Did “Thriller” Really Sell a Hundred Million Copies? - The New Yorker
Did “Thriller” Really Sell a Hundred Million Copies?
By
  
January 4, 2013
In Michael Jackson’s New York Times obituary, the singer is credited with selling a hundred million copies of his most popular album, “Thriller”—and with selling an “estimated” seven hundred and fifty million records worldwide over his career. In a new book on Jackson, “Untouchable,” the writer Randall Sullivan repeats the hundred-million figure for “Thriller.” And earlier this year, fan sites were a buzzing with the news that the Michael Jackson estate had “confirmed” that Jackson had sold a total of a billion records.
Music-industry sales figures are a complex subject, but this doesn’t excuse the fact that they are often exaggerated for public consumption. The numbers surrounding Jackson have always been particularly outlandish. I was amused, for example, while reading a memoir by Jackson’s record producer, Quincy Jones, “Q on Producing,” to see that “Thriller” had sold a hundred million copies—and then, a few pages later, that it had sold a hundred and twenty million. I was sure by the end up of the book it would have risen to a hundred and fifty million. As for that billion figure, that came from a press release for Jackson’s estate a couple of years ago, which asserted, in passing and with no documentation, that the singer had sold an “estimated” billion records.
Let’s look at facts, starting with “Thriller.” When you hear the words “platinum” and “gold” in relation to record sales, they are based on certifications from the Record Industry Association of America, known as the R.I.A.A. The group audits shipments of CDs (and, in the past, albums and cassettes), and gives those awards based on what’s boxed up and trucked out of the pressing plants. Gold represents five hundred thousand units shipped, and platinum a million. Again, that’s shipped, not actually sold. “Thriller” has been certified platinum in the United States twenty-nine times as of 2009. (At the numbers Jackson has sold over the past nearly thirty years, the difference between units sold and shipped wouldn’t be that large. But in the pre-digital era, it was pretty common for an album that had sold, say, eight hundred thousand to get certified platinum—and then have the extra two hundred thousand returned unsold to the label and end up in the cutout bins.)
In the nineteen-seventies and eighties, the famous Billboard charts were compiled by phone surveys of record-store employees, who were just asked “what was selling.” (I was one of them!) Since 1991, album sales in the U.S. have been counted by a company called SoundScan, which records the actual purchases of CDs in sales in actual stores. SoundScan showed that the traditional charts had been based on many misconceptions. We saw that overlooked genres like country and gospel were ringing up massive sales. We also learned that we didn’t have an accurate picture of buying patterns. Before SoundScan, it was extremely rare for an album to début at No. 1 on the charts. After we had the real figures, we saw that it was, in fact, routine. To this day, anticipated releases by major stars open at No. 1 and typically have their highest sales that first week.
For “Thriller,” we have R.I.A.A. data as of 2009, representing at least twenty-nine million albums. How about since Jackson died? Billboard, citing SoundScan figures, reported two years after Jackson’s death that “Thriller” had sold about two million more. It’s still selling, so at this point it’s safe to say it’s sold in the neighborhood of thirty-two million or so in the United States. But what about overseas? Could Jackson have sold another seventy million albums in other countries? It’s doubtful. I occasionally consult with a French music fan, Guillaume Vieira, who, in his off hours as a web developer, obsessively collects sales news from labels and official industry statements all over the globe. He charts the figures carefully, culls more data from a network of sources in the industry in various countries, and analyzes national sales patterns to fill in the blanks. I have no way of checking all of his figures, of course, but his methodology strikes me as more persuasive than the self-serving assertions of record labels.
Vieira totals up fifteen million copies of “Thriller” sold in Europe, three million in Asia, and so forth—and finds that Jackson might have sold an additional thirty-five million or so around the globe. (Here are some of his 2009 data points—before Jackson’s death—in an exhaustive post written under the nom de data MJ Dangerous. Vieira’s research is now being collected at a site called Fan of Music .) For “Thriller” to have sold anything close to a hundred million copies, there would have to be another thirty-five to forty million in sales out there that somehow have eluded official notice. That amount in itself would be as much as one of the biggest-selling albums of all time. The hundred-million figure is in all likelihood a lot of hooey.
So how many records—albums, singles, and downloads—did Jackson sell in total? A tougher question. Classic-era Motown refused to have its sales audited by the industry, so there are no official gold and platinum figures from this era. Vieira says that the Jackson 5 sold a bit less than fifty million singles and fifty million albums for the label. Jackson had a solo career at Motown (with hits like “Ben” and “Got To Be There”) and then further success with his brothers on Epic records, recording as the Jacksons. Then came his momentous adult solo career, beginning with the albums “Off the Wall” and “Thriller.”
Did Jackson sell a billion records, or even seven hundred and fifty million? Sure, “Thriller” sold a lot of copies, but Jackson recorded infrequently, and his later albums sold nowhere near what “Thriller” did. We know from SoundScan figures that Jackson was selling, on average, roughly a million albums a year in the nineteen-nineties and the aughts in the U.S.—and that includes greatest-hits albums, like the four-million-selling “Number Ones.” That’s not nothing, but it’s not the sort of thing that adds up to a billion records over time.
