He is quite popular in Spain. The main reason why he doesn't play here is the deplorable state of the Spanish live circuit, in general. He played in Portugal last year.

---

Actually, Prince has never been Bruce Springsteen or Dire Straits in Spain, which is mainly a rock-oriented, highly machista, country. But he could play in a medium-size venue, for sure.

---

So, to summarize, I think he is not a star anymore in Spain, like he was between, say, 1989 and 1995. But he is quite well-known. And I don't think he maintains the same level of popularity as in the early 90s anywhere in the world.

[Edited 11/5/14 7:07am]

He's a huge star. However this is not the same as being popular.

He can get on any TV show in the world, any radio show, and can still sellout huge venues with little notice. He cannot however seem to score a hit single or an album that captures mass attention.

How big of a world star is Prince these days?

Nobody under the age of 30 knows who he is

I've lived in Japan for about 15 years. I don't think I've ever met anyone who knew who Prince was. I've never seen him on TV, in the press, or even on the radio. It pains me to say it, but he may as well not exist as far as most Japanese people are concerned. He's little more than a distant memory.

airth said:

I've lived in Japan for about 15 years. I don't think I've ever met anyone who knew who Prince was. I've never seen him on TV, in the press, or even on the radio. It pains me to say it, but he may as well not exist as far as most Japanese people are concerned. He's little more than a distant memory.

I'm obviously wrong but I always thought Prince's appeal in Japan would be much bigger.

I figured he'd be seen as almost an Otaku character. There were some awesome anime style caricatures of Prince through the ages online a few years back. I think I've seen a couple of Prince themed bearbrick models.

He's an elder star like James Brown in the 80's only better.

I think he's a Euorpean and American phenomenon.
I was in Asia (Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore) a lot the last 10 years, and

nobody knows who he is. I'm not talking teenagers--I mean folks in their

30s have no clue who he even is.

airth said:

I've lived in Japan for about 15 years. I don't think I've ever met anyone who knew who Prince was. I've never seen him on TV, in the press, or even on the radio. It pains me to say it, but he may as well not exist as far as most Japanese people are concerned. He's little more than a distant memory.

This surprises me actually. I didn't expect him to be a big deal there, but he's toured there many times and I expected he would have a higher profile than you suggest.

Living in Japan these days is living in a Prince vacuum. Of course, there are people out there who still follow him or at least know who he is, which results in a certain number of Japanese comments on YouTube videos. He also toured here for the One Nite Alone... Tour, though I honestly can't remember a single piece of media coverage at the time. I've had conversations about music with all age ranges and whenever I've brought up Prince, I've been left looking at blank stares, except in two cases (one of which was my wife). He's so far from being a household name it's almost embarrassing.

You've got to put that into perspective, though. Japan is generally incredibly insular when it comes to music with the exception of K-pops i.e. Korean pop music. For most people, western music equates to The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga. I was stunned when U2 appeared in an article today and the five Japanese people I was with had no idea who they were.

There are people who know their music, but they can be frustratingly hard to find. There is a market for the rock festivals over here with the biggest, The Fuji Rock Festival, being headlined this year by Franz Ferdinand, Arcade Fire and Jack Johnson with Outkast tucked away in there somewhere. Even though I almost passed out when I was able to have a conversation about Herbie Hancock with someone last week, if you don't know your J-pops, any conversations about music are, for the most part, going to be extremely brief.

But, you know, I wonder whether the situation is really all that different wherever you might be in the world. The masses listen to whatever is currently the flavour of the month and fed to them by the media, while the music lovers go about their business generally unnoticed.

By the way, perhaps Prince killed off the Japanese market when he had 人間 (human) printed on his trouser leg for the Nude Tour. Up until then, everyone was probably under the impression he had come from another world. I'm sure they must have been terribly disappointed to find out he was nothing more than a man.

airth said:

By the way, perhaps Prince killed off the Japanese market when he had 人間 (human) printed on his trouser leg for the Nude Tour. Up until then, everyone was probably under the impression he had come from another world. I'm sure they must have been terribly disappointed to find out he was nothing more than a man.

