I'll add them to my Xmas list, I can't be arsed to pick them up tbh. I had to wait months to get Crystal Ball after I paid (and got charged twice for it), so I think Prince owes me this one, it's his turn to wait whilst I enjoy his product temporarily for free

RODSERLING said:

Common...How would you expect someone to buy AOA when you weight the packaging the moment you take it in your hand to watch the tracklist ?...Oh well that's true, there is not even a tracklist...

No tracklist

No booklet

No video

No deluxe content

No bonus content

No jewel case

No single on radio

No tv performance

No tour

No promotion made by Prince, in any fucking way.

Even the greatest hits doesn't sell anymore

2/3 of the 3121 sales were made on the first week. We may guess the total sales of AOA in UK will never exceed 10.000 copies. Surely next week it will be out of the top 40, like 3121, and the latter benefited from a lot of promotion.

Prince doesn't promote albums. He single handedly has done everything in his power he can do to lower album sales, and then blame the record company, and point the finger everywhere except at himself...

What makes it funny is by sabotaging the album by little or piss poor promotion, he really thinks he's gonna get sales, and looks all shocked when they don't sell.

Even sadder, is most of his new music deserves an avenue, and is much better than most artists these days, but Prince fumbles and bumbles his way to screw it up. Imagine any casual fan trying to sit through that release party..that host calling the band Prince & The Power Generations...a good laugh for us, but unless you tuned in to see every single outfit the girls own, you were bored. It could've been a five minute intro and then right to the performance...but no...more awful promotion.

RODSERLING said:

Polo1026 said:

Let me say there is no way Prince would have made any of his money back by promoting himself. It is not free to play late night TV shows.

Of course it's free to play late night tv shows, when your name is Prince. The best proof is that in the last 5 years he played on many tv shows, talk shows, and without a recoring company. When your name is Prince, Madonna or MJ, tv-talk shows, and award events are dying for you to perform. They are ready to nominate you just for that.

Arsenio doubled his usual audience when Prince performed in his show this year (from 4.5 millions to 9 millions !). NEW GIRL multiplied by 8 (eight!) his audience when Prince came onboard.

There is just a lack of good timing in all this releases : the anniversary of PR was in june, it won't probably be released this year, NEW GIRL and HIT AND run tour were on february, etc. And now that he has a release, even 2 releases which is absurd, he isn't showing up anymore.

You would think that this is true but it's not. The fee is reduced based on your ability to draw ratings or how big of a star you are but that's not how it works. TV talk shows have to make money and they make money off of the appearances not just off of advertising revenue. No one shows up to a talk show to talk about their life just because. It's about selling a movie, an album, a TV show etc. Most of the time, the record label or PR dept of the movie studio will pay these fees for stars to appear and for artists to perform. I believe the cost to play the MTV awards was over 150k. Even when your name is Prince this is still a business(no pun intended). Now there maybe times where Prince is actually PAID to appear on a show like Arsenio, who badly needed the ratings but that wouldn't apply to Late Night with Letterman and Kimmel and others that has it's audience built in already regardless of who appears on the show. These performances only add to the budget costs of record labels and to Prince personally if he's showing up and paying out of pocket without the label offsetting the cost. Nothing is free in entertainment, either someone is paying for you or you are paying for yourself.

databank said:

Polo1026 said:

Also please realize that Prince hasn't released a record in 5 years. Things change big time in 5 years. Since his last record Jay Z, a top record seller, sold the right to distribute his album to a cell phone company. Why? Because the model of making money by selling records is dead and has been dead unless you are the chosen project of the CONGLOMERATE not just the record label. They have to make money off of you via multiple revenue streams to promote you to the best of their ability. Beyonce, Bieber, Taylor Swift, etc are drivers of multiple revenue streams and you still see Beyonce trying new avenues to sell records but also touring heavily to make money.

If you are Warner bros, you sign back basically your signature legend but he has three albums to release and promote in less than a year and apparently has two more albums of new material and a vault filled with old songs. There isn't enough revenue drivers from Prince to make up that amount of cost. So you use limited funds to reintroduce Prince to the market and please him by releasing TWO albums. However, you keep the big budget cash for the remastered Purple Rain album which you know is a classic, has sold big, will sell big again and has the abilty to make the company's money back. AOA and Plectrum are low budget releases almost like a new artist release.

