..OK. Now I'm really confused. I read on another website that when Prince sold the tickets on his tour last year, he made $10 off of every ticket. Hasn't Prince always made ticket money off his tickets? Or did Warner Bros. pay him the recoup of the ticket money when the tours were over?

SPYZFAN1 said:

?

Has Prince always made money off of ticket sales?

It depends how much the tour costs are, and what the contractual arrangements say. His contractual arrangements would have been with the likes of promoters and tour arrangers rather than Warner Brothers.

.

Thank you. I guess with the free CD he gave out he covered himself with the extra cash. No losses for him.

Apparently, for the Musicology promo discs to count toward chart success, there had to be a dollar amount built into the ticket for the CD. $10 per ticket is the amount that has been speculatively tossed around.

On the other hand, Prince may have likely been payed a certain set amount for the tour regardless of ticket sales.

Usually tours and the like are organised by the artist's own management and not the record company, and they pay for it and receive any profit themselves.

Of course, you only make money off a tour if at the end when you add up all the plusses and minusses, you come out in front. You can't guarantee, say a $10 profit on each ticket unless enough people turn up! Perhaps what that website was saying was that when all costs were accounted for, it has been worked out that Prince made $10 pure profit on ever ticket sold.

The price of the 'free' Musicology CD was no doubt worked into the cost of the ticket - however, Prince's concert tickets were substantially less than Madonna's. Madonna made more money (gross) from her tour even though she did fewer shows than Prince because of the higher ticket price - but because her tour cost more to produce and run, she actually made less profit than Prince. I heard that she had 21 trucks on the road whereas Prince only had 7. By minimising production costs and yet selling lots of tickets, it made the Musicology tour very profitable.

The 10$ per ticket was a virtual amount to satisfy soundscan so that his album giveways would count!!!

You cant release an album and sell it for $1 and be counted by soundscan


This is just a amount thrown around and has no real significance at all!!


he did personally make around $38/ ticket sold as profit

prince was paid 85% of the profits from the tour!!

madonna took 95% of the profit the rest goin to the promoters

musicology was the most profitbale tour of 2004!! Even when he only toured the US imagine if he had toured europe too the profits would be outta this world!!
[Edited 12/2/05 9:51am]

Man, you guys are SMART!! Thanx for the answers. Squirelgrease, is that Shelia in your avatar?

SPYZFAN1 said:

It's CJ - journo/gossip/hack - Cynthia Johnson (the inspiration for Billy Jack Bitch).

I think I remember hearing on some news show that P was making abbout 100,000 dollars a show

Production costs?

http://www.thesmokinggun....ince1.html

Looks like he had 11 trucks, and 3 artist busses, 5 crew busses and 3 vans.



Pages 3, 7 and 8 go into more personal items on the tour.

youngworld said:

Interesting... well, just shows the media doesn't dig that deep for it's facts these days, it never mentioned the other vehicles! This is the article I remember commenting on Prince and Madonna's profits for 2004:

http://money.cnn.com/2005...rs/prince/

The rock star, who once changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol, took in $56.5 million to place him first on Rolling Stone's annual list of top 50 moneymakers of 2004, the New York Post said on Wednesday.

Prince, whose chart-topping hits include "Purple Rain" and "1999," beat out pop diva Madonna, who placed second, with $54.9 million, thanks to her "Re-Invention Tour," four children's books and the "American Life" CD, according to the Post.

The article said Madonna actually earned more from her concert tour, but Prince took home higher net earnings due to lower production costs. The Post said it took only 12 trucks to haul Prince's tour around, while the Material Girl's show demanded 24 trucks.

There is an interesting blog entry by Steven Page of the Barenaked Ladies on their website that breaks down the costs of a tour into some pretty fine detail. It might be a good read if you're interested in some hard numbers.

http://www.bnlblog.com/en...10/20/2005

Speaking of BNL...I saw them back in 2000 and they ended their show with Careless Whisper by Wham and then When Doves Cry. Awesome versions too. Most people were pissed that they didn't end with a BNL song but I thought it was the best non-prince show I'd ever seen.

Somebody asked Prince in an interview why there were so many back-to-back shows on the "Musicology tour" and he said something like, "The choices are: make $500,000 or sleep. What would YOU do?"