Thanks for the insight airth, very interesting.

he still had a top ten album in japan with aoa and had similar sales to the uk so he is known to a resonable number of fans in japan and has played many big concerts in japan...he has been off the radar since going indie in the mid 90s but he retains a sizable following in the country.

airth said:

I've lived in Japan for about 15 years. I don't think I've ever met anyone who knew who Prince was. I've never seen him on TV, in the press, or even on the radio. It pains me to say it, but he may as well not exist as far as most Japanese people are concerned. He's little more than a distant memory.

This.

He's virtually non-existent in Asia.
This isn't terribly good, because it is so easy to sell out giant stadiums in Asia.

Nobody has a clue who he is. Prince shot himself in the foot. But, his music

is also more challenging than what Asian countries are used to hearing for

mass market appeal.

blackbob said:

he still had a top ten album in japan with aoa and had similar sales to the uk so he is known to a resonable number of fans in japan and has played many big concerts in japan...he has been off the radar since going indie in the mid 90s but he retains a sizable following in the country.

Do you know the numbers and do you have a source for the sales figures? I've been trying to find them without success. I think I can only access them through Oricon Style the chart provider, which is a paid subscription service. Japan's population is twice the size of the UK, which would halve his presence based on sales figures.

He last played Japan 12 years ago. The biggest single concert was at Osaka with a capacity of 16,000, followed by two nights in Tokyo to up to 20,000 people. He also visited other cities and played at one venue with 5,000 seats, one with 2,800, three with 2,300, and the one I wish I had gone to only held 1,500 people. Assuming he sold out every night, he played to a grand total of 52,200 people in a country with a population of 127 million. It doesn't give me any pleasure to say it, but that hardly suggests he even had a sizeable following in 2002, never mind now.

[Edited 11/7/14 15:34pm]

Prince is a legendary icon, many people know who he is but don't know his work beyond Purple Rain and Let's Go Crazy, if that if you're under 35 years old. All that really matters is that he already has one of the most sprawling catalogs ever -- just think about who among the following people might be remembered 100 years from now:

Taylor Swift

Katy Perry

Prince

One Direction

airth said:

Living in Japan these days is living in a Prince vacuum. Of course, there are people out there who still follow him or at least know who he is, which results in a certain number of Japanese comments on YouTube videos. He also toured here for the One Nite Alone... Tour, though I honestly can't remember a single piece of media coverage at the time. I've had conversations about music with all age ranges and whenever I've brought up Prince, I've been left looking at blank stares, except in two cases (one of which was my wife). He's so far from being a household name it's almost embarrassing.

You've got to put that into perspective, though. Japan is generally incredibly insular when it comes to music with the exception of K-pops i.e. Korean pop music. For most people, western music equates to The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, Michael Jackson and Lady Gaga. I was stunned when U2 appeared in an article today and the five Japanese people I was with had no idea who they were.

There are people who know their music, but they can be frustratingly hard to find. There is a market for the rock festivals over here with the biggest, The Fuji Rock Festival, being headlined this year by Franz Ferdinand, Arcade Fire and Jack Johnson with Outkast tucked away in there somewhere. Even though I almost passed out when I was able to have a conversation about Herbie Hancock with someone last week, if you don't know your J-pops, any conversations about music are, for the most part, going to be extremely brief.

But, you know, I wonder whether the situation is really all that different wherever you might be in the world. The masses listen to whatever is currently the flavour of the month and fed to them by the media, while the music lovers go about their business generally unnoticed.

By the way, perhaps Prince killed off the Japanese market when he had 人間 (human) printed on his trouser leg for the Nude Tour. Up until then, everyone was probably under the impression he had come from another world. I'm sure they must have been terribly disappointed to find out he was nothing more than a man.

I know it´s been a while now but wasn´t "Last December" released as a single in 2001 or 2002 and even reached the top 10?

I´m surprised to hear that he´s no longer that wellknown there. I thought he was a huge phenomenon, and Japan always seemed like the Netherlands of Asia to me as far as Prince fandom and popularity are concerned.

-

.

He used to be pretty big in Germany but the Cologne 2011 concert fiasco and the cancelled (and insanely expensive) Berlin concert a while ago created a lot of negative press for him.

He´d still fill big venues though.

