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Post by Snow White on Aug 26, 2018 1:25:02 GMT
It wouldn't surprise me if RIAA inflated the GH record at least 10 million copies on purpose trying to diminish Thriller's achievement. Why would the RIAA do that? Eagles' sales numbers are impossible. Ever since 1993 RIIA hasn't been able to justify where those high numbers came from. It's curious when the allegations hit, it's been a war to dethrone Thriller. I tried to search myself the numbers on Nielsen SoundScan but I was not able to find them, so this is from mjcris in MJJC and he got the numbers from NS. February 1976 (1,000,000 (US) albums sold) 1976 - August 1990 (US) 11,000,000 more sales!!! (800,000 (US) sales each year!!!!?) 12 million (US) albums sold!!! 1990 - December 1993 (US) 2,000,000 more sales!!!(666,666 (US) sales each year!!!!?) 14 million (US) albums sold!! 1993 - June 1995 (US) 8,000,000 more sales!!!?? (5,052,000 (US) sales each year!!!!? ( 19 Months!!!)) 22 million (US) albums sold!!! real sales (Soundscan) between December 1993 - June 1995 was 919.000 sales (515,000 (US) sales each year!!!!? (19 Months!!!)) the RIAA officialy can not explain why it was certified 22 times. they can not explain where the 8 million sales coming from. 1995 - November 1999 (US) 4,000,000 more sales!!!?? ( 1,000,000 (US) sales each year!!!!?) 26 million (US) albums sold!!! November 1999 RIAA certified it 26times. it unseated "Thriller" at the top of the RIAA's all-time ranking. 1 month before the millenium. sure ^^... 1999 - 2006 (US) 3,000,000 more sales!!!?? (430,000 (US) sales each year!!!!?) 29 million (US) albums sold!!! 2006 - 2009 (US) 404,000 more sales!!!?? (135,000 (US) sales each year!!!!?) 29 million (US) albums sold!! 2009 - 2018 (US) 9,000,000 more sales!!!?? ( 1,000,000 (US) sales each year!!!!?) 38 million (US) albums sold!!! |
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Post by Thriller on Aug 26, 2018 4:15:45 GMT
Just a fleeting visit. Saw this news days after it occurred and saw how big it was (been out of the loop really). I figured there would be an explanation. I thought I'd share it and it appears to be this: Credit Edu from UKMix: The downloads/streaming/video "sales" data for any song (or "single") CAN be used for both the song certification AND the album to which belong. You can see that this rule was clearly applied to the Taylor Swift albums and songs ("singles" or tracks).Of course I don't agree with this highly artificial way of improving the albums certifications, especially when it is mixed up with the old certifications methods where singles and albums were separately certified...But there is one exception to the above rule.Labels have to choose between using the "sales" data of a song OR in a compilation OR in the album where the song originally appeared.Example: in the case of the song "Hotel California" the label Warner decided to use the "sales" data of this song in the album "Hotel California" instead of using it on the compilation "Greatest Hits Vol.2". It's easy to understand why, using it in the album the number of additional Platinuns achieved is higher than if it was used in "GH Vol.2".In the case of "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" Warner decided the opposite. The "sales" data of each song in this compilation was used in the compilation certification and so CAN'T be used in future certifications of the Eagles first four albums (unless RIAA once more change the rules...).---As an aside, Garth Brooks has a huge total with the RIAA. While one can't doubt his popularity in the States he has used certain methods to get such a total. In 2007, as part of his deal with Walmart, they were selling six CDs of his for $9.72. That's $1.62 per CD! The set was limited to 2 million units and all 2 million were sold. It seems that each CD was then awarded two platinum awards per disc. Thus making those 2 million sales equal 12 million. There are different methods for double albums and box sets. To me, the RIAA needs greater transparancy. With that said, there are different methods going on, from many different eras, and they're seemingly combined. --- About The Eagles' Greatest Hits having such a huge leap from 14X Platinum in December 1993 to 22X Platinum in June 1995, this is down to music club sales. Music club sales weren't always counted. Thus why there is such a huge leap. Music clubs were very popular. MJD at Chartmasters explains The Eagles and their music club sales better that I ever could. Other artists also included: chartmasters.org/2016/10/understanding-music-clubs-part-2/--- Its been a while but I hope you are all well. Over and out.  |
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Post by respect77 on Aug 26, 2018 5:16:15 GMT
