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The amount of compilation albums/live albums is insane!
Thanks for doing such a great job!
Well a movie is a movie ^^
Most music videos are live performances, some of them are compilations of video clips. The only grey zone are documentaries, most are very linked to the music, others can be about things quite different than the music itself.
I haven't got that data properly stored, but Jackson is easily ahead at 30m+, with a few biggies behind which include Queen (14m+) and Pink Floyd (10m+).
Not bad at all for someone whose recording career lastet for only about 3 years! Hendrix is a real legend!
What a job ypu did here guys. The amount of compilations, live and boxsets of Jimi Hendrix is truly insane. Is "all along the watchtower" the most streamed song of 1968?
Thanks, Johnny Be Good!
Yes it is, it tops the likes I Say a Little Prayer, Mrs Robinson and Blackbird among the main challengers.
What do you mean "a movie is a movie" ? You did include The Beatles' Help or Yellow Submarine, Pink Floyd's The Wall, MJ's Moonwalker...etc., I don't see how any of them are different from Elvis' movies.
I just realized that the reason MJ is above Elvis in the CSPC list is because you included these "music videos", notably the 12m selling This Is It documentary, which again I don't see how different it is than, say, Elvis' Blue Hawaii.
Back to Jimi. All along the watchtower' sales is17,3 million units, almost 17 % of Jim's whole sales, from 105 million units. But biggest money comes from movies,tv-seris,ads. Movies are 10-20 times bigger than music industry. Watchtower is after(Some over the rainbow) second most used song in movies all time, 220 times in movies, remember Forrest Gump, Watchmen. Streams royalties are modest. And peoples hear song on different platforms. Theaters, DVD, concerts, movies, tv-series, video-games and so on. One can say that Watchtower is lot of bigger than 17,3 millions.
A movie starts with a script, aimed at theaters. Then some of them have a soundtrack along with it if they involve music, but the core of the project is the movie itself. Blue Hawaii is a movie. It has nothing to do with This Is It, which is a concert rehearsal that made theaters to gross dollars on the back of Jackson's passing. On it, you see live performances of his songs. People bought the DVD to see these live performances, not to see a movie.
A 'movie' that focuses on an artist is reflective of the artist success, that's why Bieber's Never Say Never is included, it's big because Bieber is a big as a singer. It has no script. A grey zone would be something like the Spice Girls' movie, which kinda tells their story, but it is scripted / a real movie.
Elvis' movies were basically long music videos with him performing songs and acting between these performances, like The Beatles' movies (which you included).
From what I understand, This Is It is a mix of MJ performances and interviews/backstage stuff, so again I don't see the difference with Elvis' movies... MJ's fans went to see This Is It for the same reason that Elvis' fans went to see Blue Hawaii.
You completely overlook the script part, which is fundamental to define if something is a movie or not.
A musical is a specific genre of movies. It's scripted, it has songs written for it. Already known songs / performances put into a video format to make theaters are by nature a very different thing. Blue Hawaii is 100% a movie, it's scripted, Elvis acts on it, the songs were made for it. It's a movie project, with a strong musical component. This Is It isn't scripted, there are no acting, and songs on it were released as part of albums decades earlier, it isn't a musical or a cast recording or whatever. It's basically the same thing as a Tour dvd, except there are no public. To be honest it's beyond me how you can claim BH and TII are the same thing.
Yellow Submarine is more in-between, it is scripted, yet it does nothing else than exploit the popularity of existing Beatles recordings. Moonwalker is again something else, these are music videos with a pseudo-storyline. For these releases, it's trickier, it's almost impossible to define one strict rule that works out for every release from all artists. To me the ideology is that the video must be a side result of a musical project, rather than a movie project with music on it. The main question is, does the video exploits the success of the songs, or is it the video that created the success of these songs? In the latter case, like with movie soundtracks, counting these records sales already factors in this success, we won't be adding the movie DVD itself because it features the track.
Oh, and a lot of people went to see Blue Hawaii, families, etc. It wasn't a fan-targeted product, it was a movie with a widespread release, like many musicals back in the day. The most seen movie that year was no other than West Side Story. And I don't think anyone would claim that I should do a CSPC for George Chakiris counting WSS' VHS and DVD sales on it.
I don't understand why you're focusing on the "script" aspect, I mean music videos have scripts too...
"The main question is, does the video exploits the success of the songs, or is it the video that created the success of these songs?"
OK, so let's look at the specific case of Blue Hawaii : the soundtrack was released a month before the movie, peaked at #2 and spent four or five weeks in the top 5 before the movie was released... And you can't seriously say that Elvis' movies "weren't fan-targeted products", of course they were 😆
Also, what's the logic of including dvd/bluray sales of This Is It and not considering its box office gross ($260 million) ?
Anyway, I really think you should only focus on music and disregard the video aspect, I'm not saying you're doing it to advantage MJ but I can certainly see people believing that.
How can we ignore the script aspect? It's the fundamental of movies. It's like a song without sounds, then it's not a song.
About Blue Hawaii, I disagree 100%. That the soundtrack sells first doesn't change a thing. Firstly, the movie industry is something else, it's way bigger than the music industry, even more back then, it enables to promote much stronger soundtracks than traditional albums. It doesn't change the key fact which is the songs were made for the movie, and original to hit, that wasn't a greatest hits package. Again, it's a movie project with a musical component, not the other way around.
And you can't seriously say that Elvis' movies were fan-targeted products. They sold so much more tickets than he was selling albums, it's not even comparable. Blue Hawaii itself sold like 10 times more tickets than albums. And that was with a well developped music industry, even in a country like France the movie sold 700,000 tickets yet sales of the OST LP, that you would expect fans to have purchase, were irrelevant in comparison. Most of his movies were family comedies, very, very far from a concert footage. It would be like saying that Bing Crosby's movies were 'fan-targeted' when he sold over 1 billion theater tickets.
You say that videos should be disregarded, this misses a key point, which is the definition of the music industry itself, because the video in these cases also has an audio component. The music industry fundamental is that it is an audio recorded and available on a media. The music industry consists in fabricating and selling this media, no matter if it's a LP, a CD, a cassette, a stream, ..., or a VHS or a DVD. A music clip is still a music industry product, it's music recorded available on a media. You can script it, but the script is created around the music, which is the core product. You can remove the script, it's still a song, a music industry product. If you remove the music, then it's a patchwork of images with no meaning.
A movie, even when we talk about a musical, has the script as its core product. Then you put it in place, with visuals, acting, special effects, and of course also music. You can remove the songs from a movie, that will remain a movie. If you remove the script, it isn't anymore. That's why This Is It is no more a movie than a Live in Bucharest video, and that's why Blue Hawaii is no less a movie than Titanic.
Had I to add the movie's results into a CSPC, then I wouldn't add the gross, as you buy no product, instead I would add a video stream, without a 'full' weighting same as audio streams, to each of the songs present on it. Again because the various video parts of CSPCs (youtube views or music video sales) are accounted for not for the videos themselves, but as audio products with a visual component.
This isn't about counting it all or nothing, let alone about boosting x or y, I'm just too old for this kind of stuff, it's about respecting the real meaning of each product and each industry.
There's one CD missing from your list it's called The ultimate experience basically it's the greatest hits and the versions of the songs on it I like better than than on any other album of his.
Real Legend can be reflected in total numbers and compilations sales.
Greatest Album can still sold many in spite of Compilations.
Classic songs can't be judged only by its own sales.
