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Hello Glory!
The chart run you post make it look like the album sold averagely during 3/4 months. The complete one inside the Top 100 tells a different story yet:
21/07/1986 86-78-52-60-61-48-49-31-29-26-25-31-25-30-31-34-25-40-44-43-59-61-57-59-67-55-51-48-53-52-69-74-76-93
15/06/1987 97-99-78-77-50-49-53-51-55-73-75
As you can see, it was selling for one month before, then 2 months separate your last two entries (43 / 48), then it charted 6 more weeks and returned a full 3 months later for a 11 weeks run.
All certifications are available from 1990 only and year end charts started in 1988, but had them been available, Control would have in all likelyhood been certified Gold in 1986 and close to Platinum by the end of 1987 hitting the bottom of the year end Top 100 both times.
Then, the album of course continued selling a bit every year until the release of Design of a Decade. Both RN1814 and Janet. were #1 records there and Control sales have been estimated on close to 5,000 units per year from 1988 to 1994. You get almost on the 100,000 units territory, which I rounded to that figure since there is still 23 years of low catalog sales to factore in!
Hi Luminator!
I should have explained it inside the article itself but I directly added "Janet. remixed" to "Janet.".
The main place of that remix album was the UK and there they got combined both for chart and certification purpose so it wasn't possible to divide them, which is why I merged those releases especially since it ends up with the same numbers in a CSPC logic!
Hi Ethan!
We can't overlook that Janet sold as many or more physical singles than most of those other female singers though. While in the whole vacuum of things Janet can't be compared to the likes Madonna / Celine / Mariah / Whitney, she has been discussed as part of the same league due to her US success. From that country point of view, she has been truly huge. Also, from 1985 to 2003, which are the golden years of the industry, she issued only 5 albums while the other artists issued way more records. She also lacked a true massive global seller. Even you put apart Music Box, Mariah Carey sales album after album were similar during the 90s than Janet sales, the only difference was the pace of releases!
Next one will be MC :p
Hi again MJD! One final question I forgot to ask!
In terms of her 40m+ physical singles sales, how many of them comes from the US?
Thank You!
You are quite right MJD! Janet's weakness was really that she didn't have a global seller like her peers, and that she released very few albums during her peak.
However, regarding the comparison with Mariah, I still believe Mariah is by far the more successful act. If you look at album sales only, and that we remove Music Box from Mariah's discography, Daydream alone was a successful to monster seller in the 3 biggest continents, and that album alone has sold more than Control and RN1814 combined. Mariah also has 2 additional studio albums that sold upwards of 13m copies worldwide (Merry Xmas and her debut), more than Janet., Janet's biggest selling album. And if we were to add in compilations and live albums, #1's sold almost twice as many copies as DOAD and even a live album like MTV Unplugged sold more copies than Janet's AFY and not that far from TVR, and those were studio albums!
Hi Raffi!
A lot to diggest as usual 😉
I'll try to structure the answer!
1) Discipline typo is fixed, thanks!
2) Two main reasons explaining strong decreases. First is the Columbia House study that has been done and which clarified Virgin albums special situation with few to no sales at all there. Second is Asian sales, often claimed to be massive for Janet, comparing known figures with company reports we can notice there is simply no room for supposed big sales. We do have also TVR July 1998 certification breakdown which shows very low certifications as a whole in that continent. She was a good seller in Asia yes, but nowhere near the league of the likes Mariah or Michael.
3) Yes, results are disappointing overall mostly due to her lack of consistency in the World. She remained strong in the US but elsewhere it was really hit or miss and even hits weren't that big. After all, she never ever had a million selling album in a market outside the US. None in Japan, UK, Canada, Germany, France like the other big divas do have. Her brother sold past a million with a single album in countries like Australia, Brazil, Italy, Netherlands, Mexico etc. Janet highest ever outside the US is Design of a Decade sales in the UK of 750,000 units - fairly low "best".
4) Completely agree on the 2004 career stopper. The fact EMI sold 2,4 million copies of her Damita Jo album (orders were likely even higher one month prior release as the Superbowl possibly resulted in cancellations) and then so many units got returned show the unexpected backlash. This is even more telling after 15 years of solid and continuous success.
