Best Selling Motown Singles & Albums

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These Motown numbers for the Jackson 5 and Michael have been circulating on the internet since early 2006, however, the sites we have viewed give no explanation or source or credit. We have been contacted by Alessandro and his team at Autyproject, who originally discovered the figures in a Detroit court, in a contract between Motown and Polygram.

In 1991, Motown terminated its distribution deal with MCA, and began releasing its product through Polygram. Polygram purchased Motown three years later, and during this process detailed data was compiled for all Motown artists for 1960-1990, including Michael, Jermaine, Jackie and the Jackson 5 (these are the only artists whose numbers Alessandro recorded). The numbers relate to shipments, minus any returns, and are up to the end of 1990 (not 1995, as most sites claim) - this is significant, because in 1991 the SoundScan era started.

Post-1990 figures are also courtesy of Alessandro and his team at Autyproject, who were given the figures by a Motown employee. We would like to thank Alessandro for telling us about how the pre-1991 the figures were discovered, where, for passing on numbers for Jermaine, and for his permission to reproduce them here.

Note: In his book Michael Jackson - The Magic And The Madness, J. Randy Taraborrelli wrote: '...I also reviewed a computer readout of all of Motown's exact sales figures as of December 1990. This computer readout is over ten thousand pages long and includes the album, tape and CD sales of virtually every Motown release from the time of the company's inception. I refer to these figures quite often in this book.'

With two exceptions (I'll Be There and Never Can Say Goodbye), the USA sales figures Taraborrelli gives for Jackson singles are the same as Alessandro's - however, the same is not true for albums, with Alessandro's figures being much higher than those quoted by Taraborrelli. Given sales of singles were considerably higher than album sales in the early-to-mid 1970s, the figures quoted for albums by Taraborrelli appear far more realistic. Here, all Alessandro's figures are given first, with Taraborrelli's figures given in brackets after the single/album title.

To date, just one Motown single has been certified by the RIAA. In August 1997, I Want You Back was awarded Gold & Platinum status. This equates to a shipment of one million copies - only half the figure claimed by both Alessandro & Taraborrelli.

Jackson 5 - Singles

Jackson 5 - Albums

Michael - Singles

Michael - Albums

Jermaine - Singles

Jermaine - Albums