Janet Jackson albums and songs sales

You have been voting in your numbers on voting at Chartmasters.org for your favorite artist to be studied with the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept. The promise was that artists winning each category would be covered within a few weeks. On political campaigns, commitments aren’t always completed but our site is fully aiming to respect them! Among artists with a mid-sized discography, Janet Jackson received half of the votes – 297 out of 592 as of now – the highest total of any artists from all categories, making it natural to start filling your wishes by working on her statistics!

It is a mystery to nobody that the American superstar hasn’t been doing headlines for many years. Michael Jackson‘s little sister is more than a famous sibling or a faded rising star. Her discography spans 33 years from 1982 to 2015. Along the way she topped the US charts with 10 singles and 7 albums, proving a real selling power.

Albums like Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 are often claimed to be 14 million sellers each while 1993 set Janet. is supposed to be a 20 million seller. Regular readers of our website are certainly questioning those tallies though as they know how often inflated figures flood the internet, especially when the popular divas a la Madonna, Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston or Celine Dion are concerned. Her chart toppers are completely legitimate so she must have sold a good chunk of units with various of her records. What is the truth then? Where does Janet Jackson rank inside the all-time divas list?

ChartMasters’ method: the CSPC

As usual, I’ll be using the Commensurate Sales to Popularity Concept (CSPC) in order to relevantly gauge the act’s results. It will not only bring you sales information for all albums, physical and download singles, as well as audio and video streaming. In fact, it will really determine the act’s popularity.

If you are not yet familiar with the CSPC method, below is a nice and short video of explaining the concept. I recommend watching it before reading on and to the sales figures. You’ll get the idea in just two minutes.

And if you want to know the full method as well as formulas, you can read the full introduction article.

Now let’s get into the artist’s detailed sales figures!

Janet Jackson’s original albums sales

NB: N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country’s market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are also factored in.

Janet Jackson (1982)

Dream Street (1984)

Control (1986)

Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989)

Janet (1993)

The Velvet Rope (1997)

All for You (2001)

Damita Jo (2004)

20 Y.O. (2006)

• America
  • US – 700,000
  • Canada – 25,000
  • Argentina – N/A
  • Brazil – 8,000
  • Mexico – N/A
• Asia – 165,000
  • Japan –  125,000
• Oceania
  • Australia – 5,000
  • New Zealand – N/A
• Europe – 70,000
  • UK – 15,000
  • France – 15,000
  • Germany – 10,000
  • Italy – 6,000
  • Spain – 5,000
  • Sweden – 1,000
  • Netherlands – 4,000
  • Switzerland – 3,000
  • Austria – 1,000
  • Finland – N/A
• World – 1,000,000

Discipline (2008)

Unbreakable (2015)

Original Album Sales – Comments

Climbing to your peak then slowing down is pretty natural. The real question is how high was the mountain and how long you remained at the top of it.

Selling 50,5 million albums spread over 11 releases, Janet Jackson’s road was impressive. Most of those sales, some 46 million, came from the five LPs issued during her golden years which lasted from 1986 to 2001. Not many artists can claim five consecutive albums selling an average of over 9 million units. Nevertheless for several reasons this total is going to be regarded as disappointing.

The first reason is the aforementioned inflated numbers which flourished for many years. Those claims got so exaggerated that even the supposed conservative figures were way too optimistic. The second reason for the disappointment is the World to US comparison. Considering how many units the Pop / R&B diva sold in the US, expectations could have been higher for global sales.

Known facts strongly damage claims of high overseas sales. In the 1990 Polygram annual report, we learn that Rhythm Nation 1814 shipped “over 3 million units” for the year while it achieved 2,5 million units in the US alone.

Moving from Polygram-owned A&M Records to the EMI-owned Virgin label, she then shipped “over 8 million units” by March 31 1994 of Janet. album while she got certified for 6 million sales in the US a few days later, letting a mere 2 million sales for rest of the World sales.