Just a fleeting visit. Saw this news days after it occurred and saw how big it was (been out of the loop really). I figured there would be an explanation. I thought I'd share it and it appears to be this: Credit Edu from UKMix: The downloads/streaming/video "sales" data for any song (or "single") CAN be used for both the song certification AND the album to which belong. You can see that this rule was clearly applied to the Taylor Swift albums and songs ("singles" or tracks).Of course I don't agree with this highly artificial way of improving the albums certifications, especially when it is mixed up with the old certifications methods where singles and albums were separately certified...But there is one exception to the above rule.Labels have to choose between using the "sales" data of a song OR in a compilation OR in the album where the song originally appeared.Example: in the case of the song "Hotel California" the label Warner decided to use the "sales" data of this song in the album "Hotel California" instead of using it on the compilation "Greatest Hits Vol.2". It's easy to understand why, using it in the album the number of additional Platinuns achieved is higher than if it was used in "GH Vol.2".In the case of "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" Warner decided the opposite. The "sales" data of each song in this compilation was used in the compilation certification and so CAN'T be used in future certifications of the Eagles first four albums (unless RIAA once more change the rules...).That still doesn't explain it to me as Thriller' singles are all counted to Thriller as well and they are much more successful and famous songs than GH's songs. Both as singles and as streams. Which song on GH is as big as Billie Jean, Beat It or Thriller?  So to me the idea that singles sales/streams would help GH overtake Thriller is unrealistic too. I understand there is some trickery with the club sales too. Barbee said on LSA (she is also a member here) that she used to be a member of Columbia House Club and she remembers buying the Eagles GH album for 1 penny! Now if clubs sold that album for that cheap I can believe it selling that massive amount through clubs as claimed. However, then it is unfair to add its numbers to the albums' tally. That's basically free giveaway and it is not for nothing that Billboard/SoundScan doesn't count albums sold under a certain price. It's just unfair. If it wasn't a regularity though that the album was sold for 1 penny through clubs, but just some one-off and normally it was sold at a much more normal price then I do not buy the club sales claims for the Eagles. That's because it would mean that 2/3 of this album's sales came through club sales. I understand that clubs were once big, but to me it seems unrealistic that 2/3 of an album's sales would come through club sales. And why just this album then? Why is this not a tendency for all other albums that the majority of their sales would come through club sales? MJD's article doesn't give receipts, he just says "well, all those big surges probably came from club sales" and that's it. For example: He simply accepts the claim that club sales make up for the huge difference (even though he remarks at the beginning of the paragraph that clubs were on the decline already dugring this period). I am not that convinced about this, to be honest. Clubs have fallen already, yet more than half of this album's sales (and only this album's) still come through clubs? To me it rather seems like that the Eagles label took advantage of the fact that SoundScan didn't monitor club sales and thus they made overinflated club sales claims. The Eagles GH album certification history is just full of unexplained HUGE surges with no receipts to back them up. They might have tried to explain the 8 million jump from 1993 to 1995 with club sales, but it is an increasingly less convincing explanation as clubs have fallen over time. And these days clubs have fallen. So what is the explanation now for the album being overcertified by 7 million since its last certification in 2006? And as a sidenote: I find it funny how it is always said that rock fans and rock artists do not care about records and commercial success etc. I have seen this claim about the Eagles as well. Why would they overcertify their albums, they do not come across as ones who care about their sales and records? Yes, that was an argument. LOL. But by all signs they do care and very much so - either they themselves or their their label or both. If they do not care then why all the trickery to overcertify this album by such a huge margin? Why all the effort to artificially push it to overtake Thriller? |
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Post by Thriller on Aug 26, 2018 5:49:18 GMT
About club sales, from my knowledge on them, there would be numerous deals on albums. There was even such deals as buy X amount get an album free. How frequent albums were given away for almost free I don't know. At Columbia it seems the album was regularly advertised through the years. So, quite possibly, The Eagles' Greatest Hits album gained regular sales given the offers on and the frequent advertising.