For those who say Prince should pay for his own promotion he's rich and he could perform and blah blah blah. Let me say there is no way Prince would have made any of his money back by promoting himself. It is not free to play late night TV shows. It just isn't smart business to do that anymore and I have to commend Prince for actually showing restraint and good business sense by not doing that. Clearly, based on Prince's comments about the Purple Rain album, Prince believes the big money should have been spent on his current output but he knows the Purple Rain album will sell and any label will kill to put it out.

You can't bitch about the promotion of two records released at the same time by an artist who hasn't been in the market in 5 years regardless who it is especially when there is no breakout single. Most of the songs are good, great even but still not radio smash hits. He's getting closer to finding his sound that radio can't ignore but he's not there yet. Now one thing Prince COULD do that he won't do is go to every radio morning show and interview and let them play his songs. If you want Prince to have a hit record and a radio single, that's what needs to happen. It won't ever happen because Prince doesn't do that stuff.

Somehow I think the majors have pushed things way too far in terms of selling crap for gold. Also the industry as it was was very unfair. People would get a deal, make several hundred thousand bucks, sometimes a million (see TC) for releasing one single album that took them 4 months to record, wouldn't sell and then they'd fall into oblivion and would be able to live for the rest of their life with that label money (see Jesse? What do u think he's been doing between 1990 and 2010, basically nothing, God bless him, he's been lucky, but don't talk to me about a fair reward for hard work). Was this money well spent? Was this money spent in favor of the most hard-working artists, the most talented? It wasn't, not always at least. How many albums do u have by an artist that did a brilliant work, sold poorly and was abandoned on the sidewalk while the new Boys Band was selling millions of songs written for them by a writing team? I have plenty of such magnificent albums no one ever heard of even though they were on a major. How much room has been left on TV and radio by the majors for the often brilliant work of independent labels? None. Was it fair game that TC Ellis (and believe me I love the dude and his album!) would make a million buck with one album that didn't sell 50,000 while so many talented artists were starving, unable to get a record deal and touring clubs for a living? It wasn't. Was it right that some albums were pushed into selling 10 million copies although there were pre-fabricated crap while some others by vibrant talents were ignored by the very labels that had released them (Terence Trent D'Arby anyone?)? It wasn't. I'll buy Prince's music if he sells it straight to me because I want to encourage this business model. I won't buy it on a major label, I don't have any money to give those people. They used to do a relatively decent job 35 years ago, not always but relatively, now they're just selling music as if it were vacuum cleaners. Prince can have my money. Not WB, not Sony-BMG, not Universal. As I said I bought EVERYTHING Prince released independently through the internet since the very beginning. I can't buy everything by everyone cuz I'm too poor, but he's my favorite artists and I'll always encourage him doing this even though he fucked me over hard with my 77 bucks back in 2009. WB? Non merci. I believe in a new business model. I believe in artists reaching fans by themselves. I also believe that if everyone made a decent living instead of one multimillionaire for 10,000 starving artists it wouldn't be that bad. Don't get me wrong I ain't a communist or something, I just think that the whole industry as it is is unbalanced: too few records get pushed into selling millions and too many are ignored. We could sell a bit more of a lot more and balance the income by a true business model based on talent and merit and not only on marketing. How much talent is there in the Top 10 nowadays, in the Top 100 for that matter? Zero. Thanks to the majors and their radio and TV accomplices. Screw that. It's time artists grow balls and do what Ani DiFrance did 25 years ago, what all enterpreneurs in every other field do: start you own thing, go to your own consumers. I hear people who tell me "writers shouldn't publish their books themselves because it's a scandal they should invest on their own book!". WTF is this, what are we an elite? Have you ever heard a man saying "It's not fair that a man should invest in opening his own store or company because someone else should give him the money, then afterwards own his work?". Only us have been egotic enough to get fucked in that way for too long because a very few of us became rich and everybody dreamt of being one of them. Screw that. The internet gives us the way to reach our audience by ourselves. Let's not be shy, let's have guts, let's do it and if some of us can make a minimum wage income with it, it's fine enough, an artist doesn't need to be a millionaire to ba happy. End of ranting. Thank you.

