No One Really Knows How Many Albums Michael Jackson Sold

@UnderLoK: The answer to that question is quite simple....they took the number they assume sold and pay the artist for half as many albums while doubling that number for advertising purposes.

Darkest Daze

@The Red Comet: I just take a different stance. These are comments on blogs. I think you should be allowed to type the way you speak regardless of grammar if you so choose. Also, I should add, grammar can be corrected if done politely. I mainly didn't like the manner in which it was corrected.

@AaronC-T: it's the most popular...by far.

@admoseremic: But maybe one in 12 own two or more?

tatiana.noel

@UnderLoK: THANK you!

tatiana.noel

@admoseremic: I feel like that's not the way statistics work.

AaronC-T

Fair enough. I don't really see the necessity iTunes being mentioned, there are several services that do the same. Zune tracks every song/album you buy, tells you what you might like based on what -you're- listen to as well as people you actually know/talk to online/play Xbox Live with.... so?

AaronC-T

@nachobel: I was thinking the same thing... I mean how in the hell were these guys paid if no one actually knew how many were sold?

@Cliff_Dangers:
That's exactly what I find so crazy about this! This number exists, as in some company or companies produced these albums, magnetized the tape, stamped the vinyl / cds and shipped the, but they don't know how many?

I didn't realize Michael was one of frost's henchmen.

Sadiq Marsh

@wetworker: The Beatles were just imitating the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson? That's weird. Oh and just because someone uses the same style as someone else you shouldn't buy their albums? Isn't all music just a progression of what was done before? Should we all just be listening to world music then, as it was the influence for all music on a very basic scale? Why not just buy Chuck Berry AND Elvis? Stupid. And if you don't own any beatles albums you really don't have a very good taste in music.

@OCEntertainment:
Wrong, no one in my family owns a Beatles album but we all own many Michael Jackson and Jackson 5 albums, it's like buying Elvis over Little Richard or Chuck Berry. Why get the imitation when you can get the real thing.

@admoseremic:

It might be possible to calculate, at least, the TOP number of albums shipped. Then it up to them to narrow the number down based on popularity and some other factors.

uRbAnlP

@admoseremic: In 40 years we have also rotated through almost two full generations, so it doesn't have to be 1 in 6 of everyone that is living now. You can have people that died who bought albums and people that were born after those people died who bought albums. For instance, I was born in 1982 and own every beatles album. Someone who died in 1980 could have also owned every beatles album.

@bucho54: For an error that heinous, it needs to be pointed out. For something more nitpicky, like split infinitives or prepositions at the end of sentences, then it would be douchey.

I was in charge of getting a startup music company chart eligible. Even with Nielson and soundscan ratings there is plenty of room to fudge numbers, so even those can't be trusted. Until recently Nielson was even handing out gold and platinum records based on units shipped...Not sold. All record companies would over-ship, get their artists their gold record then half of those records could be returned 3 months later. It was done for publicity. "So and so sold a million records, so it must be good" Even today there are tons of loopholes to exploit. There are ways to submit multiple scans for just one sale. And digital sales aren't submitted in real time and are prone to human error as well, but the record companies want it this way so I don't see it stopping anytime soon. And one last thing...Almost all royalty audits come show that the record companies owe money to the artist. Yes the record industry is run like it was still the 70's and 80's.

alterboy

@tande04: I'd believe this simply based on how many times people have re-purchased the white album.

The editors need to review better. In the writeup, it says that Sony/RIAA puts Jackson's numbers at 55 mil. However, if you read the article, those numbers are for Thriller only.

Ghettoshark

But there is no way to quantify how much an artist has immersed themselves in the collective conscious. In that way, Michael Jackson does equal 750 Million records.

Just because an album goes platinum doesn't mean that people will know or remember it 10 years from now. But play the first few phrases of Billie Jean, and there aren't many alive that won't start singing the song in their head.

So maybe the old system was archaic, but maybe this "guesswork" had some validity?

@OCEntertainment: Michael Jackson's Thriller is the best selling album of all time. Now, we're not so sure if it really is the best selling album.

North Star

Did that pic come from Captain EO 3-D ride at Disneyland? Not really a ride than a really cool and kind of creepy 3-D mini flic promotion for the MJ.

the same thing goes for the question of pink floyd's 'dark side of the moon' staying on the Billboard 200 for 741 weeks.

record store owners submitted their billboard rankings based on 'memory' or 'favoritism', not actual sales figures.

@Cliff_Dangers: Yeah but you only have to keep your tax records for a certain number of years (7-10?).. so couldn't initial data have been thrown out prior to Soundscan?