I should add it wasn't just music club sales that were later added, I forgot other about Country retailers:
I don't think it'd be possible to make overinflated club sales claims as they'd have to show proof of sales to the RIAA.
It certainly is a huge rise since 2006. I personally feel it must have come from somewhere in some way. Looking at MJD's figures for The Eagles, 'Take It Easy' has 450,000 physical singles sales and 1,810,000 digital. If as Edu said they're adding singles to album totals that song alone gives them over 2 million.
If that method has been used, and seemingly Taylor Swift also did it (and probably others), then it makes the list totally misleading.
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Post by respect77 on Aug 26, 2018 6:42:58 GMT
About club sales, from my knowledge on them, there would be numerous deals on albums. There was even such deals as buy X amount get an album free. How frequent albums were given away for almost free I don't know. At Columbia it seems the album was regularly advertised through the years. So, quite possibly, The Eagles' Greatest Hits album gained regular sales given the offers on and the frequent advertising. I should add it wasn't just music club sales that were later added, I forgot other about Country retailers: I don't think it'd be possible to make overinflated club sales claims as they'd have to show proof of sales to the RIAA. But this is just guesswork, not receipts. If we make assumptions about unscanned territories and we consider it possible that most of the Eagles records were sold through unscanned channels then why not make the same assumption for other albums, including Thriller? I am not sure how "proof" works with the RIAA. I read the RIAA basically certifies things based on what labels report to them. If the labels are less than honest with that and they are doing a little trickery here and there would they know or would they even care? As long as labels pay them for the certification they seem to be happy. The actual receipts show that these numbers for the Eagles are highly inflated. Not just by a couple of millions (which could be realisticly explained with unscanned channels), but basically the Eagles GH albums seems to be overcertified by some 10-15 million at least! That's enormous and to me no convincing explanation to this has ever been given. Or if RIAA indeed has receipts they should be transparent about it. But even when Rolling Stone asked them now about the enormous 10 million jump in the album Hotel California's certification they weren't willing to "divulge". I find that extremely fishy. With extraordinary claims you need extraordinary proof (as Carl Sagan once said) and these huge jumps, not supported by available chart data, are certainly extraordinary claims and require an explanation. It's like they just rely on people thinking "well, the RIAA must know something we don't, they would certainly not certify something they do not have proof for" - but is that really so? Why not then make it transparent? In the 2006-2018 period club sales aren't a factor any more. We can see the SoundScan data, Billboard chart history, stream statistics. And the receipts nowhere near support the 9 million jump. The receipits support around 1.5-2 million of it. So once again (not the first time in this album's certification history) huge unexplained numbers are added and you cannot blame that on club sales any more. (And exactly this makes me suspicious about the club sales claims as well, now in the hindsight. With or without club sales it seems to be a tendency with this album that it gets massively overcertified all the time.) Singles aren't added by a 1:1 ratio to album sales. So 2 million single sales don't translate to 2 million album sales. It's much less in album sales. Based on MJD's post quoted below it seems like a 1:10 ratio, so 2 million sold of Take It Easy would only mean an addition of 200,000 albums, not 2 million. Here is what MJD wrote about Thriller's singles in September 2017 (this does not even include physical sales, just downloads): chartmasters.org/2017/09/understanding-riaa-label-audits-the-case-of-michael-jackson/11/On the singles front GH is simply no competition to Thriller. If anything singles should increase Thriller's advantage, not make GH overtake it. Streams as well. On all streaming platforms Thriller does much better than Eagles GH. |
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Post by Thriller on Aug 26, 2018 15:01:37 GMT
I totally forgot about the ratio of singles. Good point.
