According 2 WIKIpedia, 3121 is Prince's worst selling album to date, selling oly 350,000 copies, is this true? could someone shed some light please?

wow

MickG said:

I would think rainbow children or chaos and disorder...remember yank offs can put anything on wikipedia...its not regulated

glamslam2themax said:
"For You" sold only 100,000 -- but I guess that should have been expected since it was his first album

glamslam2themax said:

It's sold more than that in America alone.

I would imagine N.E.W.S. or the live One Nite Alone box set (does the latter qualify?) would have sold the least.

Cloudbuster said:

ONA EACH SELL COUNTS AS THREE...

ccollin88 said:

Then divide the figure by three.

I don't know if that's true, but at Wikipedia, people can add stuff the the articles there.

I do however know that every starbucks I frequent, bookstores and such places, still have those original copies of 3121 on the shelf. There's still many chances to win one of those covered purple tickets.

According to Soundscan 3121 has sold about 470,000 to date in the US. It will eventually seak its way up over the 500,000 mark.


the others (info from Metalorange from : http://www.prince.org/msg/7/195938 )

For You = 550,000
Prince = 1,500,000
Dirty Mind = 1,085,000
Controversy = 1,550,000
1999 = 4,320,000
Purple Rain = 14,480,000
Around The World In A Day = 2,845,000
Parade = 2,105,000
Sign Of The Times = 1,840,000
Lovesexy = 960,000
Batman (Soundtrack) = 2,500,000
Graffiti Bridge = 980,000
Diamonds & Pearls = 2,780,000
Symbol = 1,100,000
The Hits/The B-Sides = 650,000
The Hits 1 = 2,000,000
The Hits 2 = 1,750,000
Come = 500,000
The Black Album = 275,000
The Gold Experience = 550,000
Chaos & Disorder = 150,000
Emancipation = 700,000
Crystal Ball = 125,000
Newpower Soul = 225,000
The Vault = 125,000
Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic = 500,000
The Very Best Of Prince = 1,300,000
The Rainbow Children = 175,000
Musicology = 1,000,000
[Edited 7/20/06 19:43pm]

I think it's one of those things were people look under information for 'Prince' and forget to look under his Symbol name.

I'm not aware of the figures for ONA Live and NEWS, Chaos & Disorder sold less that 3121 BUT was under his Symbol name. The Come album is pretty close and IS under his Prince name. But The Vault definately sold less and is under his Prince name, so this could be the lowest selling Prince album proper, with 3121 just above that - at least currently, and only based on the US sales.

newpower99 said:

OK, so how were these multi-disc sets counted? In each case, does the number reflect how many sets were sold? Or in some cases, is it the number of discs that were sold (so must divide the total by the number of discs)? In particular, did Emancipation sell 700K sets?

Wow, CB only sold 125K sets? I wonder how the ordering fiasco affected that? Does that total include the ones he sold directly? Or just the ones sold in stores?

CandaceS said:

Emancipation is credited with a double platinum RIAA rating, they did triple the amount sold per disc (of course it would originally have had a higher price tag than 1 disc albums too so it's only fair...). But these figures are just estimations of sales of the whole package. eg, you cannot get The Truth album without getting Crystal Ball so The Truth isn't totalled seperately. I don't know whether that included ones ordered directly.from 1800 New Funk, since those sales figures aren't available I doubt it, anymore than we know the online download sales of TRC and Musicology via the npgmc.

metalorange said:

Thanks.

Nonsense.

Wikpedia is having quality control issues in many areas.

'3121' was just on Billboards Top 50 selling albums of 2006 list.

wikipedia is hardly a reliable source of information.
I think anyone can add what they onto it.

muirdo said:

worlwide 3121 has sold over a million copies

Could anyone questioning these numbers provide a more reliable source for at least the sales of 3121, if not all his past albums? Last I heard 3121 had not even achieved gold status in the U.S. (500K sales).

CandaceS said:

Last Billboard chart I saw had 3121 at 467,000 in the USA. I think they base their figures on Soundscan, which I believe counts the number of albums actually sold at stores throughout the US. I heard someone say they miss about 5% of sales, I guess that is through small stores they don't check up on, so there's every chance 3121 has sold more than half a million so far in the US.

Soundscan only came into being around '92. I don't know how they counted albums before that, but the process was undoubtedly less refined than it is now. I'm no expert, but I could imagine it is almost impossible to track the exact number of albums sold over the length of a career like Prince's. Not only have you got pre-soundscan vagaries, you've got online sales to track such as Amazon to add on. And that's all in only the USA, every country must have it's own system and it's own vagaries. Ultimately, there is no organisation that has consistently kept an eye on sales world-wide over that time period, which is ultimately there has to be some guesswork and estimation.