What a morning!

A kind of miracle happened!!!!

Last week i sent an email to Ask Billboard's Keith Caulfield, asking for Prince's Soundscan sales for his total catalog. I had not much hope and i thought that if i would eventually have an answer it would take some time for Keith to reply... but he did it last night!!!!
It's wonderful, incredible, i'm really excited!

**ADDITION**
-Just a few minutes ago, a friend of mine in another forum gave me the figures he was promising me some time ago regarding the albums that didn't appear on the original "Ask Billboard" reply to my email, because Keith didn't searched for Prince under the name Symbol or The Artist. The additions are the Soundscan sales for the albums "Beautiful Experience EP", "Chaos and Disorder", "N.E.W.S" and "One Nite Alone...Live!". He also that sales of "The Gold Experience" have an additional 69,000. Because i have all the reasons to believe in this friend i added this below to my original post and to original Keith's Billboard answer"
**ADDITION**

Here are the (finally) complete PRINCE Soundscan sales for all Prince's discography albums since 1991 :

Title (Year of Release; Soundscan, units sold since 1991; Gold/Platinum RIAA Certification, sales since 1978)

ATTENTION : Soundscan only gives sales starting in 1991 till the present, while RIAA certifies shipments since 1958. The bellow sales don't include Prince sales before 1991.

"For You" (1978; 88,000; no certification)
"Prince" (1979; 183,000; Platinum in 1980)
"Dirty Mind" (1980; 125,000; Gold in 1984)
"Controversy" (1981; 200,000; Platinum in 1985)
"1999" (1982; 641,000; 4xPlatinum in 1999)
"Purple Rain" (1984; 2.3 million; 13xPlatinum in 1996)
"Around the World in a Day" (1985; 162,000; 2xPlatinum in 1985)
"Parade" (1986; 230,000; Platinum in 1986)
"Sign 'O' the Times" (1987; 271,000; Platinum in 1987)
"Lovesexy" (1988; 68,000; Gold in 1988)
"Batman" (1989; 111,000; 2xPlatinum in 1989)
"Graffiti Bridge" (1990; 145,000; Gold in 1990)
"Diamonds and Pearls" (1991; 2.5 million; 2xPlatinum in 1992)
"Symbol" (1992; 1.1 million; Platinum in 1992)
"The Hits/The B-Sides" (1993; 630,000; Platinum in 1993)
"The Hits 1" (1993; 1.4 million; Platinum in 1995; has additional 501,000 sales from BMG record club)
"The Hits 2" (1993; 1.6 million; Platinum in 1995)
"Come" (1994; 310,000; Gold in 1994)
"The Black Album" (1994; 261,000; no certification)
"The Beautiful Experience EP" (1994; 210,000; no certification)
"The Gold Experience" (1995; 492,000; Gold in 1995)
"Chaos & Disorder" (1996; 131,000; no certification)
"Emancipation" (1996; 628,000; 2xPlatinum in 1997)
"Crystal Ball" (1998; 113,000; no certification)
"Newpower Soul" (1998; 214,000; no certification)
"The Vault - Old Friends 4 Sale" (1999; 113,000; no certification)
"Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic" (1999; 487,000; Gold in 1999)
"The Very Best of Prince" (2001; 1.2 million; Platinum in 2004)
"The Rainbow Children" (2001; 157,000; no certification)
"N.E.W.S." (2003; 28,000 ; no certification)
"One Nite Alone... Live!" (2003; 27,000 ; no certification)
"Musicology" (2004; 2 million (including 934,000 from retail sales; 2xPlatinum in 2004)

Total Soundscan sales 1991-2005 : 16,849,000 CDs (not counting the tour sales of "Musicology")
17,915,000 CDs (counting all the sales of "Musicology")


My email to and correspondent reply from "Ask Billboard" are dated from 17 January 2006 and can be seen at :
http://www.billboard.biz/...02/7005/-1
[Edited 3/23/06 2:05am]

Edu said:

A bit unlikely no?

Looking closer, most of the sales figures until 1990 look doubtful to me...

Soundscan sales are from the period May 1991 till December 2005 (that's why they are CD sales) ; on the other hand, RIAA certifications are from 1978 till 2005 (they cover vynil and CD sales). Everybody can go to Billboard Online, choose Interact, then choose Ask Billboard, and read the answer Keith gave to my email:
http://www.billboard.com/.../index.jsp

What you can see here are his sales from the past 15 years in the USA. So you can see that "Batman", since May 1991, "scanned" (sold) 111,000 copies. And that "Purple Rain", since May 1991, sold 2,300,000 copies.

Prince sales before 1991 will be analyse by me on a later thread. So from 1991 onwards Prince sold 18,125,000 albums in the United States; what he sold before 1991 i will post in a future thread.
[Edited 2/15/06 3:24am]

Oh okay... once again I didn't read properly... thanks!

