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So basically Michael is the biggest solo artist of al time right? I mean Elvis is pretty big too but his streams arent as big as Michael right? Michael has it all so im guessing he could be regarded as the biggest solo artist in history.
Jazmine,
Yeah you are correct. Its the same with Adele and Whitney. They took/take some 3-4 years between album releases. Whitney could have been much closer to Rihanna and Madonna's record sales as could Adele if they were as consistent as them.
or the public would have been oversaturated with them and they lose the aspect of anticipation and sell less
Did the video "This is it" really sell 12.3 million copies? That would be far and away the best selling music video of all time.................or did it sell 1.23 millioN copies? That just pops out as unusual to me
Hi Nathan!
There is no error, it actually outsold the top selling album of its year. The DVD/BluRay sold 3,6 million units in the US and 2,5 million in Japan, plus massive numbers virtually everywhere, including over half a million units in each the UK, France and Germany.
Can we get a breakdown of Asian sales and smaller EU countries? So many millions of album sales in those continents but we only have Japan for Asia and larger EU markets.
Both Dangerous and HIStory were recertified 8x platinum today meaning Dangerous has sold/shipped 8 million albums (I don't know if they counted streams and track downloads or not but there's a good chance they might not have). HIStory's recertification means it's sold possibly four million copies after years of being over 3.5m. Also 21 of MJ's singles have been certified or recertified by the RIAA this morning including virtually all of the singles on Thriller. I imagine they may audit for Thriller again bringing it either closer to the Eagles in the U.S. or possibly over it.
Hi Timothy!
I don't think Thriller is eligible for new certifications. Number Ones, The Essential, Off the Wall, and Bad for sure are but not Thriller which already got its SEA and TEA units last year. Dangerous / HIStory pure sales are high enough / their SEA + TEA points low enough to not be safe on whether or not SEA and TEA have been added. It looks like Sony are still awaiting to see how to dispatch these SEA/TEA units apart from the Thriller songs. They may wait to see which album (Dangerous, Ones, Essential) goes Diamond the fastest if granted with these units.
Hi XSWL!
Data for China is always sparse. What we know is that Thriller was one of the first international albums to be legally released in China along with blockbusters from Billy Joel and Lionel Richie, although no figure ever leaked for it. Bad was issued during the summer of 1988 there, it was quickly reported it had shipped 250,000 legal copies, you can find multiple references to it online. Dangerous was then reported to outperform it. Both are respectively the most owned 80s LP and 90s CD on Discogs right now. Then the leader of Sony Music China reported at Billboard during the smash of the Titanic that it was the first time it saw an international album break 500k. Since all major sellers there (Mariah, MJ, Joel, among others) were Sony artists, it sets the high limit for their sales. To finish, in the Billboard issue following the passing of MJ, Sony reported 300,000 albums since 2002 to 2009 there, so basically exclusively catalog sales with studio albums/compilations, since he released nothing new during that period.
Apparently he's someone who would re-do re-do anything that already sounds perfect till he's fully satisfied LOL people who worked with him said so. I believe it's the reason why he took so long to throw a new album.
He actually did outsell them based on studio albums only. It’s impressive considering he had so few albums. But it’s amazing how many albums the Beatles still sell considering their music is more than 50 years old.
