On Amazon.com (biggest internet music supplier since their merger with CDnow.com)

ONA has been ranked 210 - 155 (at its best) - 204 (now)

I say it's pretty good considering the "just-about-NO-Promo" and the price of the boxset.

Now, who can do the math...Live album, no promo, no record company, no middle man...Prince must earn about 20$-25$ off each ONA.

How many ONA do you think will be sold?

[There is a lot of 'magic' behind the amazon.com rankings, though... it's hard to get a good feel for sales from it, I think. Still, interesting (but please we don't need every days' ranking sent in! It's not news until it breaks the top 25 or so -Ben]

More than that. It's about $30-$34 on each $50 dollar.
The booklet and the 4 CDs are really cheap to produce.

add the rankings of following amazon on it:

amazon.co.uk united kingdom
amazon.fr france
amazon.jp japan
amazon.de germany
amazon.ca canada

and all the other online cd shops.

Yeah, let's not get into a numbers game when the quality of this music is so good.
With the only promotion, so far, being the Leno show and the great reviews (or mini-reviews) in various magazines and newpapers, it doesn't take a genius to figure out chart impact is gonna be minimal to non-existent.
With no radio airplay, word of mouth is gonna be a big help. I've been playing ONA Live at home and in my car with many people loving it and expressing an interest in it. And a couple of people are receiving it as gifts from me.
Just enjoy the music and don't worry so much where ONA Live! gonna end up on a chart of mostly mediocre product.

Realistically I think prince must realise about chart position-do Live albums ever sell massively well? I think Prince seems to think in terms of posterity-it is the only thing that makes sense-he goes well beyond mere integrity. volume wise the Price makes sense because whether this was $15 or $100 it would probably sell the same-Prince in the main is preaching to the converted and it seems to me he likes it that way. If a new audience was the game a nice tidy 11 track album with the usual gumph would be released-but I doubt we will ever see that again.. We all seem to want to see Prince in the top three and yet ironically it is the frustration of Prince that keeps us bonded to him. Prince will never see the top three until Prince has a burning ambition to see it also and even then it may be too late for him-but I am sure it is not a concern of his-money either ideologically or in real terms will never be an issue. How much did he earn at Vegas? The demographic of a mainstream album would not have paid that for a concert-Prince has moved more into that Barbra Streisand adult audience arena (I do not mean literally).

As for price in general he has always priced himself out of the market-that isn't a criticism. Emancipation as a statement was a commercial nightmare-people couldn't just throw it in a basket and try it out-price wise people had to make a commitment to it from the beginning and I think that album has set the tone for Prince ever since-but that is up to him. The music has become far more liberated than 1990 -1994 where Prince was slipping into a charicature of himself-I think leavinf WB's would have happened anyway-because the commodity of his image was actually becoming his music-howver good it was.

Justin I fully agree with U.

BTW, I saw somewhere that Emancipation went triple platinum over the years?

Is that true? and if it is...How many sales does it take to get platinum?

I think this one will do """very""" good because of word to mouth, and also "old times" fans may want to try it out because of the "old times" tunes in it.


Time will tell.

Smiley said:

Internationally and the US platinum is 1 million sales but for example the UK is 300,000. So yes Emancipation did go triple platinum but I read that this is because it was atriple album therefore it actually sold 1 million-but that is fair enough for a 26 pound album as it was in the UK. prince gave the whole profit to a hospital fund so I think that highlights that he does not need the cash because if ever he needed it it would have been then-in an uncertain legal situation. I think this album will be regarded as the Crystal Ball set or possibly even more so-due to the sheer novelty value and packaging-that sold 250,000 copies. If as the other messages indicate here that would net Prince with over $7 million. I was reading an article the other day that a major artist with all the marketing involved needs to sell 4 million units for an album to start earning them money-so even though prince has lost ,ainstream exposure-financially he has gained massively because if he can rely on the hardcore to purchase music that audience will not get tired of two or three or four albums every two years so in terms of product Prince has the potential to earn more than anyone. what he would lose is royalties of airplay which can be massive. prince should loosen up his back catalogue-look at Nothing Compares 2u-obscure for the Family but sold millions later-Prince has the potential to do this with loads of songs. People hate Prince just for being Prince -the music is inconsequential to them-somebody else singing it would release the song to a commercial audience and Prince could sit pretty collecting royalty cheques-though I assume that in most cases that would go against his grain

i don`t think that this box-set becomes a sales-hit. it`s much to expensiv for non-hardcore-fans. even a lot of shops aren`t willing to order the set automaticly because of the price. my experience were everywhere the same, a lot of them didn`t even know that there is a new prince cd out and those who heared about it won`t order copies for there shops. thats it. i don`t want to bitch around i`m just frustratet about all this buisness-jokes from the park.. i think they are not able to handle this kind of projects.

and whatever he earns - i dont give a f... i just need new music ...

CAN`T WAIT TO GET MY COPY...please

www.swamprecords.com

Just a quick update...

I once saw it ranked at 55.