https://www.billboard.com/music/mus...s-linger-best-selling-album-all-time-8503903/
“After
Thriller being the recognized No. 1 album seller in the United States for a decade, we were obviously surprised and concerned when we were overtaken despite all metrics we use stating otherwise,” Sony Music Entertainment CEO
Rob Stringer said in a statement earlier in 2019, before the documentary premiered.
“All we are asking for is transparency in the process so we can understand how sales numbers changed so dramatically at such short notice.”
Sony’s questions arose due to its own calculations, based on Nielsen Music data, that Their Greatest Hits had sold just 1.3 million units since 2006, with streams and track sales bringing the total to 2.3 million album equivalent units — 6.7 million units short of the RIAA’s figure.
Billboard found at least one reason for the big uptick: The data team at Warner Music Group, the Eagles’ label, had undertaken an exhaustive forensic search to find all sales and royalty reports dating back to 1976, when the album was first issued, sources say. To retrieve the data, WMG’s team visited Iron Mountain, a renowned document-management company that stores historic objects and files in underground protected vaults, and interviewed former label financial executives to ensure they had correctly interpreted the sales and royalties numbers found there. The record company then provided the documentation to the RIAA for certification on Aug. 20, 2018. The RIAA told
Billboard that the certification was approved by its auditor, Gelfand Rennert & Feldman.
Jackson estate co-executor and Ziffren Brittenham partner/head of music John Branca is skeptical. “When you review the analysis of the [Eagles] record’s performance over the last 20 years, this sudden certification of newly discovered albums that were uncounted calls into question the accuracy of the RIAA certifications,” he said in January. “Record companies regularly restrict audits of sales to a three-year period. I’ve never seen an audit that goes back 20 years.”
About Thriller, between 85 to 91 the sales don't have been counted in USA, it's a huge lost for the album, for example that mean the first CD sales (new technology in late 80's) during these period have been completly ignored, that put lot of sales, keep in mind that during this times the Vinyls have near completly disappear for the CD.
it's not just about Thriller, for Grease soundtrack it's worst, The Eagles have been favored for whatever reason, but it's clearly something wrong with their relation with the RIAA, so yes we can call that cheating or an agenda, in this case that should be Thriller the number one with far more albums, 54 millions I think include all the shipments, so it was not some crazy numbers; and according the RIAA The Eagles is not too far of these numbers (I'm sure they will find some magic numbers soon) when they shouldn't be the first seller, nor the second and honestly I"m not sure if they should be in the top 10, they were never been seen like the biggest seller (with this album or not), before Thriller it was, if I remember correctly, Saturday Night Fever and the Fleetwood Mac album "Rumors" in USA, maybe Grease but I'm not sure.
