far behind.
Already owner of 7 of the very best selling music videos ever, the death of the icon sent figures into a new dimension. The This Is It DVD shipped more than 12 million units in 2010. That’s twice more than Eminem‘s Recovery, the top selling album of the year with 6,0 million units sold.
“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.