Vieira’s data collection encompasses sales of albums, singles, videos, ringtones, and digital downloads, all the way back to Jackson’s time with the Jackson 5. He found that, around the time Jackson died, Jackson had sold about four hundred million records, give or take. Since Jackson’s death, he’s moved some forty million albums and fifty million song downloads, plus a lot of DVDs and ringtones for a total, more or less, of roughly five hundred and fifteen million sold. That’s about the same as the five hundred million-plus credited to the Beatles but less than any of the cumulative totals of the individual Beatles, Ringo included. (Paul McCartney, Vieira says, has total sales of some six hundred and seventy million.)
I am always happy to exchange e-mails with Vieira, so I asked him what, based on his research, the other best-selling albums worldwide were. Here’s his list:
1. Michael Jackson, “Thriller”: 66,200,000
2. Soundtrack, “Grease”: 44,700,000
3. Pink Floyd, “The Dark Side of the Moon”: 44,200,000
4. Whitney Houston et al., “The Bodyguard”: 38,600,000
5. The Bee Gees at al., “Saturday Night Fever”: 37,200,000
6. The Eagles, “Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975”: 36,900,000
7. Bob Marley, “Legend”: 36,800,000
8. Led Zeppelin, “IV”: 35,700,000
9. AC/DC, “Back in Black”: 35,700,000
10. Shania Twain, “Come on Over”: 35,400,000
11. Michael Jackson, “Bad”: 34,700,000
12. Soundtrack, “Dirty Dancing”: 33,300,000
13. Dire Straits, “Brothers in Arms”: 33,200,000
14. Alanis Morissette, “Jagged Little Pill”: 33,200,000
15. Fleetwood Mac, “Rumours”: 33,000,000
16. The Beatles, “1”: 32,400,000
17. Pink Floyd, “The Wall”: 31,900,000
18. ABBA, “Gold”: 31,400,000
19. Guns N’ Roses, “Appetite for Destruction”: 30,800,000
20. Simon & Garfunkel, “Greatest Hits”: 30,700,000
21. Queen, “Greatest Hits”: 30,600,000
22. Celine Dion, “Let’s Talk About Love”: 30,300,000
23. Michael Jackson, “Dangerous”: 30,200,000
24. Celine Dion, “Falling into You”: 30,200,000
25. The Eagles, “Hotel California”: 30,000,000
26. Bruce Springsteen, “Born in the U.S.A.”: 29,100,000
27. Metallica, “Metallica”: 28,900,000
28. Meat Loaf, “Bat Out of Hell”: 28,700,000
29. Soundtrack, “Titanic”: 28,500,000
30. The Beatles, “Abbey Road”: 28,300,000
The “Grease” soundtrack is a perennial seller. Along with the ever-popular “The Dark Side of the Moon,” those two albums seem safe at the No. 2 and 3 slots. Will they, and “Thriller,” be there forever? The digital era has also brought back the availability of the single; music fans no longer have to shell out for the whole album when they just want a song or two. It’s hard to see how numbers like those can be matched. Vieira takes a different view:
Although I would be contradicted by many on that point, yes, it is still easily possible to sell as many records as “Thriller,” “D.S.O.T.M.,” or “Grease.” Those albums are blockbusters—albums that reach groundbreaking sales, e.g. uncommon sales given the market. If we look at the years 1975 to 2005, the worst year for album sales worldwide was 1982—the year “Thriller” was released. On the other side, if you look at best-selling albums released on each of those years, the weakest is 2001’s top seller (Shakira’s “Laundry Service,” with less than twelve million), despite the biggest year for album sales of all time being… 2001.
It means that market size has little to do with best-sellers. Market size is mostly dependent on the number of regular buyers, which is massively low at the moment. But blockbusters find their limits on the number of potential buyers (not regular ones), which is at an all-time high at the moment. Adele ended up selling exactly the same as “Saturday Night Fever” did when it was released, slightly more than “Grease,” and over three times more than what “D.S.O.T.M.” sold during its first two years.
What about China or India, I asked—could a Jackson-size phenom emerge from either country, each with a population far bigger than that of the United States?
Definitely nothing crazy happening in China and India. Despite massive number of inhabitants their markets are pretty weak, similar to Australia or lower.
In the golden age of the nineties, some local acts reached sales of three or four million in China, like their “local Michael Jackson” Jacky Cheung, with “The Goodbye Kiss” (arguably the best-selling album ever in continental Asia), and around two million in India, but those are the best-selling albums ever there.
I can see Adele selling another thirty million albums over the next twenty years and coming up close to “Grease” or “D.S.O.T.M.” But leaving aside some astonishing phenomenon that sweeps the world , Jackson’s “Thriller” will forever remain in its position at No. 1—and it doesn’t need for its sales to be exaggerated to stay there.
Bill Wyman, who recently wrote about Michael Jackson for the magazine , is the former arts editor of Salon.com and National Public Radio.
Photograph by Terry Lott/Sony Music Archive/Getty.
Bill Wyman is the former arts editor of Salon and National Public Radio.