According to Edu the MJ Estate used digital sales and streaming to send Thriller to 33X Platinum which would explain why The Essential was eligible for a higher certification but wasn't eligible to get it due to songs from Thriller already been used towards Thriller's total. So The Eagles' sudden increase is extremely bizarre.
'I am not sure how "proof" works with the RIAA. I read the RIAA basically certifies things based on what labels report to them. If the labels are less than honest with that and they are doing a little trickery here and there would they know or would they even care? As long as labels pay them for the certification they seem to be happy. '
The RIAA's proof does appear to be based on what labels tell them. Although, surely they must check with retailers:
Supporting documents:
Sales Report:
Choose one option, but the submitted report must show domestic shipments only and the net of returns):
Provide a copy directly from your sales system
Provide a screenshot of Excel data
Label Copy of Product (or “one-sheet”) containing product and packaging info.
---
I wonder if they've shipped a ton of copies and then applied for an RIAA certification.
---
That first post I made I deem irrelevant as that doesn't seem to explain it. I agree, I also mentioned it, about the lack of transparency. I think that is probably the case for everything they certify though.
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Post by Snow White on Aug 26, 2018 15:06:12 GMT
Even if it's disliked or hated by the fans, I love the fact The Girl Is Mine streams better than 7 songs of the GH.
If people want to explain the 93-95 sales with club sales, who were still buying the GH record if most of the Eagles fan demographic are between their 50s and 70s and because of their fan base ages, who are still buying the record if people hardly buy CDs or vinyls.
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Post by respect77 on Aug 26, 2018 15:28:56 GMT
Even if it's disliked or hated by the fans, I love the fact The Girl Is Mine streams better than 7 songs of the GH. If people want to explain the 93-95 sales with club sales, who were still buying the GH record if most of the Eagles fan demographic are between their 50s and 70s and because of their fan base ages, who are still buying the record if people hardly buy CDs or vinyls. Yes, I was thinking about that too. No disrespect to the Eagles, but I think they are less appealing to the younger generations than MJ and they are largely a nostalgia act with mostly older fans. Which also makes this jump ahead of Thriller weird. |
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Post by Thriller on Aug 26, 2018 17:12:21 GMT
Scrap what I said above, I was wrong, and don't believe the explanation I saw covers it. This is very odd. Especially with Hotel California also receiving such a sharp rise.
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Post by respect77 on Aug 27, 2018 4:06:21 GMT
So a fan wrote directly to the RIAA to ask them about how they count and how they certify albums. They absolutely refuse transparency.   I find this extremely fishy. I mean the methods of how an organization certifies records aren't exactly military secrets, so why the refusal to transparency? This is absolutely fishy. As I see it they also talk about "recalculation" so this seems to hint at them not only certifying the relevant period (2006-2018) but going back in time and modifying old counts. So someone now can go back and say "hey, you know, we didn't sell 12 million of this album in the 1980s but let's make it 20 million instead"? Just very, very fishy IMO. And if it is not based on actual sales data then what the hell is it based on? I know that initially one difference between the RIAA and SoundScan was, that the latter counted actual sales while the RIAA counted shipments (regardless of whether those albums were then sold). But I cannot imagine it as an explanation for that enormous difference either because well, if you are a retailer you order a lot of an album and if it doesn't sell then you don't order more. So while the shipment data is always a bit bigger than the sales data, but it cannot be bigger by some 10-15 million because if an album doesn't sell retailers simply won't order that many. |
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Post by Angel of Light on Aug 27, 2018 10:52:43 GMT