5) Yes, TTWLG has been the biggest song of her career, I wouldn't call it her signature song yet as asking through the World for one song of Janet to 100 passengers, I don't expect more than 20/30 to say TTWLG first. I would say this is along 4) a strong reason for low Janet showing in the digital era, the lack of a driving force for her catalog. A 100m-streams song a la Stayin' Alive, MHWGO or IWALY would drive traffic on her iTunes or Spotify page, make people think about her when walking on a music retailer, would boost promotion of a compilation etc.
Now about questions:
1) Really hard to tell, there is many acts with more than 3,5 million sales. About females apart from those mentioned already, we need to add Avril Lavigne too. Most Janet sales are there already - the Japanese total is 3,31 million.
2) Hard to tell as well, I never tracked a statistic of most million selling singles, but 23 is truly an impressive number there. Celine has 12, Whitney 22, Madonna 38. This is even more impressive for Janet that she has few albums and few tracks outside her albums. Almost half of Madonna million sellers for example are lead singles or orphan tracks, thus selling a million with a 5th or 6th single of a successful album is a real achievement.
3) I would say Janet biggest European market was the Netherlands with 550,000 albums sold there. It is often a very favorable country for black music artists.
4) Forgot about it, will see how to insert it on this article!
5) about South Africa, I'm not sure how legitimate are 4/5/6xP awards of her early albums, and I'm safe that "biggest selling xxx" claims are fake. There is no way an album like Janet. outsold Thriller for example while That’s The Way Love Goes was released when the market was in a hole at an abysmal 100,000 units sold per year for the entire country, so that single being the top seller ever is a nonsense. Her success was real there yet, the 4xP award of All For You was valid for example. So while it is hard to put specific figures on each album, she did perform well in this country.
Of course Raffi! Mariah overall is undoubtedly way bigger than Janet in more than a way. My comment was referred to average sales. Janet albums from 1986 to 2001 sold 9m on average, I haven't update Mariah stats so far but I don't expect her average studio albums to be much higher than that without Music Box for the same period 🙂
Michael Jackson pleaaaase!
Love Janet!
I find your career brilliant and it sold very well. Having the stigma of being the King of Pop's sister and launching her career at the Michael's peak was a risky. Just because she left that huge shadow and built her own legacy already shows just how iconic she is. GOD BLESS THE QUEEN!
I thought 14 million for "Janet." and above 10 million for "Control" and RN1814 was a given.
In the US she was a force to be reckon, both in albums and singles... but in the singles department is where she outperformed most of her contemporaries from the decade 1986/1995 particularly.
Hello Raffi!
To complete MJD's answer, here is the list of artists who have the most million selling singles (question 2):
1. Madonna - 38
2. Beatles - 31
3. Rolling Stones - 28
4. Janet Jackson - 24
4. Whitney Houston - 24
6. Bee Gees - 21
7. ABBA - 20
8. David Bowie - 15
9. George Michael - 13
10. Bon Jovi - 12
10. Céline Dion - 12
10. Fleetwood Mac - 12
I'm not sure why you're bringing in Britney Spears to undermine Janet Jackson though. I'm glad that Britney has had a lot of success but let's not forget that Britney's peak years, the TRL era 1999-2004) were filled with imitating Janet Jackson in her music videos/tours that sold all those albums. So she obviously owes Janet Jackson as much as Madonna.
Hey, according with Chartmasters analyses Céline has more than 15 songs that sold at least 1m, not only 12: Mhwgo, Because You Loved Me, It's all coming back to me now, The Power Of Love, I'm your angel, Think Twice, All By Myself, Beauty and The Beast, A new day has come, Pour que tu m'aimes encore, That's The way it is, To Love You more, I'm alive, Tell Him, Immortality & Taking Chances (her less sold with 1,150,000), these are her 16 best selling singles... Despite the fact she may have some 1m topping singles. 
Hi Celiniac!
The comment of Raffi was related to physical singles sold only 😉
