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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to the numbers here at Chartmasters, but a flurry of fanatics went to Twitter saying that sales were higher and mostly outdated. The sales were withdrawn and some time later in the news section the inflated sales began to appear.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 if one of her biggest fanatics is there (and on Wikipedia with various profiles to inflate Janet's sales and put her on the same level as Madonna) it would be great to be able to have the sales information again, and in an official way, without inflation.
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 also featured a hype sticker stating "Includes The Hit Single: Whoops Now" in addition to some novelty editions so yes, the album was still being shipped everywhere throughout 1995.
And let's look at The Velvet Rope:
In early 1998, Italian media already reported the album sold 150,000 copies and yet the all-time estimate here is 140,000. Janet also received a plaque from EMI/Virgin Music Italy celebrating 150,000 copies sold.
Source: https://www.julienslive.com/lot-details/index/catalog/378/lot/154722?uact=3&aid=378&lid=154534¤t_page=53
If you compare the album's Italy (FIMI) chart-run to Whitney’s “My Love Is Your Love” which you have at 200,000 sales:
The Velvet Rope - (140,000)
(41/1997) 25-21-25-24
RE (48/1997) 29-17-11-14-14-12-13-11-12-12-18-16-13-19-26
= 19 weeks Top 30
My Love Is Your Love - (200,000)
(47/1998) 9-10-10-8-16-20-21-16-22-30
RE (7/1999) 26
= 11 weeks Top 30
So either Whitney’s total is inflated or Janet’s total is deflated. Both albums peaked in the Christmas shopping season, exactly a year apart.
Also in September 1998, Billboard Magazine reported Virgin’s top selling international acts “whose albums have enjoyed huge success in Germany” during the “last 18 months” - mentioned in descending order.
- Spice Girls
- Rolling Stones (700,000 albums)
- The Verve (500,000 albums)
- Janet Jackson
- Genesis (400,000 albums)
- Massive Attack
- Lennie Kravitz
- Smashing Pumpkins
So in those months, The Velvet Rope had sold 400,000 copies in Germany and yet you have it’s all-time total at 375,000. Once again, the total is lower than available official data.
And lastly, there's Japan. The Velvet Rope was certified Platinum by the RIAJ during release month and never again. However, in January 1999, Janet returned to Japan for her Velvet Rope tour leg and received a plaque from Toshiba EMI commemorating 2x Platinum status for 400,000 sales in Japan.
Meanwhile, it’s total sales are listed here as an underwhelming 275,000 copies. It seems likely the album was a consistent seller outside of the Oricon charts and/or heavily imported rather than being the low seller that's represented here.
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 situation, but you got the point. I recently posted Genesis, and you'll see that the concerned album (Calling All Stations), sold 320k to date in Germany, while they listed it at 400k. The Stones' album, Bridges To Babylon, never made it to 3xG (750k), suggesting 700k by 1998 was likely a very favorable rounding. Massive Attack's Mezzanine, listed just below Genesis, took until 1999 (it kept charting until March) to even hit Gold at 250k, same for Lenny Kravitz with 5.
These claims are often presented as "official data", but in this case we do have the ultimate official data, which largely contradict claims from some Janet Jackson's fans about her record sales. These are The Velvet Rope shipped units according to Thorn-EMI year end financial reports:
April 1997-March 1998:
The Velvet Rope - 4.5+ million (note that numbers were rounded to half millions, so this was anything from 4.5 to 4.9 million)
April 1998-March 1999:
The Velvet Rope - 1.6 million (from that year they rounded to nearest 100k)
So by March 1999, the album had shipped from 6.1 to 6.5 million copies. If you start putting claimed numbers for Italy, Germany, Japan, etc, up to that date, along with confirmed numbers for the US, Canada, or the UK, you'll see that it doesn't match.
It doesn't mean that country by country numbers are perfect, in fact we improved many methods since then and I'm sure I can refine some stuff here and there, but global totals listed on this article fit with all available numbers from EMI reports, so what we can't expect is to see her albums gained millions of sales. It would be a switch from one country to another, or from one compilation to another for recent catalog sales, but that's it.
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!
I know she's not the moment but I'd be curious to see how her numbers evolved since her last update
Considering her relatively low album sales, selling 40 million singles is kind of crazy.
Hello,
Thank you for creating this fun blog. I do believe some estimations for Janet are a bit too conservative.
For example: You have Together Again at physical sales of 3,220,000 sold.
The single sold 700k in France, 500k in Germany, 700k in UK, and 1 million in USA. That alone is 2,9 million+. The song did very well throughout Europe, Oceania, and USA removed link I think 4-4.5 million would be a more accurate prediction.
