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I love Janet, I really do. I recognize and admit that she is Britney's biggest influence and idol. At my school, I ask students all the time about her so I can discuss her albums and performances with them but their answer is unfortunately almost always "I don't know who that is" and sometimes I get (a rather shady) "MJ's sister" as an answer but in that case they never know a single song from her. Her catastrophic Youtube and Spotify streaming further confirms that her catalogue of hits is forgotten. She is unfortunately not as cemented, immortal and legendary as you were led to believe. At least outside of the US. So I'm going to ask you to stay in your lane and to stop coming for Britney Spears, who actually has a music catalogue that is known to the public. Janet and Paula is a better comparison in my opinion since they have a lot in common it seems. Great dancing skills, forgotten hits and low name recognition. ♥
Canada, Japan, Oceania, Africa... That's all outside the USA, not only Europe. And Janet is huge there. Just like Britney, Janet had huge tours and stadium shows at all continents. Actually Janet had bigger world tours than Madonna until 2004, in both attendance, number of countries visited and gross. It's just that Janet became a superstar 15 years earlier than Britney, so we'll talk about Britney and how many people can name any of her songs in 2033. Right now, if you talk with kids, she's already a stranger to the most of them. They weren't even born when she was popular. Even Madonna is not in much better position, and she's like super active and trying so hard working with young, relevant stars - not to mention Elvis, Whitney, Celine, Bob Dylan, Barbra, Tina Turner, Arteha etc. Do you really think that kids are familiar with their work? The most of them aren't, and that's normal, that will happen to every pop star sooner or later. However, in popular shows like "Dance Dance Dance" and "Your Face Sounds Familiar" Janet is everywhere: Hungary, The Netherlands, Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Italy, Spain, UK, Slovakia... Which only proves her legendary status even in Europe. And honestly, I never met anyone here in Eastern Europe that didn't know at least on Janet song. Check how many likes has her Vkontakte fan page, and they are all very young. As of Spotify, that's only because the most of her albums and videos weren't available until 2015 in many big markets. That's when she finally verified her Spotify account, made albums available in more countries and sorted them all under "Janet Jackson". Before, some were sorted under "Janet" and it was hard to find them, even if they were available in your country. YouTube is still a mess. None of her VEVO videos are available in my country, and many other countries actually - which you can check using some VPN. Not to mention that her biggest hits aren't even uploaded, and when fans do, they remove them after a year or so. But, I wasn't even talking about sales and streams. I was comparing Britney to Paula in terms of music quality, influence, originality, and respect she is getting from serious music publications and critics. What's her artistic achievement? How many of her albums and songs are on all-time lists of the best albums? How many of her #1 or Top 5 hits were written by her? That's what makes you legendary and important, not sales. Sales are secondary thing.
Janet's sales are definitely bigger than this. Of course, some people will estimate however they want, pretend that they know everything and believe in whatever they like - and MJD is not an exception. But in reality, guessing global sales would be an impossible task even for Alan Turing. Janet was the world's top female artist and best paid artist of all time. She got $120 million for 5 albums in the '90s, Madonna and Michael Jackson $60 million for 7. That would never happen with these imaginary numbers. She was also much bigger global touring act than Madonna until 2004. Bigger gross, bigger attendances and she was touring in much more countries and more continents.
Janet's numbers are more than amazing even here where they are, probably, deflated and, considering how many albums she has released, these numbers definitely puts her in a league of the biggest female stars ever. I know that this is "popularity analysis" but when we talk about some "leagues" there is a thing that puts Janet above every mentioned woman here and that's her artistic achievement. I won't be going into details now, but that's the fact and if anyone care they can do a research by themselves. Unlike other mentioned divas, Janet is actually writing her music too, not only lyrics and she is the only one with a #1 hit written solely by her.
It can only be from later in 1994 since as I said, the album shipped 8 million by the end of March 1994 😉
And then, how do you climb to 20 million? I see you are asking other fanatics to come and post their wishful thinking - feel free, facts will remain what they are 😉
EDIT: In fact, it is from June 1994 -> link... Thanks for proving my figures!
