June 30, 2009

Sales of Michael Jackson's Music Surge

By Gil Kaufman (MTV.com)

From Cairo to Compton, Harlem to Hanoi, last week, fans of the King of Pop were rushing out to buy as much of Michael Jackson's music as they could, creating a retail crush around the country (and the world) that will likely land a number of Jackson albums at the top of the Billboard catalog charts next week.

Retailers across the country reported a mad rush on Jackson titles, with many saying that they had quickly run out of their stock of music within 24 hours of the singer's death on Thursday at the age of 50.

The quickest-selling titles, according to Billboard, were the Number Ones and The Essential Michael Jackson compilations, as well as the expanded reissue of Thriller. Billboard predicted that those three sets, along with Jackson's studio albums Off the Wall, Bad and Dangerous, will likely leap to the upper reaches of the Top Pop Catalog Albums chart next week. The magazine said that Number Ones will probably take the top spot after resting at #20 last week on sales of 4,000.

In a telling tale of the times, as of Monday (June 29), eight of the 10 best-selling songs on iTunes belonged to Jackson, with "Man in the Mirror" resting at #1 on a singles chart that also included such hits as "The Way You Make Me Feel," "Billie Jean," "Black or White," "Smooth Criminal," "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough," "Thriller" and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." The only other songs on the chart blocking Jackson's clean sweep were a pair of singles from the Black Eyed Peas.

As befits the man who made the music video a true art form, Jackson had a complete lockdown on the Top Music Videos chart on iTunes, as well, taking the top 10 spots with such landmark clips as "Thriller," "Billie Jean," "Black or White" and "Beat It." In all, more than 40 Jackson videos made it onto the top 100 videos chart.

London's Daily Telegraph reported a similar phenomenon in the country where Jackson was slated to make his comeback in two weeks at a series of now-scuttled 50 shows at the O2 Arena in London.

A best-of album reached #1 on the U.K. charts over the weekend, and four other albums entered the top 20 alongside 43 singles in the top 200. Given the additional digital sales, the paper predicted that Jackson's posthumous sales could easily dwarf those of such fellow music icons as Elvis Presley and John Lennon.