The Velvet Rope, which was quite successful in Europe by the artist’s standards. and weaker in the US, sold 4,5+ million by March 1998 and 1,6 million more for the next 12 months a total of slightly over 6 million including some 3,1 million of which in the US. Then All For You shipped 5,1 million copies by March 2002 with again 3 million units coming from the US alone. On its side, Damita Jo shipped 2,4 million on its day of release thanks to high expectations but its failure resulted in heavy returns and the missing out on a place in the IFPI Global Top 50 for the year. 20 Y.O. suffered the same fate.

All the official shipment data proves, not only that global claims are truly fanciful, but also that non-US sales are way overstated. With the album Janet Jackson being the least US-axed era still saw half of its sales coming from her native country. While the remaining albums had from 60% to 80% of their Worldwide sales coming from home.

Getting rid of old myths and focusing on real data, we can highlight how incredibly good those figures still are. As mentioned, five consecutive 6-13 million sellers is impressive, even more so from an artist that always continued to sell good amounts of physical singles too. Sales in this format are going to be analyzed right now.

Janet Jackson’s physical singles sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 3 ratio between one album and one physical single.

1982-89

Janet Jackson’s career started slowly with weak album sales and weak singles sales too. In spite of the Michael Jackson‘s madness happening at the same time, singles from her first two albums failed to become hits, selling moderately thanks to a solid market only.

Barely 16 years old when dropping her first LP, she grew both as a person as well as an artist in the following years. What Have You Done for Me Lately, the lead single of Control which went to #4 in the US, broke the main audience for her, paving the way for upcoming singles. Nasty at #3, When I Think of You at #1, Control at #5 and Let’s Wait Awhile at #2 confirmed her new status. The breakthrough was valid abroad too with three of those songs hitting the Top 10 in the UK.

Such successes logically boosted the album to tremendous sales but also direct sales of singles. The singles market had dipped in the US at that time but, it hasn’t prevented those five hits from crossing the million mark in global sales. All together, Control hits sold upwards of 7 million units, an equivalent of 2,1 million albums.

A string of smashes as impressive was difficult to replicate but Janet Jackson did even better with her following era. After five Top 5 hits, she stepped up again to register 4 chart toppers plus 3 more Top 4 songs from Rhythm Nation 1814. Just like Control singles, none made it to 2 million units sold due to low European sales overall, all 7 did however become million sellers. The cumulative tally of 8,7 million singles equals to 2,6 million albums.

Janet Jackson (1982) – 201,000 equivalent albums

Young Love – 230,000
Come Give Your Love to Me – 290,000
Remaining Singles – 150,000

Dream Street (1984) – 66,000 equivalent albums

Don’t Stand Another Chance – 120,000
Remaining Singles – 100,000

Control (1986) – 2,118,000 equivalent albums

Control – 1,000,000
Nasty – 1,290,000
What Have You Done for Me Lately – 1,470,000
The Pleasure Principle – 530,000
When I Think of You – 1,410,000
Let’s Wait Awhile – 1,340,000
Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun) – 20,000

Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) – 2,601,000 equivalent albums

Rhythm Nation – 1,250,000
Miss You Much – 1,610,000
Love Will Never Do (Without You) – 1,150,000
Alright – 1,020,000
Escapade – 1,310,000
Black Cat – 1,210,000
Come Back to Me – 1,110,000
State of the World – 10,000

1993-2001

How long can an artist continue issuing Top 5 hits? Dominating the US charts from 1986 to 1990, the pop star returned in 1993 with her long awaited fifth album Janet. Lead single That’s The Way Love Goes was a monster hit spending 8 weeks #1, which perfectly started the new era. Shifting 2,27 million units, it became the top selling hit of her career up to that point. Five more singles made the Top 10 after that with a seventh one Whoops Now moving relevant amounts abroad while not released locally. Just like its predecessor, the Janet. album was responsible for more than 8 million physical singles sales.

The transition of the US market from a shared singles and albums market to an exclusively album sector led Virgin to release only two singles from The Velvet Rope in that country. As a result of those decisions, Together Again and I Get Lonely sold a huge 4,7 million units combined while the remaining singles were issued in fewer markets explaining their lower sales.

