Novabreaker said:

lmao

AsianBomb777 said:

Plus, the album wouldn't have sold shit on its own. Thy hype from the tour and the TV appearances helped push it, but that was all greatest hits stuff. If Prince had spent all the year just on Musicology and songs from that album, the sales would have been in the toilet.

from what i remember, the album sold about 500k outside of concert tie-ins. no it's not amazing relative to 2 million plus, but considering from the position of commericial anhilliation prince was coming from a mere 2 years ago i think it's still pretty impressive - RELATIVE to prince's former stature a few years ago. if you compare it to his heyday obviously it's not as good, but that ignores pretty much all of 1993 onwards with regards to diminishing sales and reputation

EvilWhiteMale said:

agreed.

So the naysayers here are saying that If Musicology was sold only in stores, that none of these thousands of concert goers in the biggest tour of the year would have stopped by Best Buy and picked one up?!! Not one person?!! I don't think so.... True, the sales may not have been as big..... But it would have still had an impact, and still would have been one of Prince's biggest sellers in years! He simply cut out the middle man. It is too simplistic to just discount the sales of this marketing ploy, because there is no way at this time to determine how many people waited to get their copy at the show, but would have went to the store to buy it if that was the only place to get it!
[Edited 2/21/05 2:55am]

7lovesymbol7 said:

It was a very clever thing to do ,and i bet other artists are going mad they did not think of doing it before i bought it the minute it was released here in Ireland and it sold realy well and was in the top twenty for ages :nod:and as far as i know the sales in Europe were good
[Edited 2/21/05 4:26am]

If Musicology was sold only in stores, it would be certified gold or maybe platinum.... But never double platinum, only Sony and Soundscan known the real numbers....

krayzie said:

krayzie said:

OK, from the beginning of his "comeback", I've been following this phenomenon with a keen eye! Remember his tour started on 29 March 2004 with his intention to distribute his new cd to concertgoers! He and Columbia tried to work out a deal where Soundscan would count this as sales! This was printed in the press all over the country and even the world! After several talks, Soundscan finally agreed. However, they would only count those shows listed on or after the official release of Musicology, which was April 20th. Prince did 14 shows prior to that but Soundscan did not count those. Plus, the Essence Festival in New Orleans on 2 July, where he played in front of 50,000, Soundscan didn't count for reasons never recorded.

Now time for some mathematics!


Minus the New Orleans show, Prince played 95 shows to about 1,470,000 people! ( the N.O. show will be figured in later)

Simply divide 1,470,000 by 95! That's about 15,474 folks per show!

Now multiply the 14 dates prior to the cds official release to stores that Soundscan didn't count by 15,474! That's 216,632 cds distributed at shows from 29 Mar to 19 Apr 04 that Soundscan didn't count!

Now, we must add the 50,000 from the July 2 show that Soundscan didn't count to 216,632! That's 266,632!

So folks we have about 266,632 cds that were distributed at shows that Soundscan didn't count in 2004!

If that's true, then simply subtract total # of concertgoers, 1,470,000, from 266,632! That's 1,203,368 cds distributed at Prince shows that Soundscan counted for 2004.

Now according to Soundscan, 1.95 million copies of Muscicology were sold by the end of Nov 2004! So based on those figures, in determining the actual retail sales simply subtract the "Soundscan counted" cds distibuted at the shows 1,203,368 from the total sales 1,950,000! That's 746,632 copies sold at stores as of the end of Nov. 2004!

Now, since then, the cd enjoyed multiple Grammy noms, a spike in Christmas and New Years sales, not to mention 2 Grammy wins and big media exposure at Golden Globes and People's Choice Awards ceremonies. So, it would be safe to say that Musicology is hovering between 900,000 and 1,000,000 in retail sales in America alone! Worldwide total sales are around 3 million!

Just my 2 cents!

That's interesting Smittyrock70.

Since we'll never know, and it's impossible (and pretty pointless) to try and dertermine what percentage of concert goers would have purchased the CD any way, without the give-away - I think it's fair to say that even without the concert give-aways - Musicology would have been his most commercially successful album for a long time - I'd say since D&P, but I'm not up on sales figures.

It was Prince's most promoted album since Emancipation, so even without the free CDs, it was gonna be a commercial success any way, just down to the large amount of promotional activities Prince put into the project, plus the timing and that it was a single CD of strong pop music, as opposed to a religious concept album, or a 3 CD set.


» MetroArea
[Edited 2/22/05 2:38am]

plus he must have sold thousands of downloads of the album on the internet which must be figured in to the number to get an acurrate idea of total sales. so its over a million in sales and internet in the usa, roughly the same number in other parts or the world and 1 1/4 million given away at the concerts.

Thank you smittyrock.... hopefully you've put an end to any further naysayers on this subject..... at least on this website.