Thursday, February 28, 2008

Michael Jackson - The Case Of The Missing #2 Album

For the second week in a row, Jack Johnson's Sleep Through The Static and Michael Jackson's Thriller 25 are the top two albums in the U.S. Or are they?

They are, if you look at the Top Comprehensive Albums chart compiled by Nielsen/SoundScan. Johnson is #1 for the week with sales of 105,000 copies, trailed by Jackson with 63,000 copies. (The gap between the two is wider than it was last week, when just 14,000 copies separated them.)

But Jackson is nowhere to be found on the list of Top Current Albums that is published each week (as The Billboard 200) in Billboard magazine. The top 10 from that chart is reprinted in countless newspapers and websites around the world, including this one. The reason for the omission, as I explained last week, is that Nielsen/SoundScan and Billboard exclude catalog titles-defined as albums that are 18 months old or older-from the main chart. (Continuously running "current" hits are exempted.)

The idea is to make more room on the chart for new albums, which need every break they can get. This week, the rule resulted in 31 older albums being removed from Top Current Albums and shifted over to Top Catalog Albums. Just four of these 31 titles would have ranked in the top 100: Thriller 25, which would have ranked #2; Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers' Greatest Hits, #63; Guns N' Roses' Greatest Hits, #64, and Bob Marley & the Wailers' Legend, #84.
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