Michael Jackson sold between 300,000 and 400,000 albums in the three fleeting days following his death, along with roughly 1.8 million individual digital tracks in that same span, according to Billboard Magazine.
By comparison, Jackson’s albums sold just 10,000 copies in the week before his death, while digital sales capped at 40,000.
The new figures - based on weekly tracking that cut off Sunday - will be strong enough to place three of the star’s albums (“Number Ones,” “The Essential Michael Jackson” and “Thriller”) in the top three spots on the latest Billboard Top Pop Catalogue chart, published Wednesday.
Jackson’s albums won’t appear in Billboard’s regular Top 200 Albums chart, since that list bans any disc that’s older than 18 months. Yet, ironically, this will mark the first time in Billboard’s history that a Top Catalogue entry has outsold the No. 1 disc on its regular album list. (That will be the Black Eyed Peas’ “The E.N.D.,” which moved just under 100,000 copies).
Amazing. WSJ is reporting that retailers sold 415,000 albums and 2.3 million songs were downloaded since his death.
And that doesn’t even count the people who got around the system and downloaded illegally.