The irregular release schedule impacted All For You even more. Doesn’t Really Matter sold past 1 million units as it came out before the album in order to promote the Nutty Professor II soundtrack. Then the title track replicated the feat. The freefall of the US singles market, which was by far Janet Jackson’s strongest market, damaged her severely. From 1997 to 2002, physical singles sales dropped hugely from 117 million to 8 million in the country. Thus, even a #3 hit like Someone to Call My Lover ended up selling way less than its predecessors.

Janet (1993) – 2,448,000 equivalent albums

That’s the Way Love Goes – 2,270,000
You Want This – 840,000
If – 1,280,000
Because of Love – 520,000
Again – 1,670,000
Any Time, Any Place – 1,050,000
Whoops Now – 530,000

The Velvet Rope (1997) – 1,632,000 equivalent albums

Got ’til It’s Gone – 490,000
Go Deep – 160,000
Together Again – 3,220,000
Every Time – 70,000
I Get Lonely – 1,500,000

All for You (2001) – 906,000 equivalent albums

All for You – 1,260,000
Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You) – 240,000
Someone to Call My Lover – 440,000
Doesn’t Really Matter – 1,080,000

2004 onwards and orphan songs

There’s not much to say about Janet Jackson’s post-2004 albums as the physical singles market was truly weak by then, a situation getting even worse with largely unsuccessful songs. The interesting category is the Orphan one which contains several hits from different years.

Herb Alpert duet Diamonds was a US hit in 1987, just like The Best Things in Life Are Free with Luther Vandross in 1992. A series of Orphan Top 10 singles continued in 1995 with the duet alongside her brother Michael, Scream, then Busta Rhymes’ #3 smash What’s It Gonna Be?! in 1999.

All those successes brought the artist a total over 40 million physical singles sold, a fairly huge tally in an era which favored albums.

Damita Jo (2004) – 36,000 equivalent albums

All Nite (Don’t Stop) – 40,000
I Want You – 10,000
Just a Little While – 70,000

20 Y.O. (2006) – 27,000 equivalent albums

So Excited – 20,000
Call on Me – 70,000

Discipline (2008) – 9,000 equivalent albums

Feedback – 25,000
Rock with U – 5,000

Orphan – 2,147,000 equivalent albums

Diamonds – 820,000
Making Love in the Rain – 150,000
The Best Things in Life Are Free – 1,410,000
Scream – 1,660,000
Runaway – 1,170,000
Twenty Foreplay – 80,000
What’s It Gonna Be?! – 1,110,000
Luv Me, Luv Me – 170,000
Girlfriend / Boyfriend – 440,000
Feel It Boy – 140,000
Don’t Worry – 5,000

Janet Jackson’s digital singles sales

As a reminder, the weighting is done with a 10 to 1,5 ratio between one album and one digital single.

1982-89

What’s Janet Jackson’s signature song? A striking fact when one looks at her most viewed videos on YouTube in each country, the most viewed song is different several times. This lack of obvious smash hurts her digital sales, just like her poor popularity overall since iTunes was launched.

Figures are thus terrible. Blockbusters like Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 have no song at all coming close to half a million downloads.

Janet Jackson (1982) – 3,000 equivalent albums

Remaining tracks – 20,000

Dream Street (1984) – 2,000 equivalent albums

Remaining tracks – 10,000

Control (1986) – 195,000 equivalent albums

Control – 100,000
Nasty – 350,000
What Have You Done for Me Lately – 250,000
The Pleasure Principle – 125,000
When I Think of You – 200,000
Let’s Wait Awhile – 175,000
Funny How Time Flies (When You’re Having Fun) – 75,000
Remaining tracks – 25,000

Rhythm Nation 1814 (1989) – 210,000 equivalent albums

Rhythm Nation – 250,000
Miss You Much – 250,000
Love Will Never Do (Without You) – 150,000
Alright – 150,000
Escapade – 300,000
Black Cat – 100,000
Come Back to Me – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 100,000

1993-2004

Interestingly, each 1993-2001 album has at least one song at 600,000 download sales or more unlike her previous four LPs. Even more surprisingly, the song which appears to be the best selling tune preceding the digital era is All For You. The song was still recent when downloads first arrived and it is also one of the few hits that had a global impact.

Damita Jo, the only album from this list released during the digital years – even if they were just getting started – has the worst results which is good evidence of its lackluster performance.

