milty said:

Me three. The Vault should satisfy anyone who digs his jazz leanings.

fran said:

who wants to listen to his spaced-out funk/jazz fuzziness? they wanna hear Kiss and Let's Go Crazy. as for ONA Live, well , it is £/$50 after all.

you knwo, i'm kinda glad that Prince is returning to this type of 'underground' artist status. even tho, i miss the fact that he was once riding the crest of a very huge wave he now has come a bit full circle and is now doing things underground and independently. like i said, it would be cool if he was promoted a bit more and consistently tho.

you know, even with his post WB years, he's made a bit of lovely cash. ONA Live alone got him about nine million. Rave sold 7 million dollars worth of sales. that's not bad. even TRC sold about 1.5 million dollars.
not bad, not bad.

I thought around the World in a Day was his top selling album being that it was after Purple Rain and everyone expected a hit! I could be wrong
klick2me

milty said:

lets not forget the live gigs!!! Performances are where the REAL money comes from.

imnotsayinthisjust2bnasty said:

Doubt it. i think that's a bit of bravado on P's part. Unless he was including the Tour revenue.

fran said:

I'm kind of surprised that VBOP only sold a million considering the fact that it was a very wide release with a promotional push. Rhino (now called Warner Strategic Marketing or something) is pretty good at selling those rehashed greatest hits CDs. Cher's is still in the Top 20 after about five months!

you guys believe those numbers just because somebody posts them online? Numbers aren't even correct.

lildragon said:

The Lovesexy sales look like they must be USA sale only not rest of the world - Lovesexy was a big hit across Europe and Japan - check out the Days of Wild book - I think it lists rest of world sales at over a million units+

Ditto for Graffiti Bridge

Emancipation sold i million units world wide in first week of release - so looks pretty accurate


Do the later releases include NPGMC sales or just soundscan figures?

Btw, i'm surprised @ how low some of these numbers are. Especially Rainbow Children. This one has been available around the world in stores, was supported by a very succesfull tour and received quite some radio playtime where i live.

I'm not. Rainbow Children's not a good album. And no one in their right mind wants the man who sang Darling Nikki and Sexy Motherfucker to tell them about Jesus Christ

Actually I would say these figures are pretty accurate up to the mid 90s then they get a little blurred and harder to track.

I have read numerous books including DMSR, Days Of Wild etc and these figures sound about right.

The method by which sales are recorded has been changed over the years (I think soundscan only came in in the 90s).

Certainly I remember reading that Emancipation sold 700,000 units in USA (but three disks are counted) therefore 2.1 million certified (double platinum). It seems pretty low if Emancipation therefore only shifted another 200,000 units worldwide BUT he did not tour outside the USA to promote the album so it IS possible.

As for VBOP I had this very conversation yesterday. It was quite a success in comparison to Prince's more recent sales and WB wanted to recoup their cash so it did receive promotion.

I'm gonna look this up tonight from my sources and post them here (up to mid 90s)

BTW - D&P is his second biggest selling album - that's why WB were so keen to sign a $100 million deal off the back of it - they thought he was on the way back up!

deepabove said:

Feel free to give us the correct numbers then
[This message was edited Mon Aug 18 2:30:05 PDT 2003 by DavidEye]

i think these are the sales of the U.S!

And i think the sales of Batman could not be true!

In 1989 i red, that the album has sold more copies than the

4 albums tohether (Atwiad,Parade,sott,lovesexy) before!

I red this in different articles!And the album was 3 or 4

weeks number one on the billboard charts!

Do u know something about that?

jaypotton said:

Yes,the 'D&P' album was considered a huge commercial comeback for Prince.But unfortunately,it's success is probably what started the war with Warners.After it's success,they wrongly assumed that every subsequent album would be just as big.When the follow-up CD 'Love Symbol' didn't meet sales expectations,that's when things got really ugly.

DavidEye said:

The big question then is, whý didn't it sell that good?
OK, the album is not one of his best, but neither is D&P.
The difference is promotion.

I can release the best album EVER. But if I don't promote it, no one will buy it.

