I would like to know if there was here in the Org somebody that bought the book "The Vault" and would be kind enough to give me all the Prince's ALBUM SALES FIGURES that are eventually mentioned on the book.
I would be very grateful! Thank you!

Here's a list I made for another thread - the mentions are a bit erratic, sometimes it is not clear is the figure to date or at the time of release, or whether worldwide sales, but:

For You - 430,000 US
Prince - 1 million US
Dirty Mind - 500,000 US
Controversy - 1 million US
1999 - 3 million US
Purple Rain - 11 million US (5 million rest of the world)
Around The World In A Day - 2.4 million US
Parade - 1.6 million US (1.9 million rest of the world)
Sign O' The Times - US 1.6 million (1.6 million rest of world)
Lovesexy - 750,000 US (1.9 million rest of the world)
Batman - 1.7 million US (4.4 million rest of the world)
Graffiti Bridge - 500,000 US
Diamonds & Pearls - 2 million US (4 million rest of the world)
The Symbol Album - 1 million US
The Hits/The B-sides - 1 million US
The Hits Vol 1 - 1 million US
The Hits Vol 2 - 1 million US
Come - 350,000 US
The Black Album - 295,000 US
The Gold Experience - 530,000 US
Chaos & Disorder - 140,000 US
Emancipation - 570,000 US
Crystal Ball - 350,000 US
The Vault, Old Friends For Sale - 140,000 US
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic - 350,000
The Very Best Of Prince - not mentioned
The Rainbow Children - 130,000 US
One Nite Alone - not mentioned
One Nite Alone Live - not mentioned
N.E.W.S. - not mentioned

Thank you very much metalorange !

I'm working on a Prince sales thread for this (and other foruns) and there were some "pieces of the puzzle" missing. The numbers you posted will help me, even if i can say right away that some of them are not exactly correct...

If you like this kind of stuff about Prince take a look at my recent thread :

http://www.prince.org/msg/7/174573

in it you will find all Soundscan sales figures for all the Prince catalog since 1991, courtesy of Billboard's "Ask Billboard" and a friend of mine of another forum (the master of charts on the net!).

Soon i will post my prince worldwide sales thread (i'm busy right now, but i'm working on it).

Once again thank you very much! (wish i had that book... )

Yeah, I did see that thread - keep up the good work, certainly something I find interesting. Being in the UK, I'm more interested in the global figures than simply the USA ones - it is often amusing to see some peoples say such-and-such an album was a flop, when in fact in other countries it was a big hit!

In a way, it is surprising how low the total figure for Prince's sales come to - around 18 million, when often I have heard people say he has sold over 100 million! I'm sure music journalists wildly exaggerate. I read a news item recently saying that All Saints might be reforming and that they had sold 10 million albums worldwide! And supposedly that was with only 2 or 3 albums! That can't be right, can it?!

Hi metalorange

you (and others ) must read more carefully my thread!
What it is written there is:

Prince sold from 1991 to 2005, only in the USA, more than 18 million CDs. It's not a worldwide figure and doesn't contains sales from before1991.

I can say to you that Prince sold worldwide, since the beginning of his career till September 1992 more than 52 million albums, including 14.7 million of "Purple Rain".

In my future thread i shall give more details.

Edu said:

Sorry, yeah, I did remember reading that when I first followed the thread, I just forgot when I quickly flipped back to look at the thread.

Still I reckon the global total will be considerably less than the 100 million that has often been touted. It would be kind of interesting to compare album sales to another similar artist, I hate to say it, perhaps MJ or Madonna. MJ having sold, what, 50 million of Thriller alone? It would kind of put Prince's sales figures into some kind of context.