-

I think he´s neglected the Greek and the Turkish market a bit when those countries were still commercially interesting. He didn´t play Istanbul in 1993 and didn´t play Athens in what, 2010 or 2011? Madonna, U2, Sting, Michael Jackson, pretty much every big star has played in Athens and Istanbul except for Prince. These days, people would probably still go and check him out simply because he has never played there but he´s definitely not popular or even known among the younger crowd. Plus both countries have tons of talented and popular musicians (so called "real musicians", using Prince´s words. ) So he´d have to put on one hell of a good show there and could probably only play in one or two cities maximum.

-

He has played in Poland and Hungary and the Czech Republic though, and I think that was a smart move.

Well first of all, it's interesting to note that Prince singles such as Guitar, Fury, Black Sweat, Musicology, etc... went Top Forty on worldwide charts in the 2000s. Last December reached #1 in Japan back in 2001/2002

Second of all, as someone who has visited Japan before, they know no one from America. Well not literally, but in terms of music stars of the past, people had no idea who Bruce Springsteen, Bon Jovi, George Michael, Whitney Houston, even Madonna were... They were all about Japanese music and I heard quite a lot of TVXQ fans there. Not to say all of Japan is like this, but in my experience not many American artists are 'icons' there (except Michael Jackson). However, if Prince were to play there I'm sure he would be successful. The people I mostly spoke to recognized pictures of Madonna and Prince (I didn't show any of the others), so they are still somewhat in the 'legend' status there.

.

I just made friends with a guy who came from Saudi Arabia 2 months back. When he found out I liked Prince, he told me that P was pretty well-known in Saudi and that a lot of people knew him mostly for being so risque. He only knew one P song, and that was Darling Nikki! So P has a substantial presence in Arab countries.

.

This was in the 1990s, but my uncle who grew up in 90s Pakistan said Prince was HUGE. I've heard similar things about him by Arab acquaintences, from Egypt, Jordan, etc...

.

blackbob said:

he still had a top ten album in japan with aoa and had similar sales to the uk so he is known to a resonable number of fans in japan and has played many big concerts in japan...he has been off the radar since going indie in the mid 90s but he retains a sizable following in the country.

.

Exactly. He does pretty well in the country sales-wise still (Song of the Heart went Top Forty back in 06 and Guitar in 07)

What most people probably don't realise about Japan is that the charts are separated into Japanese artists and everybody else. When you walk into a store, you'll be faced with a rack of CDs of the Japanese chart and will have to go looking for the 'western' one. Even if Prince got to number 1, I bet the majority of people wouldn't notice. While not strictly true, I agree with CharismaDove when he says, "...they know no one from America". There's just not that much interest in anything from outside of Japan unless it's a film or a nice car. The bottom line is that in today's Japan, Prince has zero cultural relevance.

airth said:

blackbob said:

he still had a top ten album in japan with aoa and had similar sales to the uk so he is known to a resonable number of fans in japan and has played many big concerts in japan...he has been off the radar since going indie in the mid 90s but he retains a sizable following in the country.

Do you know the numbers and do you have a source for the sales figures? I've been trying to find them without success. I think I can only access them through Oricon Style the chart provider, which is a paid subscription service. Japan's population is twice the size of the UK, which would halve his presence based on sales figures.

He last played Japan 12 years ago. The biggest single concert was at Osaka with a capacity of 16,000, followed by two nights in Tokyo to up to 20,000 people. He also visited other cities and played at one venue with 5,000 seats, one with 2,800, three with 2,300, and the one I wish I had gone to only held 1,500 people. Assuming he sold out every night, he played to a grand total of 52,200 people in a country with a population of 127 million. It doesn't give me any pleasure to say it, but that hardly suggests he even had a sizeable following in 2002, never mind now.

[Edited 11/7/14 15:34pm]

aoa entered at number 6 in japan and has sold around 20,000 copies so far...pe entered at number 10 and has sold around half that... http://www.ukmix.org/foru...;start=100

blackbob said:

aoa entered at number 6 in japan and has sold around 20,000 copies so far...pe entered at number 10 and has sold around half that... http://www.ukmix.org/foru...;start=100

Thank you.

So, let's put that into perspective. The most recent sales figures quoted in the page you linked to for Art Official Age are 17,669 after being on the shelves for over a month. Compare that with the four-day sales figures for the latest album by one of Japan's biggest bands, Arashi: 660,204. That pretty much reflects his standing in the popularity stakes.