I can agree with this but I will point out to you that Prince is 'licensing' his music to Warners now. It's a model that benefits Prince more than Warners and not supporting this model means it won't be available for others in the future. Prince's warners deal helps him more than releasing his music independently because Prince doesn't shoulder the risk and he also doesn't lose control of his music and his publishing by having a major label release his work. Prince really needs to be smart and play his cards right with this deal.

And to answer the OP, I bought both albums the day of release. I did get the mp3s emailed to me by some kind soul before I paid for them...it's like people know I was really wanting them early. I had them Sept 25th, and was so giddy and happy, and felt special, like I had an exclusive, but I probably had them after a few thousand others, lol.

It probably would've been a lot better as just one album with the best songs...

Or a 3 disc set:1 Prince album,2 3EG album with the girls on lead, Prince singing lead on 3EG Songs for disc 3...

Bought them both in the Croydon HMV, both were £9.99, it was cool to get a bit of the old feeling of buying a new album on release date from a shop and rush home to listen to them!

In the Radio one r&b album chart AOA is number one at the moment.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/chart/rnbalbums

Bought them both.

Bought both cds through prince's site.

They e-mailed me song downloads. They delivered the Cds Sept 27th. Everything was great with buying and receiving cds.

I think Prince fans want more from the cds than the music and the last three cds I have bought from Prince have just been cardboards holding cds. 20ten, the 3 cds with bria, and this one. Of course for 3rd eye girl he did add a booklet for them which was a plus.

Bought both CD's and plan to cop the PE vinyl as soon as it's available in the USA.

I pre-ordered and received both cds. I've pre ordered the PE vinyl from Warners Australia, but heard there is some kind of delay (although I've received nothing official via e-mail notifying me of that fact).

Of course I went and bought both albums in physical CD format, the way it´s supposed to be.

Paid way too much though..... 19 Euros each. No wonder the music industry is down in the dumps if they charge CD buying folks like me so much money for a product that should be half of that price and that´s going to go on sale real soon, like most new albums do with the swiftness.

If they charged, say, 10 or 12 € or even less, then there´d definitely be higher sales.

19 Euros for an album that comes in a very cheaply made packaging, not even a proper digipak, is a rip off. No liner notes, no booklet, no jewel case, not even a digipak.

The Rainbow Children looked much nicer and came with some great album cover art and booklet.

I listened to a download before I bought it but I would´ve bought it anyway, so the argument of downloaders not buying legit albums does not count for me. If I like what I hear, I will always support the artist. Just went and picked up my Banks limited edition CD today and will probably buy Flying Lotus´s album "You´re Dead!" in the next few days.

I MUST have every CD he releases. Since day one: albums, singles, and *cough* unreleased *cough*. I'm like Gollum and that ring with my Prince CD collection. I like to hunch naked over it and chant "my precious!"

I think I've said too much.

Polo1026 said:

databank said:

Somehow I think the majors have pushed things way too far in terms of selling crap for gold. Also the industry as it was was very unfair. People would get a deal, make several hundred thousand bucks, sometimes a million (see TC) for releasing one single album that took them 4 months to record, wouldn't sell and then they'd fall into oblivion and would be able to live for the rest of their life with that label money (see Jesse? What do u think he's been doing between 1990 and 2010, basically nothing, God bless him, he's been lucky, but don't talk to me about a fair reward for hard work). Was this money well spent? Was this money spent in favor of the most hard-working artists, the most talented? It wasn't, not always at least. How many albums do u have by an artist that did a brilliant work, sold poorly and was abandoned on the sidewalk while the new Boys Band was selling millions of songs written for them by a writing team? I have plenty of such magnificent albums no one ever heard of even though they were on a major. How much room has been left on TV and radio by the majors for the often brilliant work of independent labels? None. Was it fair game that TC Ellis (and believe me I love the dude and his album!) would make a million buck with one album that didn't sell 50,000 while so many talented artists were starving, unable to get a record deal and touring clubs for a living? It wasn't. Was it right that some albums were pushed into selling 10 million copies although there were pre-fabricated crap while some others by vibrant talents were ignored by the very labels that had released them (Terence Trent D'Arby anyone?)? It wasn't. I'll buy Prince's music if he sells it straight to me because I want to encourage this business model. I won't buy it on a major label, I don't have any money to give those people. They used to do a relatively decent job 35 years ago, not always but relatively, now they're just selling music as if it were vacuum cleaners. Prince can have my money. Not WB, not Sony-BMG, not Universal. As I said I bought EVERYTHING Prince released independently through the internet since the very beginning. I can't buy everything by everyone cuz I'm too poor, but he's my favorite artists and I'll always encourage him doing this even though he fucked me over hard with my 77 bucks back in 2009. WB? Non merci. I believe in a new business model. I believe in artists reaching fans by themselves. I also believe that if everyone made a decent living instead of one multimillionaire for 10,000 starving artists it wouldn't be that bad. Don't get me wrong I ain't a communist or something, I just think that the whole industry as it is is unbalanced: too few records get pushed into selling millions and too many are ignored. We could sell a bit more of a lot more and balance the income by a true business model based on talent and merit and not only on marketing. How much talent is there in the Top 10 nowadays, in the Top 100 for that matter? Zero. Thanks to the majors and their radio and TV accomplices. Screw that. It's time artists grow balls and do what Ani DiFrance did 25 years ago, what all enterpreneurs in every other field do: start you own thing, go to your own consumers. I hear people who tell me "writers shouldn't publish their books themselves because it's a scandal they should invest on their own book!". WTF is this, what are we an elite? Have you ever heard a man saying "It's not fair that a man should invest in opening his own store or company because someone else should give him the money, then afterwards own his work?". Only us have been egotic enough to get fucked in that way for too long because a very few of us became rich and everybody dreamt of being one of them. Screw that. The internet gives us the way to reach our audience by ourselves. Let's not be shy, let's have guts, let's do it and if some of us can make a minimum wage income with it, it's fine enough, an artist doesn't need to be a millionaire to ba happy. End of ranting. Thank you.

I can agree with this but I will point out to you that Prince is 'licensing' his music to Warners now. It's a model that benefits Prince more than Warners and not supporting this model means it won't be available for others in the future. Prince's warners deal helps him more than releasing his music independently because Prince doesn't shoulder the risk and he also doesn't lose control of his music and his publishing by having a major label release his work. Prince really needs to be smart and play his cards right with this deal.

OK, u're making a fine point here, fair enough

After listening to both albums, I bought the CD plus mp3 download of Art Official Age. I have not yet purchased Plectrum Electrum, but may eventually.

..duh...

RODSERLING said:

Common...How would you expect someone to buy AOA when you weight the packaging the moment you take it in your hand to watch the tracklist ?...Oh well that's true, there is not even a tracklist...

No tracklist

No booklet

No video

No deluxe content

No bonus content

No jewel case

No single on radio

No tv performance

No tour

No promotion made by Prince, in any fucking way.

Even the greatest hits doesn't sell anymore

2/3 of the 3121 sales were made on the first week. We may guess the total sales of AOA in UK will never exceed 10.000 copies. Surely next week it will be out of the top 40, like 3121, and the latter benefited from a lot of promotion.

You guys kill me. Do you really need the validation of having music you like played on the radio?

Why do charts matter? Do you really care if Prince makes a living? Do you think he cares if you make a living?

Buy the music or not, enjoy it or not. But don't look for validation of your own tastes from whatever is "popular". Popular doesn't mean squat in a payola system that is based on pumping out filler and calling it art.

living in Hong Kong now. Was on vacay last week when it was released globally. Gonna go buy them at HMV tomorrow. My first music purchase since Lotusflow3r.

EnDoRpHn said:

RODSERLING said:

Common...How would you expect someone to buy AOA when you weight the packaging the moment you take it in your hand to watch the tracklist ?...Oh well that's true, there is not even a tracklist...

No tracklist

No booklet

No video

No deluxe content

No bonus content

No jewel case

No single on radio

No tv performance

No tour

No promotion made by Prince, in any fucking way.

