MUMBAI: A week after his death, Michael Jackson stands tall on the global charts. Based on preliminary sales numbers from Nielsen SoundScan, the entire top nine positions on Billboard’s Top Pop Catalog Albums chart now have Jackson-related titles.
Jackson himself has a record eight out of the top 10, while a Jackson 5 compilation also finds its way into the upper slots. Due to the rising demand, Britain’s HMV Group Plc had reported unprecedented surge in demand for Michael Jackson’s music following the singer’s death on Thursday.
Of all Jackson albums, â€?Number Ones’ leads the pack while â€?The Essential Michael Jackson’ stands in the second spot. â€?Thriller’ is on third position. Till last week, â€?Number Ones’ was the only Jackson title on the chart, at No. 20 with 4,000 copies. â€?Essential’ and â€?Thriller’ re-entered this week.
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No. of albums sold so far
Number Ones – 108000
The Essential – 102000
Thriller- 101000
Albums like Off the Wall, Bad, The Jackson 5’s The Ultimate studio collection, Dangerous, Greatest Hits: HIStory — Volume 1, and Jackson’s 2004 box set The Ultimate Collection re-entered with good response.
Re-entries
1979 album Off the Wall- 33, 000
1987 album Bad – 17,000
The Jackson 5’s The Ultimate studio collection debuts with 18,000
1991 album Dangerous with 14,000
2001 compilation Greatest Hits: HIStory — Volume 1 with 12,000
Jackson’s 2004 box set The Ultimate Collection with 11,000.
Collectively, Jackson’s solo albums sold 415,000 this past week. But till four days before his death (June 21) Jackson’s music sold a combined 10,000. The 415,000 albums sold just last week is nearly 40% more than what Jackson’s catalog had sold the entire year up through June 21 (297,000).
Digital downloads
The Essential Michael Jackson – 80,000 downloads
Thriller – 57,000 downloads
Jackson places record 25 songs on the 75-position Hot Digital Songs chart out of which 21 are solo hits and four with his siblings. Jackson’s total volume of downloads this week — including his tracks with the Jackson 5 and the Jacksons — account for 2.6 million downloads, a remarkable number considering last week’s cumulative sum was 48,000. Moreover, Jackson becomes the first act to sell more than 1 million song downloads in a week.
Not surprisingly, each of the tracks in the top 10 of Hot Digital Songs were among the top 10 most-played Jackson selections at radio following his passing. According to research provided by Nielsen BDS of monitored airplay from over 1,600 terrestrial and satellite radio stations and cable music channels, â€?Billie Jean’ was the Jackson track with the most spins for the week ending June 28 with 4,540 — 97% of which occurred after news of his death became public. The track posted only 318 plays in the prior week.
