Michael Jackson's record sales top 9 million since his death

story by the Los Angeles Times
written by Chris Lee and Randy Lewis


The surge in sales of Michael Jackson's music catalog continued Wednesday with the announcement that his recordings dominated the pop charts for the third consecutive week, and a source told The Times that more than 9 million of Jackson's albums have been sold worldwide since his death June 25.

Nielsen SoundScan said Jackson's albums sold 1.1 million copies over the last seven days and had combined to sell an impressive 2.3 million in the U.S. in the nearly three weeks since he died.

Sony Music, which controls the catalog of his solo adult recordings, declines as a policy to comment on sales issues, but a spokeswoman for the label did not dispute the accuracy of the 9-million figure provided by the source, who has knowledge of Jackson's global album sales but is not authorized to speak on the matter. Jackson's music has also topped the pop charts in countries including France, Germany, Australia and the U.K. during the same period.

The dramatic influx of income for the singer's estate illustrates what's at stake in the legal battle to name an executor for Jackson's will.

Although Jackson was about $400 million in debt to various financial institutions, people with knowledge of the singer's business holdings say his assets outweigh his debt by at least $200 million -- and those assets are only increasing with the tremendous record sales.

In the meantime, the popularity of Jackson's music, memorabilia and even performances inspired by his body of work shows no sign of diminishing.

"We're seeing a real outpouring from fans and consumers who are looking to connect and get past what's happened -- the tragedy of his death -- through attaching themselves to his music," said Gary Arnold, senior entertainment officer for the national music retailer Best Buy.

Sales of Jackson's music have remained "exceedingly strong" in the weeks since his death, Arnold said. "They're buying a pretty broad spectrum of his work; they aren't just buying 'Thriller' but a broad range of titles from throughout Michael's career. Realistically we expect to see people connecting at unprecedented levels through Christmas."

Amazon.com typically doesn't discuss sales figures, but in the wake of Jackson's death company spokesman Andrew Herdener said "the customer response to Michael Jackson's death has been staggering and unprecedented -- we took more orders for Jackson CDs and MP3s in the first 24 hours after his death than we did in the previous 11 years of the Amazon music store."

There were other manifestations of the insatiable appetite for all things Jackson. The performer's songs were punched up just shy of 1 million times on the 38,000 jukeboxes operated by TouchTunes, the nation's leading jukebox supplier. Thirteen of his songs, either solo or with the Jackson 5, were in the company's Top 100 songs for the period, and his recordings occupied half the slots in the Top 10.