Michael Jackson's "Thriller" Hits The 30 Million Mark

There are some classic albums that continue to sell years, even decades, after their release. The Beatles Abbey Road, Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, and The Eagles Hotel California come to mind, but the album that tops all of them is Michael Jackson's Thriller which has just reached the 30 million mark in the US, according the RIAA.

Released in 1982, the album helped lift the music industry from a recession, and has gone on to sell over 100 million copies world-wide.

The album also spent a record setting 37 weeks on top of the Billboard 200 album charts.

While Adele has had some impressive numbers with both her 21 (over 30 million worldwide), and 25 (5 million in the US so far) albums, it's fairly certain that we won't see an album with the sales legs of Thriller again, at least until another consumer-attractive physical format emerges.

It's a different music delivery world that we live in today, so the real numbers to watch are the number of streams and views that an album gets. You know you have a huge hit Thriller-like hit when you hit a billion, as Taylor Swift, Katy Perry and Justin Bieber (among a few others) have found out.

That said, Thriller remains a stellar work that still holds up well today. It's the work of a lifetime that captures lightening in a bottle. About the only thing that doesn't work (at least for me) is the cover, which seems disconnected from the album title.

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Billboard 200 Album Chart To Incorporate Streams

You have to hand it to Billboard - the company recognizes that it has to change with the times and does so on a regular basis. The latest update will come on Dec. 3 when the Billboard 200 album chart will incorporate on-demand streaming and digital track sales as well as the Nielsen Soundscan point-of-sale data that the chart has been based around since 1991.

The Billboard 200 chart will now consider all major streaming services, including Spotify, Beats Music, Google Play and Xbox Music.

In determining the chart, the company will equate 10 downloads to equal 1 album sale, and 1,500 song streams to also equal 1 album sale.

Billboard will continue to publish a traditional equivalent to the former Top 200 chart called Top Album Sales that will rely on traditional Nielsen data to determine rankings.

It's been estimated that there have been more than 100 billion (yes with a "B") streams that have been listened to this year so far. It's great that those streams can now be figured into actual chart rankings.

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Jack White's Lazeretto Goes To #1 Because Of Vinyl

It used to be that you needed sales of 1 million+ and massive radio airplay to get to #1 on the Billboard 200 album chart, but those days are long over. Today the sales requirement is a lot more modest, sometimes as low as 50,000, which includes all sales of CDs, vinyl and downloads. That's why it's so interesting that Jack White's new Lazaretto album went to #1 this week, but chiefly based on his vinyl sales.

Lazeretto had total sales of around 138,000 in the week ending June 15, but 40,000 of those where vinyl copies, which also garnered him a #1 on the vinyl chart as well. To put that into perspective, the CD sales were only 41,000 and the rest were attributed downloads.

But the 40,000 vinyl sales were significant in another way. They were the highest weekly sales since Soundscan began sales measurement in 1992.

One of the things that really helped the vinyl sales of Lazeretto is the extra features that White included to make the record unique, like:

• 2 hidden vinyl-only tracks beneath the label. One plays at 78 rpm and the other at 45 rpm.
• Side A plays from the outside in.
• Dual groove technology plays an electric or acoustic intro depending upon how the needle is dropped.
• The dead wax area on side A contains a hologram designed by Tristan Duke.
• Zero compression used.
• Different mixes from the CD version.

Jack White has always pressed the limits of technology and music, and this time it appears to have paid off.

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