Skeetz

Then how are plaques (gold, platinum, diamond) awarded? "Back in Black" has gone diamond ... but if there's no real sales numbers to back that, do we REALLY know that they've sold 10MM+ copies?

Steeb2er

Could this title also be "No One Really Knows How Many Albums Any Artist That Pre-Dates 1991 Sold"? I mean, admittedly, it's not as catchy. I'm just curious if there's a reason (besides the man's death) for the MJ connection, or if he's apparently still topical.

@tande04: 1 in every 6.7 people in the entire world has bought A Beatles album? Even including die hard fans who buy every album twice, replacement copies for people who lose/break theirs, and completely ignoring the possibility for piracy and bootlegging....that still seems a little off.

Should point out that even with Soundscan, you don't have a totally accurate number because smaller, non-chain stores don't necessarily use Soundscan.

The de facto industry number was 3x Soundscan sales. And yes, that means that only one third of music outlets was/is using Soundscan.

@tande04: That's roughly 68,500 albums a day, every day, for the last 40 years. No fucking way that happened, even for the Beatles.

cpthook

@noamjamski: But that's my point. If we have some idea of what percentage of the albums sold, then you could get a good estimate of the total number sold.

@DreamTheEndless: Repeat after me: "is a douche" As in, "... DreamTheEndless is a douche for needlessly pointing out grammatical errors in comments in a douchey way."

@tande04: I don't know, one billion is an ungodly huge number.

IcemanD

@admoseremic: There are great metrics about how many records are produced but that number is meaningless if they go unsold.

Think about game consoles. When MSFT and Sony are trying to win the PR battles they will boast about how many consoles SHIPPED to stores. If they are all sitting unsold in a backroom that number is irrelvant.

KISS always used to talk about how every record they made shipped gold or platinum. That's wonderful if you have the scale for manufacturing, but shipping 500,000 copies to a store doesn't mean anything about actual success.

@tande04: I doubt that. That would mean that one in six people in the world own a Beetles album if everyone had one. edit: I know more than 6 people that don't have a Beetle's album, so it can't be true. . .

@MisterWho Cares: Well, it wasn't so much my mathematical skills as it was my amazing Sherlock Holmes-like powers of deduction. :)

Shouldn't there be a way to find out how many albums were produced? Manufacturers should have a better idea how many were made at least. Maybe from that number you could get a better estimate for how many were sold.

Thanks to the iTunes Music Store we now know exactly how many Beatles songs have been purchased through Apple: 0.

sw_white

They should also include all the cheesy 80's Halloween song compilation tapes in their songs sold counts, that always seemed to include the requisite "Thriller", only second to "The Monster Mash".

@KesMonkey: You, sir are a mathematical genius!

Can't they reverse engineer the stats from royalties?

LOL okay, that was just a joke.

@tande04: repeat after me: "could have"
As in, "...the Beatles could have hit a billion."

DreamTheEndless

Sadly soundscan is better but still not completely accurate. Since they can't account for every record sold on tour, or smaller shops that under/over report, everything is weighted. Reported soundscan numbers are unfortunately still not 1:1.

I lived with the owner of a reasonably successful indie label (sold albums in the tens of thousands, not hundreds of thousands) and he was always very frustrated with the under-reporting of his records when he received soundscan reports.

I don't understand how they couldn't know this info just because it wasn't electronically tracked. Does a company not know how many products they produce and how many of them were sold? If you don't know these numbers, how exactly do you do your taxes?

Cliff_Dangers

I've been of the belief that Thriller alone did 40 million, and I usually smh when I read 100 million. MJ was awesome and all, but 100 million is an insanely large number to wrap your brain around as it pertains to album sales. haha.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say "more than twelve".

Well I can say I am the proud owner of autographed LP's of Thriller, Bad, Dangerous, History and Invincible. So you can include my five on that list :)

And...?

I don't know. I imagine with 40 years of album sales the beetles could of hit a billion.

Interesting all around though.

Doesn't iTunes/apple not release numbers either, just rank?

tande04

@bucho54: Oh come on. I didn't point out his lack of capitalization of the name of the band or his misspelling of the word "Beatles," and I didn't call him any names. That's "douchey"? As The Red Comet said, it was a pretty heinous mistake.

Furthermore, you later said that one should be allowed to type in blogs in the same manner as they speak. Even taking this into account, his post was still incorrect. In that case, it should have been "could've" and still not "could of."

Do you think maybe that calling me a douche might have been going a little overboard?

DreamTheEndless