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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.
Hi dhhd!
To make it short, what's said about Jackson in China:
- Thriller was one of the first international albums to be released there along with Billy Joel & Lionel Richie albums
- Bad came out in mid-1988 and shipped 250,000 units over a few weeks
- Dangerous outperformed Bad
- by the time Titanic topped a million sales, Sony head manager there said he never saw a half-million seller before, "not even Michael Jackson's albums"
- from 2002 to 2009, his Sony catalog sold 300,000 copies
HIStory sold about half of Dangerous sales in most continental Asia, so when no data is available, that assumption was taken, rounding down figures to remain conservative. One thing that can be said is that HIStory was likely his only album that was always available in China as others have been banned at some points. It also performs very well in Amazon, almost always his top performer. It is #104 in Amazon's China overall sales list right now, #48 among popular music.
Hi dhhd!
The IFPI list countries with an official body tracking sales, that doesn't necessarily represent 100% of the scope. There can be retailers selling music in countries where there is no RIAA, BPI or CRIA. Most remaining countries had no direct industry indeed, but imports were sold. For most albums, random ones, imports most likely never arrived in countries like Vietnam or Cambodia but they definitely did for all-time top sellers like Dangerous. If we focus in continental Asia on YouTube, countries you list represent about 80% of Jackson's views against 20% for Vietnam, Pakistan, Bangladesh, etc, which isn't irrelevant at all.
Then, here we talk about 'expected' Asian countries, but technically speaking various countries listed by the IFPI as Middle East are actually Asian markets. This includes Saudi Arabia for example.
http://taiwanilainen.blogspot.com/2009/06/20090627.html?m=1
By 2009/06/27, according to Sony Music Taiwan, Thriller sold 140k copies, Dangerous sold 400k copies and HIStory sold over 400k there(don't know if this was doubled because it sold 239k by November 1996). MJ sold over one million in total there and about 100 to 200 monthly (catalog sales).
I found Billboard magazine reported Dangerous sold 300k in 1993 and then Sony Music Taiwan reported Dangerous sold 400k in 2009. It is very logical so I wonder where the 500k figure from...
The same source, confirmed MJ's top 5 best-selling albums in Taiwan in 2009/06/27 by 自由时报
1. HIStory, 450k in Taiwan (it seems like the 9xPlatinum thing?but IFPI confirmed 239k by November 1996)
2. Dangerous, 400k in Taiwan
3. Bad, 160k in Taiwan
4. Thriller, 140k in Taiwan (maybe without including Thriller 25, but can't be that much because in 2008 Taiwanese media published the year's best-selling western albums with figures, I didn't see Thriller 25 in the chart)
5. Off The Wall, 80k in Taiwan
official figures published by 自由时报 in the same link I gave, and fit with what the Sony Music Taiwan confirmed. And we then know that other MJ's albums are all under 80k.
BTW, the source said that because of his death, Sony Music Taiwan was ready shipped another 50k orders, and another article in the same link confirmed his catalog sales at 100 to 200 monthly, so still be able to add little catalog sales maybe
Hi dhhd!
You are good at finding improbable links! 😉
About Taiwan, let's not forget about Billboard's post-death article stating 1.2 million Sony sales in HK+Taiwan from 1994 to 2009. In HK, History plus BOTDF got certified for 100k, then King Of Pop was certified for 20k. Basically, HK represents a tiny fraction of these 1.2 million sales, the rest coming from Taiwan. It's interesting because obviously from 1994 HIStory was the only real big seller, so catalog sales have been huge until 2009. It isn't rare, Asian markets got developped later than European or American ones, so often popular albums, like Thriller, haven't sold that much in early years but then amassed a large % of their sales from the 90s onwards.
HIStory has been a poor catalog seller in most countries because of its price and because most people owned the hits through the studio albums. The situation was different in Asia though where most notably never bought Off The Wall or Thriller, so compilations sold heavy numbers through the years. It's the case for History too where it remained the go-to package basically until King Of Pop. You can see the same phenomenom of heavy compilation sales for most legacy artists.
It's indeed logical, but one has to get that information first 😉
Dangerous shipped 200k upon release, that's the only data we had by the time the article was completed, so the estimate is actually fairly close. Also we shouldn't forget sales since his passing which have been huge including for this album. I'm very fine with an error of a bit more than 10% in sales to date only for a 1991 album in a market as obscur as Taiwan! ^^
Get a life already. Creating multiple fake account just prove how desperate u are. No matter how much decline MJ had, nobody will take away his greatness. Nobody can sell that amount of CSPC with very few albums. And Queen will never take over his sales. Dream on.
You havent been commenting for a while. But you have been using multiple fake accounts in order to make everyone agrees with you. When actually you're the only one who has that views. And btw, maybe personal attack will stop once you stop dissing MJ for good. Its really rather annoying.
PS : Queen is mentioned because u kept on comparong mj's streams to queen on several occassion.
I dont think disrespecting an artist work and constantly trying to prove that he is no big deal when clearly he is still a big deal, is acceptable. Dont start a war if u cant handle it.
"And Queen will never take over his sales. Dream on." - you never know 🙂 Don't be so offensive against Queen.
Michael, I hope you don't think that Steve is me :))) 'Cause I'm Queen fan, and discussed sharp with MJD and some others about Queen sales and collected lots of minuses, but never used fake nicknames and never talked about MJ. I think admins will clear this situation, if they can.
Hi Lawyeris!
Indeed you have nothing to do with Steve. I can disagree with you on many subjects but you have in fact never create multiple accounts and such. As for clearing the situation, that Steve has been banned, he was obviously only aiming to troll again and again, creating pointless tensions every time he spammed comments.
https://chartmasters.org/2018/06/learn-how-to-exploit-youtube-insights/3/
in this article you put MJ's Asian album sales at 24.163 million, but here you put it at 25.69 million. The global figure is the same, why is that?
Hi dhhd!
I'm not seeing this 25.69 million figure, where is it that I can explain if needed?
Let me check it tonight once I have the file available, may be a silly mistake since J5's figures are on the same sheet as well as some music videos, the excel formula may consider too many lines! Or it's the opposite, the 24m is possibly only for albums with identified sales, I'll confirm this to you!
