Michael Jackson's Music Sales Reclaim Top of the Charts

By ETHAN SMITH

Sales of Michael Jackson's music have skyrocketed since he died suddenly last Thursday, returning the late pop star to the top-selling spot he held more than once during his career.

U.S. retailers sold 415,000 albums by Michael Jackson in the four days following his death, according to Nielsen Co.'s SoundScan, compared with fewer than 10,000 copies in the previous full week. More than half of those album sales were digital downloads made on services such as Apple Inc.'s iTunes and Amazon.com Inc.'s AmazonMP3.

In addition, the artist sold more than 2.3 million digitally downloaded songs since his death. That compares with 37,000 song downloads during the previous week.

Albums of the Jackson 5 sold 32,000 copies since the singer's death, compared with about 1,000 during the previous full week.

Mr. Jackson currently occupies the top nine spots on the SoundScan catalog chart, which tracks albums released more than two years ago. His most-popular albums in the past few days have been: "Number Ones," "The Essential Michael Jackson" and "Thriller."

The increase far surpasses the jump in Nirvana sales following lead singer Kurt Cobain's suicide in April 1994. The band's four studio albums sold a total 68,000 copies the week after Mr. Cobain killed himself, according to contemporary SoundScan reports, up from 29,000 copies the previous week.

Mr. Jackson's "Thriller" is routinely ranked as one of the two best-selling albums in U.S. history, with 28 million copies shipped to retailers nationally, according to the Recording Industry Association of America. The Eagles' "Their Greatest Hits 1971-1975" has shipped 29 million copies, according to the RIAA.

Write to Ethan Smith at ethan.smith@wsj.com