After the ‘King of Pop’s’ untimely death last Thursday, interest in Michael Jackson’s music has seen a major resurgence, sending sales to the top of the charts and making Jackson a best-seller once again.

According to Nielsen Co.’s SoundScan, since Jackson’s death, retailers have sold 415,000 albums in just four days following his passing, compared to less than 10,000 copies sold in the previous week.

Of the 415,000 sold, 58% were digitally downloaded.

"In general, when the news broke about Michael Jackson’s passing, we saw people go to the Internet to look to see what happened, bringing lots of traffic to big search engines,” said Billy Johnson, Jr., Senior Program Director of Yahoo! Music. “And it appears on the Billboard top album charts he has secured some of the spots for the top selling albums.”

More than half of the albums sold came through digital downloads from online retailers like Apple’s iTunes and Amazon.com’s AmazonMP3.

Data from Nielson SoundScan said three titles by the artist had more than 100,000 sales in the U.S., including “Number Ones,” “The Essential Michael Jackson,” and “Thriller.”

“When record sales are taking a big hit, I think it says a lot that people went out after his passing and bought records they already had, newer copies and greatest hits packages, which signifies what an impact he made,” Johnson said. “In terms of the music industry, there has been a huge argument as to who is the best pop singer of all time, and I think this would put a feather in Michael’s cap to say it is him.”

Meanwhile, 2.6 million songs by Jackson as a solo act or with the Jackson 5, were downloaded digitally through last Sunday. Jackson has become the first artist to sell more than a million song downloads in a single week.

The surge in Jackson’s sales could mean things are looking up for the music industry’s overall sales, while providing help for retailers around the world.

Johnson spoke with Amoeba Music in Hollywood, which reported an increase in sales immediately after Jackson’s death was announced.

“It has a lot to do with impulse purchases. However, in general, he sells about 300,000 albums a year, and to think he is selling this much in such a short time, says a lot,” Johnson added. “It will die down, but I think the amount of records he sells per year will increase over the next few years.”