So a fan wrote directly to the RIAA to ask them about how they count and how they certify albums. They absolutely refuse transparency. I find this extremely fishy. I mean the methods of how an organization certifies records aren't exactly military secrets, so why the refusal to transparency? This is absolutely fishy. As I see it they also talk about "recalculation" so this seems to hint at them not only certifying the relevant period (2006-2018) but going back in time and modifying old counts. So someone now can go back and say "hey, you know, we didn't sell 12 million of this album in the 1980s but let's make it 20 million instead"? Just very, very fishy IMO. And if it is not based on actual sales data then what the hell is it based on? I know that initially one difference between the RIAA and SoundScan was, that the latter counted actual sales while the RIAA counted shipments (regardless of whether those albums were then sold). But I cannot imagine it as an explanation for that enormous difference either because well, if you are a retailer you order a lot of an album and if it doesn't sell then you don't order more. So while the shipment data is always a bit bigger than the sales data, but it cannot be bigger by some 10-15 million because if an album doesn't sell retailers simply won't order that many. What an incredibly vague answer they gave. Wow. Agree with many of you. I'm suspicious about this all as well. I do believe the sales numbers have been counted in such a way to intentionally push down Thriller. |
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Post by Deleted on Aug 30, 2018 10:52:18 GMT
All these arguments are compelling and I also don't accept how all these Country Rock and MOR artists can surpass a truly classic work like Thriller. The RIAA is controlled by whites wanting to downplay success by Black artists as much as possible and up play that of mediocre white acts (If you are going to cook a white artist's figures over Black artists, at least choose a good one like say David Bowie or Elton John rather Garth Brooks or the Eagles).
Accepting record club sales is also unfair and the bit about 6 Garth Brooks CD's for $9 bucks is definite cheating.But did this rubbish also happen to Thriller, even I remember those record clubs with ads like "12 albums for a cent" and then 99c each. In reality the first 6 albums were free or cheap, but you had to pay regular club prices and a membership fee to keep in the club afterwards. the regular prices were barely cheaper than wrekka stow ones and they whacked on ridiculous postage and packaging prices. I also heard if you didn't buy enough albums, you were sent and charged recommeded albums which were always something shitty or something you did not want (Kenny Gee etc).
Fortunately digital music and streaming and ripping dealt these clubs back into the past, but yes I am not buying this crap for one second. Thriller is still number one and at least as an original album.
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Post by Snow White on Aug 30, 2018 13:46:53 GMT
LOL, I LOVE how GWR still shamed RIAA's lie.
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Post by respect77 on Aug 30, 2018 14:13:46 GMT
Apparently John Branca was asked about it in Vegas at the MJ fan event and he said (no doubt to also please the fans LOL) that he thinks the Eagles record is bogus and they will ask for a new certification for Thriller as well.
There is also an interesting fact that fans on social media are pondering: the Eagles manager is Irvin Azoff (who topped Billboard's "Most Powerful Men in the Music Industry" list in 2012) and apparently he has been obsessed with this record. He is also someone who financed a rival of MJ in the bid for the Beatles catalog. Apparently then he was asked by Branca to revoke his support for those people and he did, but maybe since he has had regrets and bitterness, who knows. Anyway, food for a conspiracy theory, LOL.
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Post by HIStoric on Aug 30, 2018 22:03:26 GMT
Apparently John Branca was asked about it in Vegas at the MJ fan event and he said (no doubt to also please the fans LOL) that he thinks the Eagles record is bogus and they will ask for a new certification for Thriller as well. I mean, I could see Branca genuinely thinking that. Even if you want to be somewhat pessimistic about it, a win for Michael Jackson makes the Estate and therefore makes him look good. But fingers crossed it kicks ass! There's been a lot of streaming of the album ( especially in the context of a catalogue album) since late-2015/early-2016 when the numbers were last calculated for Thriller's certifications  |
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