Michael Buble’s ‘Christmas’ was the biggest selling Christmas album for 2016 as well as the previous five Christmas periods.
Buble’s six-year-old Christmas outsold the heavily marketed new Christmas album ‘Friends for Christmas’ by John Farnham and Olivia Newton-John (aka FONJie).
While the FONJie and Buble albums both sold just over 70,000 units at chart stores this Christmas, the Buble ‘Christmas’ was ahead by less than 100 copies.
However, in real sales, the Michael Buble album outsold the FONJie release by tens of thousands. Warner Music, the label behind the Buble album, sold a further 50,000 units of Buble ‘Christmas’ to Post Offices and petrol stations, neither of which are listed as chart stores and therefore sales are not counted towards the ARIA chart.
For Sony, the FONJie album was treated as a “loss leader” for 2016. Like the Buble album, the title will be reissued and promoted every Christmas and is likely to be a seasonal seller, like Buble and the Mariah Carey Christmas album before that.
Sony lifted awareness of FONJie via a $2 purchase coupon in the Sunday tabloids. Noise11 understands that generated around 10% of the total sales this year.
Michael Buble ‘Christmas’ has now sold over one million copies in Australia making it the 11th biggest seller of all-time just behind Alanis Morissette ‘Jagged Little Pill’ but ahead of Pink Floyd ‘Dark Side of the Moon’.
John Farnham ‘Whispering Jack’ is the second biggest selling album of all-time in Australia with 1.7 million sales. Meat Loaf ‘Bat Out Of Hell’ is Australia’s biggest seller with 1.75 million sales.
Olivia Newton-John is close to her first million-seller. The ‘Grease’ soundtrack, featuring ONJ, is the 13th biggest seller of all-time in Australia with sales just under the one million benchmark.
