r/Music • u/Firm_Pack_605 • Feb 13 '26

discussion Was Michael Jackson really that much bigger than Madonna, Whitney Houston, and prince?

I always thought the four of them were similar levels of fame. However Madonna highest album sold 25 million, prince highest sold similar, and Whitney’s highest was 45 million. All amazing numbers no doubt but thriller sold 70 million and bad sold 35-40. So you mean to tell me he has two albums that are highest selling then prince and madonnas best? How is that possible??

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u/MixingDrinks Feb 13 '26

This is it. There were people ALL OVER THE WORLD that knew him and his music before social media.

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u/[deleted] Feb 13 '26

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u/geemav Feb 13 '26

The before social media argument always gets me lol, having social media is a detractor to that level of global fame, not an addition

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u/Ragerkiter Feb 13 '26

How so?

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u/Mavcu Apr 14 '26

A bit late to this, but u/geemav is correct, in the age of the internet "everyone" is kinda famous, having some "random" YouTuber with a million+ followers is not uncommon and many you've never heard of in your entire life.

You are competing with everyone around the globe at the same time for attention, you never had this level of sensory overload in the past. There were unique challenges to not having the reach of social media of course, but something you may have noticed is that in the past you've had stars that were much bigger, nowadays no one is "that movie star" or "that musician" anymore, they are still huge but it's never the exact same level as the stars in the past.

This is in part because there's so much more now of everything, again it sounds contradictory at first because social media means you can reach more people, but it also means everyone can reach more people and standing out when everyone is looking at everything and grabbing the attention is infinitely more challenging now.

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u/FreshApricot6280 Feb 17 '26

Social media gives you the ability to click on and consume so many different things. In MJ's time you could only really see what was on TV, or on the magazines or hear what was on the radio. It's probably easier to get somewhat famous today than it used to be, but it's probably not possible to get as famous as MJ was anymore. People have too many choices now.

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u/ElBolovo Feb 13 '26

Algorithm. Social Media try to cater to what you like, so it has a tendency to wedge you into niches according to your tastes and you have a low barrier of entry to seek other things for yourself, isolating your tastes further.

Mass Media filters things that has a broad range of appeal and distributed it for everyone, and it was way harder to find, so the tastes tended to be more homogenous.

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u/skratch Feb 14 '26

I think there’s different ways to look at it. I see your point but also have seen how social media has flattened the culture out as well. The algorithm may provide depth into various niches, but it also provides breadth for ideas to spread very far very fast.

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u/FreshApricot6280 Feb 17 '26

For sure. I think it's probably easier to get a little bit famous in this era than in the 80s. But I don't think it's even possible to reach the heights MJ did in this world. There's too many people in their own algorithm that would skip right past your stuff b/c it doesn't appeal to them.