October 21, 2019: Michael’s total streaming sales, CD sales, paid downloads for everything comes to 661,000 through today. So that’s a nice rise from July 29th, of 163,000. His 2019 sales are way up over 2018. “Leaving Neverland” had no negative effect.

July 29, 2019: Remember when the documentary “Leaving Neverland” looked like it was going to hurt Michael Jackson’s legacy?

Remember all the calls for banning Jackson’s music from radio, from the culture?

Well, it didn’t work out that way.

According to numbers from BuzzAngle, Michael’s music has soared in 2019. (I must say, I was surprised.)

To date, Jackson’s numbers for Album Sales including streaming, downloads, and CD purchases are up 15.7% over 2018. His total at this point last year was 425,330. This year it’s 498,806.

Jackson’s CD sales are down slightly, but that’s true for just about every recording artist. His streaming numbers are a different story, however. His streaming (audio, video, etc) is up 39.7% over last year. (We’re using the same 30 week period each year.)

Jackson’s total streaming so far in 2019 is 1,127,200,908. Yes, over 1 billion. Jackson has been dead since June 2009 and even then hadn’t issued a record of new material since 2001.

Roughly a third of Jackson’s album sales this year come from “Thriller” and its singles, and individual tracks.

This information should come as good news to the Jackson estate. They’ve still got a Broadway musical cooking for next year. It was briefly derailed, but with Jackson’s music’s popularity on the rise, they should feel emboldened to move ahead.

Maybe all publicity really is good publicity!