ChocolateInvasion said:

I would argue that the 'Love Symbol' CD was promoted extensively.There were lavish,expensive videos for all five singles: "Sexy MF","My Name Is Prince","7","Damn U" and "The Morning Papers".At least three of those videos were shown regularly on MTV.In addition,there was the 'Ryde Divine' TV special that aired in December 1992 and Prince even went on tour in early 1993.The promotion was very impressive.


...
[This message was edited Mon Aug 18 2:53:26 PDT 2003 by DavidEye]

DavidEye said:

I wasn't a Prince fan back then, so I don't know exactly how promotion was done.
Then how may you explain the difference between D&P and
?
Is it that D&P is a better or more commercial album?

ChocolateInvasion said:

I actually think 'Love Symbol is a stronger,better album than 'D&P'.It baffles me why it didn't sell more copies.I wonder if the rock soap opera storyline was a problem for some people? Also,perhaps the wrong singles were released.A song like "Sexy MF" is alot of fun,but it's an odd choice for a first single and radio wasn't really able to play it.I wonder how the album would have fared if stronger cuts like "The Continental" and "And God Created Woman" had been released as singles.

DavidEye said:

IMO Sexy MF was a good single. It got me interested in Prince.
The Morning Papers seemed like a good single, but didn't work for some reason.
AGCW as a single? I don't know...isn't it to slow and to cheezy for that? But that't just me not liking that song.

The Continental could have been a nice single. Some nice club-mixes added to it...can be nice. Even though Prince hasn't been really succesfull with rougher songs.
Almost all his later hits are 'slower'/softer songs.

My guess is, that a lot of people found him tó strange back then. Interesting to see what his next crazy thing is, but not really interesting to listen to or something.
Like with Marilyn Manson; interesting to read about that strange guy, but you aren't seriously considering buying his albums!

I'm actually surprised.He's sold some albums much more than I thought.Let's face it;Prince has really sold a lot of albums over a very long period of time.How many artists in history can say that?Really,it's a small number.I am shocked so many purchased NEWS and even One NITE ALONE LIVE!I mean,it is harder to get his albums and he doesn't even really promote them anymore.I think that's far better than what I imagined.

Imagine, that for every Purple Rain album sold, he collected about $0,10.
For every One Nite Alone Live album sold, he collects maybe up to $10.

16.900.000*0,10 = 1.690.000
188.002 * 10 = 1.880.020

Pretty interesting numbers (if I estimated the commission correct, based on what I've heard about those figures over the years)

timur said:

These are worlwide sales. And the figures for Batman are about right. The album spent only one week at no.1 on Billboard.

Cloudbuster said:

I'm pretty sure that 'Batman' spent several weeks at the Number one position on the Billboard charts.I actually recall checking those charts every week

DavidEye said:

Maybe that was the R&B chart.


I'm a dick edit.
[This message was edited Mon Aug 18 6:26:34 PDT 2003 by Cloudbuster]

Nope,it was the regular Top 200 Albums chart

I'm sure that someone like Langbleu can confirm this

DavidEye said:

Maybe I'm confusing it with Batdance but I'm sure both only hit the top for a week.

Cloudbuster said:

LOL...I'm telling you,Prince's 'Batman' CD was Number One for at least a whole month,here in the States.

Finally some uptodate figures! but did ONA live sell THAT many?, also does this take into account of sales via NPGMC?. i am also surprised that it also sold more than TRC, dont forget they sold TRC at the concerts also which should have bumped up sales somewhat.

Is it that D&P is a better or more commercial album?[/quote]



Yes it is more accessible than the O)+> LP. That LP was very jazzy (2the9's, Sexy MF) in my opinion.Very quirky as well (3chains of Gold, the Flow), not as commercial as D&P at all, which had many possible hits and also a great lead off single (Gett Off) which everybody loved, even Hip Hop culture.
"My Name is Prince" could not compare. Even though "Gett Off" was racy and did not get the airplay it should have (now they could play it) in relation to it's sales and Club play. D&P just had commercial all over it, we had "Gett Off", "Cream", "D&P", and "insatiable". Prince was then what so many Orgers want him to be now, a commercial sell out. It just so happened that his commercial selling out was still better and more artistic than anything else on the radio at the time. And please don't say "Purple Rain" was selling out too, cause I think Prince did'nt know that that LP was gona be as big as it was until after he had already released "When Doves Cry".