What do you think?
Hi!
I wasn't responsible for the singles' sales back then, and our automated tools were yet to be developed, so I checked back the old file to be able to provide an answer:
US - 950k
UK - 750k
FR - 500k
DE - 500k
JP - /
We can understand these numbers - certs for Germany and France as they came late in the run, and no real data to assume higher numbers, only Gold in the US so below a million, and uncharted in Japan. That being said, we have access to much more information nowadays. It's known that it scanned 1.2m in the US despite the absence of a Plat award, in France our automated tools suggest 738k and in Germany 521k. Then, Discogs confirms the single was released in Japan, with better numbers than All For You and much lower than Doesn't Really Matter, which suggests 20-30k. We are looking at 3.3m sales in these 5 markets.
That being said 4.5m would be too high, unlike albums that were sold throughout the world, singles were focused on these top 5 countries - they represented 466m of the 516m singles sold globally when Together Again was released. It means that Germany alone (52m singles sold that year) was a larger market than all the remaining countries combined. 40% of the missing 50m sales were from the Netherlands and Australia, that our tools put on over 200k combined, then we get into markets where hit singles sold 10-25k like Italy, Switzerland, Sweden, etc. Ultimately, that would put Janet's single on 3.8m-ish, which is already a sizable 600k more than the 3.22m mark.
We can see it's mostly down to errors (in the US and France) rather than conservativeness. These can go both sides when data lacks, for example US sales for That's the Way Love Goes (1.5m), If (1m), and Any Time, Any Place (900k) were all largely overstated in our file compared to their soundscan numbers (1116k, 679k and 531k, respectively).
@mjd Regarding those early 90s singles that you said were overestimated in the US, I recall having that discussion with you back when the Janet article was released, and you explained that the discrepancy lies within how Soundscan (now Luminate) was rather incomplete/incomprehensive back in the early 90s, and that various singles then hit certain certification despite scanning less than the required amount (e.g. singles in the 700-800K mark going platinum).
But now that you mentioned those Janet figures were overestimations, I was wondering if that perhaps wasn't the case anymore, or was it just something you forgot about. Because when you updated Mariah's article last year, I did notice a lot of her early 90s physical singles, most of which were US-centric hits, had their figures downgraded compared to her 2017 article. I also forgot to ask you back then whether Fantasy, a song that scanned 1,6m but was certified 2XP on physical singles, really was a 2-million seller in the US.
From these changes in the Mariah article and your comments about Janet's figures being overstated, I started to wonder perhaps a lot of physical singles back then really were overcertified rather than having 'unscanned' units. But that raises the question on how, as I believe a lot of these overcertified singles had their certs over 1 month after they were released, and I recall you saying that most labels often employ the tactic of certifying an album/single in the first month based on extremely advanced shipments (the most famous example being Britney's Femme Fatale being certified 1XP, or Black and Blue by the Backstreet Boys being certified 8XP).
It's a bit of both (Soundscan's understatement and estimates' overstated) - with a 3rd reason explaining a large part of the discrepancy. Early 90s singles soundscan figures do seem to be less reliable somewhat than albums' figures, a bit in the low side. Not as much as I though some years back though. In Janet's examples, I'm quite safe even without looking at the details that these numbers were overstated, as the gaps are just too wide between Soundscan numbers and the estimates.
Then the 3rd reason are formats vs RIAA rules. We tend to forget that maxi singles were worth 2 units. Many hits (including Mariah's Fantasy, set at 1.73m in her CSPC for US sales) sold 10%-20% of their total units as 12" vinyls or maxi cassettes / CDs in the early 90s. Selling 1.5m traditional singles and 250k maxi singles was enough to be awarded 2xP!
someone to call my lover has gone viral recently, the song did 700k yesterday! which is far beyond what everyone thought. all for you(song) also surging, i really hope the era can reach the 8m in the long run, what seems unthinkable only months ago
STCML going viral wasn't on my bingo card for 2025, but it's definitely a welcomed surprise. It's nice to see something from Janet's catalog finally getting some shine in the streaming age.
Hopefully, it'll lead to more interest for her wider catalog, particularly her 80s music that were big then but seems to be completely forgotton now, along with her 2000s work post-Superbowl 2004 that didn't make much noise back then.
Is it possible that Janet's page could get an update?
Surely this will happen at some point in the future. But at the moment, there's no reason for a Janet Jackson update anytime soon, as other artists are higher up in the reanalyzing rankings, and numerous others haven't even been analyzed once yet.