Even the greatest hits doesn't sell anymore

2/3 of the 3121 sales were made on the first week. We may guess the total sales of AOA in UK will never exceed 10.000 copies. Surely next week it will be out of the top 40, like 3121, and the latter benefited from a lot of promotion.

You guys kill me. Do you really need the validation of having music you like played on the radio?

Why do charts matter? Do you really care if Prince makes a living? Do you think he cares if you make a living?

Buy the music or not, enjoy it or not. But don't look for validation of your own tastes from whatever is "popular". Popular doesn't mean squat in a payola system that is based on pumping out filler and calling it art.

airth said:

I considered getting them for nothing, but I wanted to support him and so decided against it. I bought the WAVs for both albums from the website.

This. Although I bought both albums/ cd format from HMV here in the UK.

I spent more on my lunch today than the cost of either albums, so i always buy new music when its artists i generally like..

I would only "acquire" albums for free when it's artists or record labels that I didnt care for for whatever reason.. but there aren't many of those. As others have stated there are other ways to "preview" music these days without having to "acquire" them illegally, so if I know something is to my liking, why not support them?

I bought both

At the Wrecko Store on the day of release. (Both.)

I downloaded both albums from iTunes, but something was weird with AOA.

My AOA download price was something like $8.50, which was about $1.50 less than PE.

Looking at my track list, I had no track 3. I found out the reason why was that my AOA download DID NOT contain "BREAKDOWN".

I thought it was maybe because I'd already bought it when it was released as a single. But when I hit the "Show Complete Album" button, viola! There was BREAKDOWN; at least, there was BREAKDOWN available for purchase for $1.29!

If it was not included by Prince/iTunes because I'd already bought it, and so they lowered the price by the cost of BREAKDOWN, then I sincerely appreciate that. Not charging a consumer twice for the same song is pretty cool, IMO.

Oh - and my iTunes says AOA was released April 21, 2014! It says PE was released 9/26/14.

there's no record shop where i am at the moment but what with the current collapse of the local bus service over the past three weeks the only bus other than a overpriced taxi from work is to the nearest HMV so that's some genius cosmic marketing right there!

I have downloaded both of them from the Prince store. And both CDs arrived in my mail box on October 2 - woot woot, thank you!

databank said:

I downloaded both of them "illegally" (well, kinda legally here in India). I bought every track on 3rdeyegirl.com on the day of release, I was a crooked member of lotuscam.com who's still crying on his stolen 77 bucks, and a premium then lifetime member of NPGMC from beginning to end. My policy basically is that if it's a "fans" release directly from to us, I'm in, but if it's a mainstream release then my money isn't needed. If tomorrow opens an online store with regular releases from the vault, I'll buy each of them on the day of release.

.

I hardly buy anymusic anymore anyway. I spent a fortune in records between 1988 and 2004, buying about 200 or 250 cassettes, then between 600 and 700 CD's, an average of 1 album a week was a strict minimum 4 me. I know it wouldn't have been a much ot a fortune for a lawyer or a doctor, but it was a fortune for me given the money I used to make back then (not that I do any more money today, this being said, i'm still below the national minimum wage of a full time French worker). I paid my dues, now I just take what's available since it's available. If I could download my food and clothes too, I'd do it as well.

.

I'm all for global licence. Charge me 5 additional bucks a month on my internet connection, let me install a software that lists what I download and split the money between the artists and labels. This is the only reasonable, viable, realistic way to save the music industry and this is what they'll come to eventually, because no matter what people say, 99% of the people ain't gonna buy what they can get for free if getting it for free doesn't involve any additional effort on top of it, and there's no way, I said NO WAY to stop illegal filesharing and direct download from happening/existing, so what's the point in trying?

.

I usually get lectures here when I admit that but save your fingers 4 I ain't gonna feel guilty or change my ways: moral or not, good or bad, there's no debating reality, and this is reality. This is what I do, this is what all my friends do in both France and India, and I have lots of friends! Don't give me a choice, get the money straight from my internet connection: I'll pay. That's what they did with blank cassettes, videotapes, CD's and CD-roms: a share of the retail price was redistributed between labels, studios and royalties-managing companies. It worked well and I think it's a fair system in the end. Fair or not anyway this is the only system that's gonna work so WTF?!

[Bait snip - luv4u]