No, I never said that I'm 100% sure it's "over 20 million". As someone pointed out, the truth is somewhere in between your estimations and Branson's / label's claims. Their claim of "over 14 million" from 1997 is very possible because they weren't inflating her or anyone's numbers, I think, back then. Or at least that was very rare. That became trend later in in 2000s. ABBA was among the first who started doing that. I'd say that she was always very realistic. 160 million is unrealistic and it came 2 years ago from BMG, not Janet's team nor her label. In the mid and late '90s they were claiming 14 million for Control, Rhythm Nation 1814 and Janet + 10 million for Design of a Decade and The Velvet Rope. BBC estimated 65 million in 2010 and Janet's website claimed 70 million in 2008. 5 million more or less, it seems pretty accurate and realistic. Add to it 40+ million singles and videos and that's 105-110 million records. The latest claim of 160 million could mean anything. She was sampled many times and signed like author of those songs, so maybe they counted those sales as hers too, because realistically they are in some way but I'm not saying that we should count that here, of course. For instance she is credited for Kendrik Lemar's "Poetic Justice" which is Gold in the USA, "Bust It Baby" by Plies feat. Ne-Yo (Platinum), "Love in This Club, Part II" by Usher feat. Beyoncé and Lil Wayne (Gold)... Not to mention numerous covers, especially in Asia. There are more examples, she's often signed as an author and people don't even realize it. And don't get me wrong, I really don't have any problem with your numbers, unlike you or some fans of other divas here I really think that they are amazing, and, but I think that they are slightly bigger. Despite all the hard work and data available to us, provided numbers are still not a fact, it's only speculation. There's still no way to know exact numbers and meanwhile everyone from Billboard to BBC to The Guardian claim that those 3 albums sold 14 million each.
EDIT: If "Janet" went from 8 million to "over 10 million" in 3 months, then is very possible that it sold another 4 million during the 90s when she was very popular and huge touring force everywhere in the world. Especially because that album was promoted one more year after this and the last single "Whoops Now" was a solid international hit.
Bojan,
You obviously don't know how it works. First, medias always put "over", even if it is a figure rounded up, there is tons of such examples from the IFPI / Sony / EMI etc. Second, sales quoted were gross shipments, the 8 million figure was a net shipment figure, the 10 million is a gross shipment, so no, it doesn't mean the album shipped 2m new copies. June 1994 is very precisely when the album started to lose ground, it has unlikely ship more copies from that date til the Remixes reissue. Third, it is very cheap to say "she was popular so 4 million more seems ok", being "popular" means nothing. Fact is by June 1994 the album Soundscan sales were 5,5 million, it added only 1,5 million since, while we know it sold way more than half of its sales Stateside.
You put a lot of claims in her label's mouth while they were not label claims. Medias / Managers =/= labels. When she signed her new contract in early 1996, the real reported figure was close to 30 million combined for her previous 3 albums. It is easy to throw away figures from her and there, what matters are the fact. You refer to "guesswork", that's just utterly wrong. The "guesswork" represents a tiny percentage of all figures, the huge majority of them are backed by industry's numbers.
I can perfectly point out Billboard claiming Thriller sold 100m+ or Back In Black 49m, it doesn't make those claims true. I already explained that Billboard barely reports what other people tell them, if a manager tells BS they will publish BS. It is funny how you consider for example The Guardian to be a credible source while they have been using my own estimates on various articles and they stated them as the absolute truth just like they got them from the label. You can check this Bowie example, figures on "his best selling LPs" were my estimates from CIF website.
Given that she had 5 sold out shows in South Africa, including 3 largest stadiums, it's probably truth.
Well, at least you finally admitted that your estimation isn't the absolute truth. The fact that The Guardian used sources like ukmix.org, Wikipedia and this website only proves that nobody knows the actual sales. So, yes, this is a guesswork and not the absolute truth. Many also use Media Traffic and take it very seriously! 😀 https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=882040388536814&id=299303286810530
I don't know what are you talking about. With exception of "Like A Virgin" and "True Blue", Janet's sales were very similar to Madonna's. Madonna only released much more albums.
And btw, I don't know what are some of you here talking about. With exception of "Like A Prayer" and "True Blue", Janet's global sales were very similar to Madonna's. Yes, Janet was always weaker in Europe, but starting from 1989 Madonna was selling much less in the USA the most of the time. Overall sales difference here is depending on the number of releases rather then showing some spectacular difference in their popularity.
I agree. While, at least according to this website, Madonna had four studio albums that sold better than any of Janet's albums, Janet also had two studio albums that sold better than 13 Madonna's albums, and one more that sold better than 9 Madonna's albums. That pretty much puts them in the same category if you ask me. Nobody's denying that Madonna had bigger success overall, but that indeed wasn't some spectacularly bigger success if we know that Madonna had much more releases and was making safer music (sonically safer, not lyrically). It makes me wonder what would happen if Janet was more active during her golden years? It's really weird that she had only two albums during the '90s instead of using her popularity like Mariah, Celine and Madonna to sell even more, but it's also very impressive what kind of impact she made and the fact that she sold over 100 million records considering everything. Bow down to all of these divas. That will never happen again.