Janet (1993) – 360,000 equivalent albums

That’s the Way Love Goes – 800,000
If – 650,000
Again – 300,000
Any Time, Any Place – 400,000
Remaining tracks – 250,000

The Velvet Rope (1997) – 330,000 equivalent albums

Got ’til It’s Gone – 600,000
Go Deep – 150,000
Together Again – 700,000
Every Time – 100,000
I Get Lonely – 350,000
Remaining tracks – 300,000

All for You (2001) – 225,000 equivalent albums

All for You – 900,000
Son of a Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You) – 100,000
Someone to Call My Lover – 175,000
Doesn’t Really Matter – 175,000
Remaining tracks – 150,000

Damita Jo (2004) – 83,000 equivalent albums

All Nite (Don’t Stop) – 250,000
I Want You – 100,000
Remaining tracks – 200,000

2006 onwards and orphan songs

2008 song Feedback, her only Top 20 hit during the last 15 years, is easily Janet Jackson‘s top seller. Factoring in ringtones it passed the million mark in the US alone, although its impact elsewhere was limited.

In total, she sold a mere 13 million digital singles. Considering her 24 Top 5 discography and the four albums issued during digital years, we have to say this is a disastrous figure.

20 Y.O. (2006) – 98,000 equivalent albums

So Excited – 200,000
Call on Me – 300,000
Remaining tracks – 150,000

Discipline (2008) – 248,000 equivalent albums

Feedback – 1,300,000
Rock with U – 150,000
Remaining tracks – 200,000

Unbreakable (2015) – 68,000 equivalent albums

Unbreakable – 100,000
Dammn Baby – 75,000
No Sleeep – 225,000
Remaining tracks – 50,000

Orphan – 180,000 equivalent albums

Scream – 700,000
What’s It Gonna Be?! – 200,000
Remaining tracks – 300,000

Janet Jackson‘s streaming sales

As seen with the example of the Beatles, today’s weight of Spotify is steadily increasing, representing as much as 63,5% of overall streams on their platform. The Swedish giant recently announced they broke the 50-million barrier of paid subscribers.

We will keep that ratio Spotify-All Audio Streaming services updated as much as possible, especially when the IFPI RIN comes out next month covering the 2016 Global market. For now, we will be sticking with this 63,5% rate.

What is this section about? Here we will be reviewing streams from all songs and all albums of Janet’s, converting each of them into equivalent album sales. The equivalent album sales is the division of the comprehensive streaming figure by 1500 as is now the norm in the new industry model.

Streaming Part 1 – Anonymous Jackson

During the Bee Gees study, we met some awful performers in the streaming area. The first two Janet Jackson albums happen to be even weaker. Cumulatively, all their songs have just 820,000 streams! Technically, skipping tracks every 30 seconds just after the stream gets registered, one user can be responsible for 2,880 plays in a day. This would be enough to double the 8-years total of Hold Back the Tears after one week. Yes, it is that bad.

Streaming Part 2 – Call Me Janet

Streams of Control and Rhythm Nation 1814 are kind of unique. Those albums had so many hits that there are barely what are traditionally known as album tracks on them. All seven singles from the Control are on 1,7-4,9 million streams while the two albums tracks are on 200,000 plays. The addition of both facts, unimpressive streams for former singles and so few album tracks, make it look like some kind of successful instrumental album with solid tracks but no hit, while Control was in reality the exact opposite.

The same case is true for Rhythm Nation 1814 with the addition of the massive arrival of interludes. The two tracks opening and closing the album are long enough to get streams but the others are all under 30 seconds, concluding on an automatic 0 total. Just like songs from Control, none of them have topped 5 million streams mark.

Streaming Part 3 – 90s Global Attack

Here comes the first decent streaming hit of Janet Jackson – That’s the Way Love Goes, which has more than 22 million plays. From The Velvet Rope, both Got ’til It’s Gone and Together Again are close to 16 million.

In terms of equivalent album sales, both sets are around 50,000 units, twice as much as both her big 80s albums.

Streaming Part 4 – Slowing down

Expectedly, All For You is the diva’s last big hit. With 15 million plays, it ranks in the same league as her big 90s tunes. Indeed, her top 4 songs are all in the 15-22 million range showing one more time the absence of a real signature song in her repertoire.