MartyMcFly said:

Edu said:

Any news on Chaos and Disorder?

MartyMcFly said:

shes got a boner. )

PLEASE SEE MY ADDITIONS ON THE FIRST POST. I GOT WHAT WAS MISSING IN KEITH'S BILLBOARD REPLY.

Edu said:

gold = 500,000 copies
platinum = 1 million

so this doesnt make sense

PLEASE READ CAREFULLY EVERYTHING I WROTE BEFORE LOOKING AT THE NUMBERS!!!

REMEMBER THE FOLLOWING :

Soundscan gives sales since 1991

RIAA certified Gold/Platinum awards reflect sales since 1978

jaynoonan said:

it's a little confusing, but here's how it works:

gold and platinum certifications are based on shipments, not sales. so "come" shipped 500,000 (gold) but only scanned/sold 310,000. that's why you still see so many sitting in record stores. there are nearly 200,000 unsold copies on the shelves.

As for the older albums, like "purple rain" scanning 2 million but being certified for 13, that's because this list only covers sales from 1991 to the present. that's when soundscan began tracking exact album sales electronically. before 1991 sales were based on written reports sent in from stores. it's MUCH more accurate now.

so for all the albums from "diamonds & pearls" on, these sales are the complete totals. from "for you" to "graffiti bridge," it's merely the number of copies sold since 1991.

I'm a little surprised that "lovesexy" has done SO poorly over the years. "for you" has sold more copies in the last 15 years?!?!?!?!

thanks very much for these!



oh, and NEWS only sold 28,000 copies

Does soundscan track international sales? Are albums sold through NPG Music Club scanned? I wonder what the effect of the different Hits compilations is on album catalog sales. If WB and Prince had a better relationship those catalog sales would double.

remember this is JUST soundscan and NOT actual sales. Actual sales are higher... much higher. heck PR sold almost 18 million in the US alone.


and this is JUST US soundscan as well not overseas.
[Edited 1/18/06 8:23am]

MartyMcFly said:

Universaluv's girlfriend said ten minutes from now:

.
[Edited 1/18/06 12:44pm]

renfield said:

Lovesexy's a hardcore fan favorite. For the general public, it's the album that Alphabet Street was on.

For You, probably gets more interest just because it was the "first".

Christopher said:

Say what you want about greatest hit packages but look at the numbers. Since 1993 his biggest selling albums after Musicology ( 2 million) are

The Hits 2, 1.6 mil,
The Hits 1 (1.4mil) and
The Very Best of Prince (1.2 mil) .

Universaluv said:[quote]

MartyMcFly said:

Edu said:What a morning!

A kind of miracle happened!!!!




thanks for posting

npgmc doesn't supply soundscan/billboard with their figures, so i don't know how figures for eg TRC and NEWS would stand with them included? its a shame we don't know downloads either, be interesting to see how many all of them, inc slaughterhouse and choc invasion sold on download too.

The CDs "The Rainbow Children" and "N.E.W.S" are available a bit all over the world at retail. Even here in my country, Portugal, i could find them. That's why Soundscan could track their sales in USA.

I read that some people were confused with the numbers, remember:

Soundscan gives sales (for any album) ONLY since January 1991 , while RIAA gives SHIPMENTS (records sold to stores) since an album's release date, going back to the 50's. These shipments DON'T include records returned to the label. For albums older than one year we can consider shipments numbers like number of CDs sold, because no retailer buys CDs that he cannot sell. And remember that, especially in the 90's, a lot (and i mean A LOT) of CDs were sold through Record Clubs (which sell by mail). I can give an example regarding Prince : the BMG record club sold more than 500,000 copies of the album "The Hits 1" (for curiosity their best seller is Shania Twain's "Come On Over" at more than 2 million!). Soundscan doesn't track these sales but RIAA does because it's the label that gives RIAA auditors all the documentation with the sales figures (RIAA doesn't certify sales automatically, labels have to request it AND pay for it).
[Edited 1/26/06 3:20am]
[Edited 1/26/06 11:20am]

so when we get sales figueres, they don't include music club sales (BMG etc i mean, not npgmc!)? so hits 2 has really sold 2.1million? actually, it can't have because presumably it'd be 2xplatinum (unless WB didn't ask for it doing).

sorry, this is getting confusing isn't it! soundscan don't scan those sales through bmg music club etc, so when we get figures, how do we know if music club sales are also included?


re: trc and news, i know it was also available at retail, what i meant was, that the npgmc doesn't supply anyone with their numbers, certainly not soundscan. so i'd be interested to know how many they sold just through the club, not just in retail!

great info...really interesting, thanks