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I think you have to put his singles and albums in context. Usually big album sellers aren’t big singles sellers. Madonna is similar in that regard, but they both still saw good singles success. Adele is one of the few who has strong album and singles sales. Conversely, Beyonce, Rihanna, and Drake tend to sell more singles than albums. MJ and Madonna have similar physical singles numbers partially because Madonna has released more singles over the years.
I read an article from a few years ago that said he sold 13 million albums since he died.
History was certified 9xP in Taiwan.1xP for international artists before 1996/1998 is 20.000, so it equals to 180.000 sales. I doubt it sold 600.000 to date.
Hi djdj!
From their creation to 2002, Gold / Platinum awards levels for international artists were 25,000 / 50,000 in Taiwan.
Hi MJD!
I know you've been busy, I see you posted a few new articles this week. Great work as always. So, you probably haven't had time to respond to the email I sent furthering our discussion on how to create more profits for the site. Take your time and get to it when you have a chance. 🙂
I just have a quick question though, for use on the project I'm putting together -- For HIStory are your pure sales numbers based on the double album? Or is that the single disc count? I know the RIAA does doubling of its numbers for double albums. So, reading through this article, I wasn't sure if you had done the same. Please let me know when you get a moment... Thank you!
Why is this hitpiece posted here? This was written by Bill Wyman, a notorious MJ hater and his extremely subjective and twisted opinion, not to mention factual errors, have nothing to do with the hard data regarding sales and streams which is what this site is all about.
Hi! That is from 1996 to 2002 when RIT started to track sales. Before RIT started, Platinum was 20k for international artists. History certified 4xP+G by RIT by October 1996, which equal to 225k sales
Hi,MJD
You shold really correct your Taiwan figures.
https://books.google.nl/books?hl=zh-CN&id=Gw8EAAAAMBAJ&dq=thailand+platinum&q=platinum#v=snippet&q=platinum&f=false
By 1996/02/17, Hisotry was 9xP in Taiwan.RIT was created in August 1996, So that was before RIT era. It was 1xP=20k for international artists before RIT era in Taiwan,so History was 180k by that time.
http://web.archive.org/web/19980530075007fw_/http://www.ifpi.org.tw:80/chart/gold/1996.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/19970403060227/http://www.ifpi.org.tw/chart/certify.htm
By 1996/10/14, History was officially certified 4xP+G for 239,365 copies. The total estimation should be at 300k, which was half of the figure you overestimated.
That looks correct Dhhd, tricky case with an album promoted and selling well just when awards changed. Thanks for that, it will be fixed once the article gets updated. Be reassured your links aren't being useless, when I update articles I always review all comments and do the adjustments when needed!
Well, just to name one of many reasons: Paul McCartney has 32 number one singles on Billboard 100 (career)...untouchable
MJD,I want to ask your one question,how did you get MJ Thriller selling in Zimbabwe?what is the source?It's amazing,can you get another Africa country ?
Hi 梦之蓝!
The best and most concrete picture (although the database is still being populated) is easily Discogs for 'unknown' markets. You can check all referenced versions of Thriller, some of which come from Egypt, Zimbabwe, Suriname, Mozambique or Kenya. Not all countries use internet the same, so number of owners of these versions vary depending on that, but that data is also very useful when gauging where an album sold well or poorly.
For example, Thriller has 120k owners, True Blue 36k, a 3 to 1 ratio similar to their global album sales, Thriller is relatively collected a bit more. Thriller Turkish and Nigeria LPs have respectively 160 and 62 owners, True Blue's counts from there are 27 and 12, a gap of near 6 to 1 much bigger than globally, so we can assume Thriller did relatively much better there. Then in Brazil, True Blue's LPs are owned by 342 discogs users against 581 for Thriller, a much closer number, which is in line with their 80s sales in this market of 700k and 1,1 million.
Dangerous (1991)
Asia – 5,120,000
Japan – 925,000
Hong-Kong – 150,000
Singapore – 195,000
India – 250,000
China – 450,000
South Korea – 850,000
Taiwan – 500,000
Thailand – 450,000
Malaysia – 225,000
plus 575k in Indonesia and 300k in Philippiness, it is 4.87 million in total. Where did other 250k came from? According to IFPI Asia, there is only one country, Pakistan left, but it sold nowhere near 250k.
There is Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar and many other asian countries. I believe those are the estimated sales for the other remaining countries combined.
IFPI only count 12 Asian countries, those countries that you mentioned are not counted into IFPI.