The collapse is severe with Damita Jo which has only 9,000 equivalent album sales, less than a third of All For You.

Streaming Part 5 – Sleepy years

Streams of both 20 Y.O. and Discipline are weak. This being said, their singles are in the 1 to 5 million range, a la Control or Rhythm Nation 1814 hits which comes as a real surprise. The bad side of this fact is that the surprise is more due to the low results of her early hits rather than a great showing of the recent singles.

Unbreakable is the Janet’s lone album released during the streaming era. This explains why it has 37,000 equivalent album sales, more than the previous 3 combined.

Streaming Part 6 – Orphan Songs

The streaming performance gap between Janet Jackson and Michael Jackson is so big that a low song for the latter is one of the biggest streamers for the former. Scream is close to 10 million plays, enough for the 6th spot among Janet Jackson’s list but barely Top 50 inside a similar Michael Jackson ranking.

Janet Jackson’s full length related record sales

It sounds fairly logical to add together weighted sales of one era – studio album, physical singles, downloads, and streams – to get the full picture of an album’s popularity. For older releases though, they also generate sales of various live, music videos and compilation albums.

All those packaging-only records do not create value, they exploit the one originated from the parent studio album of each of its tracks instead. Inevitably, when such compilations are issued this downgrades catalog sales of the original LP. Thus, to perfectly gauge how worthy the original LP is, we need to re-assign sales proportionally to its contribution of all compilations which feature its songs. The following table explains it all.

Remaining Long Format Part 1 – Compil & Remix

How to understand this table? If you check for example Design of a Decade 1986-1996 compilation album line, those figures mean it sold 8,300,000 units worldwide. The second statistics column means all versions of all songs included on this package add for 64 million streaming plays on Spotify.

The second part on the right of the table shows how many streams are coming from each original album, plus the share it represents on the overall package streams. Thus, streaming figures tell us songs from Control are responsible for 31% of the Design of a Decade 1986-1996 tracklist attractiveness, which means it generated 2,541,000 of its 8,300,000 album sales and so on for the other records.

Design of a Decade is, from a 2017 point of view, a fairly irrelevant compilation as it misses various key hits like Together Again, Got ’til It’s Gone and All For You which released after the compilation came out, but also notable eligible omissions like Any Time, Any Place, If and Again. Nevertheless, its track list is the distribution of sales that matters the most as this is by far Janet Jackson’s biggest selling compilation with 8,3 million units. All three of Control, Rhythm Nation 1814 and Janet. are responsible for a third of its appeal, some 2,7 million-ish sales generated by each.

Remaining Long Format Part 2 – Music Videos

Janet Jackson’s full length related records sales – Summary

No doubt Janet Jackson sold a lot of albums and singles during her hey-days. She was proportionally even bigger in the music video format. Over the years, she issued 10 such packages, each selling 150,000 units or more.

The first five are themed as per a specific album, providing them an enjoyable comprehensive sales boost. The best example is the both of the Rhythm Nation 1814 VHS releases which moved a combined 750,000 units.

The following five releases are career-comprehensive, mostly driven by Janet. and The Velvet Rope hits. Will this be enough to push them over 20 million and 10 million, respectively, equivalent album sales once every format is factored in ?

Here is the most underestimated indicator of an album’s success – the amount of compilation sales of all kinds it generated. Due to the dependency of the original studio album sales on those releases, they are a key piece of the jigsaw.

The overwhelming dominance of Design of a Decade among all those sets logically put Control, Rhythm Nation 1814 and Janet. well ahead of the pack. Both The Velvet Rope and All For You have solid hits but Janet simply hasn’t sold enough compilations after they were released.

BONUS – Janet Jackson’s compilation albums sales

NB: Just like for original album sales, N/A means no specific number is available. Sales from the country are still accounted for in the Worldwide estimate by using figure patterns of both the artist and the country market. Countries not displayed in this fixed panel are also factored in.

Design of a Decade 1986-1996 (1995)

JANET JACKSON CAREER CSPC RESULTS

So, after checking all the figures, how many overall equivalent album sales has each Janet Jackson album achieved? Well, at this point we don’t need to add up all of the figures defined in this article!

