He had no control, he couldn't wait no longer, he just HAD to release it.

It's time had come.

If you don't know what I'm talkin' 'bout, don't even try.

You'll never understand .

funkaholic1972 said:

I don't think that waiting awhile longer would have made a difference in the sales.Prince is a veteran artist.He's not gonna sell alot of records anymore,no matter what he releases or when he releases it.

daingermouz2020 said:

No, he should just release a good album. Seems he's hell bent on giving us everything but a good album. I'll always be a Prince fan. I still thinks he has some gems in him. He needs to swallow his pride and collaborate. Call in his Revolution members for some tracks, go dig through his vault dust off,rework,update unreleased songs from 1977-1988. Call in Questlove. Yeah he talks alot. But I feel he'd bring it when compared to what this Josh dude is bringing. Or work with whoever Bilal worked with on his Airtight Revenge album. That would've been a great Prince album. Better than any album he's put out in 20 yrs. He needs an executive producer.

I like some of your ideas

I would wager that the number of people that have HNR on their hard drive is around the same number of people that have AOA. But you could pay to download AOA so more sales were recorded. Tidal may seem like a good idea, but its not if your fanbase is on the wrong side of 40 and still very much a buy-it-own-it collective. Its just asking for the torrents to serve up what the artist isnt serving. All Prince and Jay Z have done with this venture is increase Prince's torrent activity for a couple of weeks.

I think the release of the physical album was botched, it felt like an after thought, regardless of whether it was or not. All the press was focused on it being a Tidal exclusive, so likely most people who may have been interested mentally checked out at that point, then seeing it appear in drips and drabs on a non-standard release date in record stores was not going to get people on board.

On Twitter people were posting themselves with the cd and saying "it's here, this town has it in this shop" and people replying "I tried this shop they don't have it until Friday" etc - it was fun for the hardcore but messy as fuck for the mildly interested and that killed its sales.

Then the cover looks identical to the previous album, so that if I was browsing through HMV or Target and saw it out of the corner of my eye I'd unconsciously assume it was AOA and that I already had it on my selves. It makes no sense commercially to have that cover - it's cute for the hardcore and in the knows, or for a remix album like Rave un2/in2, but doesn't do enough to differentiate it from the previous product.

Mixed reviews and a lack of marketing/record company muscle behind it also majorly affected it.

Could have been Prince's greatest album ever, but with all of the above it would have had a hard time making much of a splash.

On the flip side, I have a friend who is a hardcore fan and he actually skipped the physical CD because he's happy with the Prince content on Tidal and will remain a subscriber, so it may have worked from that point of view.

I wonder if the release of a physical CD alienates Tidal / Jay Z at all? Did they think they were going to get HNR exclusively or did they know all along?

i think Prince should have never released HNR

[Edited 9/22/15 12:00pm]