Madonna and Michael Jackson’s sales

From the New York Times:

Compared with contemporaries like Madonna and Prince, Michael Jackson still packs a hefty commercial punch, even though he hasn’t played a concert tour in the United States in more than a decade, and arguably does much less to market his recordings (regular appearances in tabloids aside).

Mr. Jackson’s last album of original material, “Invincible,” which was released in 2001, has sold an estimated 2.1 million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan data. Madonna’s last one, “American Life,” from 2003, has sold about 656,000 copies. Prince’s “Musicology,” released last year, has racked up about two million copies, but more than half of them were provided to fans as an add-on when they purchased a ticket to his best-selling tour.

Madonna still outpaces Mr. Jackson (and Prince) for overall commerce since the music industry began computerized tracking in 1991; her catalog in all has sold about 22.8 million albums since then, while Mr. Jackson’s has registered about 17.7 million copies. Her most recent greatest-hits compilation also outsold his.
Source: NYTimes.com
Thanks to Mark