Janet Jackson Weak Album Sales

Starting today, new posts from this blog would focus mostly on the music genre. I will still have the weekly Billboard countdown and will also create articles about the current songs and music videos, news about the musicians and many more. Of course, CD reviews for the music lover like me.

Months ago, my personal posts have been transferred to my new personal blog at Makoyskie.com and lately this blog doesn't look like a personal blog anymore. In the coming days, you will see more changes in this blog. A possible header picture change, a different title and also a new template with a music touch.

For the first article of "Makoy's All About Music", I will discuss about Janet Jackson. Janet Jackson is one of the top ten best-selling artists in the history of contemporary music for having sold over 100 million records worldwide. She is one of the household names in the 80's especially during her "Control" and "Rhythm Nation" albums. With the two albums, her 3rd and 4th album, she made her own name even winning the Grammy Awards in 1986 and 1989.

In 1991, she signed to Virgin Records with a contract value of $32-50 million. "Janet.", "The Velvet Rope", "All For You", "Damita Jo" and "20 Y.O." were the albums that she has done for Virgin Records. In 1996 before the Velvet Rope album, she renewed her contract in Virgin with a whopping $80 million value.

Based on the Nielsen SoundScan, it looks like the start of her weak album sales hit on her last album with Virgin Records, "20 Y.O." It only sold 655,000 records compared to her highest sales of 7,005,000 for "Janet." That led to the resignation Jermaine Dupri, the head of urban music at Virgin. Her latest album "Discipline" is now under Island Records and was released last February 2008. It debuted number one at Billboard's Hot 200 Album Charts but didn't stay long in the countdown. It only managed to sell 441,000.

Here is the other figures on her other albums from 1991 onwards:
"janet." (1993), 7,005,000
"The Velvet Rope" (1997), 3,227,000
"All for You" (2001), 3,105,000
"Design of a Decade 1986/1996" (1995), 2,411,000
"Damita Jo" (2004), 1,002,000
"20 Y.O." (2006), 655,000
"Discipline" (2008), 441,000

Is Janet losing her control? I think what she should do is to improve her material and try to evolve her music in the current era. I have mentioned before on my old post that she is somewhat stuck in the 80's. Mariah Carey and Madonna are now on different leagues yet she is still "moaning" in most of her songs. Just my opinion.

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