In the following results table, all categories display figures in equivalent album sales. If different, pure sales are listed between parentheses.

'Av.' stands for Average, 'LD' for Last Day.

As a reminder:

• Studio Album: sales of the original album
• Other Releases: sales of compilations generated thanks to the album
• Physical Singles: sales of physical singles from the album (ratio 3/10)
• Download Singles: sales of digital singles from the album (ratio 1,5/10)
• Streaming: equivalent album sales of all the album tracks (ratio 1/1500 for Audio stream and 1/6750 for Video stream)

Artist career totals

See where the artist ranks among remaining singers

In spite of lower than claimed album sales and bad digital results, Janet Jackson’s totals are still truly healthy. How many artists can claim they outperformed their previous album twice in a row from a nearly 15 million equivalent album sales starting point? With rounded totals of 15-17,5-19 million, Control, Rhythm Nation 1814 and Janet. have been strongly successful.

She hasn’t exactly collapsed after that with The Velvet Rope shifting 10 million overall sales and All For You 7,3 million. Damita Jo bombed hard though with less than a fourth of the sales of its immediate predecessor. The following three albums continued the decreasing trend and a rebound looks highly unlikely in the future.

The total number of equivalent album sales managed by Janet Jackson is 77,1 million. This result puts her ahead of all post-2000 divas like Adele, Rihanna, Beyoncé or Taylor Swift. However, this is barely half the total managed by Whitney Houston who had a career that spanned the same era, less than half of Celine Dion too and less than a third of Madonna‘s superb 241 million total. I started this study with a reference to politics – I’ll conclude it by saying that Janet Jackson is the perfect candidate of the centrism movement in the Diva’ scale.

The following pages list the most successful songs of Janet Jackson as well as the full listing of all CSPC results compiled so far to better gauge her position in the history of the music industry.

As usual, feel free to comment and / or ask a question!

Of course, the poll to decide which artists you would like to be studied next is still active!

Sources: IFPI, Spotify, PolyGram, EMI, Chartmasters.org.

Janet Jackson’s biggest tracks

The list of most successful songs is compiled in equivalent album sales generated by each of them. It includes the song’s own physical singles sales with a 0,3 weighting, its download and streaming sales with appropriate weighting too, plus its share among sales of all albums on which it is featured.

1. 1993 – That’s the Way Love Goes [Janet] – 10,360,000
2. 2001 – All for You [All for You] – 3,990,000
3. 1997 – Together Again [The Velvet Rope] – 3,710,000
4. 1986 – Nasty [Control] – 3,330,000
5. 1989 – Escapade [Rhythm Nation 1814] – 3,330,000
6. 1989 – Rhythm Nation [Rhythm Nation 1814] – 2,940,000
7. 1997 – Got ’til It’s Gone [The Velvet Rope] – 2,830,000
8. 1993 – Any Time, Any Place [Janet] – 2,710,000
9. 1986 – When I Think of You [Control] – 2,680,000
10. 1989 – Miss You Much [Rhythm Nation 1814] – 2,600,000
11. 1986 – Let’s Wait Awhile [Control] – 2,510,000
12. 1986 – What Have You Done for Me Lately [Control] – 2,420,000
13. 1989 – Alright [Rhythm Nation 1814] – 2,160,000
14. 1989 – Love Will Never Do (Without You) [Rhythm Nation 1814] – 2,100,000
15. 1993 – Again [Janet] – 1,930,000
16. 1993 – If [Janet] – 1,850,000
17. 1997 – I Get Lonely [The Velvet Rope] – 1,770,000
18. 1989 – Black Cat [Rhythm Nation 1814] – 1,660,000
19. 1986 – The Pleasure Principle [Control] – 1,620,000
20. 1989 – Come Back to Me [Rhythm Nation 1814] – 1,510,000

We have more for you…

… Mickael Jackson‘s full CSPC analysis

… Jackson 5 & The Jacksons‘ full CSPC analysis

… checking out the upcoming artists or even voting for them!

… similar artists

… best-selling artists, albums, and singles