Here are the first week U.S. sales estimate according to Hits Daily Double:

http://hitsdailydouble.co...;id=316951

*Prince (Rhino/Warner) SPS: 18-21k, SALES: 17-20k

It is projected to land at #16 with 18 -21k Sales plus streaming, Pure sales 17- 20k.

You can see just from the streaming to sales ratio that this album has not been streamed a lot.

Piano & A Microphone debuted at #11 with 34k sales, I'm surprised that Originals is projected to sell a lot less...

[Edited 6/26/19 3:51am]

What does this mean for any future releases with the estate, it seems like Piano & A Microphone that was literally gone from the charts in 3 weeks and didn't even clear 50,000 in the U.S. will outsell Originals.

Thanks for this thread. Will be interetsing to see how global sales fare. In all honesty IMHO with streaming now a 'thing' I think 100k of global physical sales is more than respectable for nuche records such as these.

All adds to the voulme of catalogue, long term sellers.

EmmaMcG said:

FrankieCoco1 said:

By the way Mods - should this thread be in the main Originals thread?

This thread is talking specifically about sales and the chart positions, not a discussion about the album.

[Edited 6/26/19 5:26am]

antonb said:

Trying to make every release into an event ain't working. Set up a website and start emptying the vault. Directly to the hardcore fans. Rehearsals.shows, the lot!

Yep, they need to start selling as much as they can as soon as they can to those of us who are still alive and care enough to buy it. Prince has never been a huge seller, outside of his most popular albums, especially towards the latter end of his career.

feeluupp said:

What does this mean for any future releases with the estate, it seems like Piano & A Microphone that was literally gone from the charts in 3 weeks and didn't even clear 50,000 in the U.S. will outsell Originals.

There's no reason for this, or any other, posthumous album to sell well amongst anyone except the hardcore Prince fans. Maybe the estate will finally cop on and stop trying to have a hit with tracks that are 30+ years old and sound like it too.

FrankieCoco1 said:

I bought that shit three times (so far). So I have more than done my part.

antonb said:

RODSERLING said:

Let s say the next release next year is 1999 deluxe. . To avoid such a flop, they absolutely have to : . - including a live from this era remasterized in HD - to make a one hour documentary for tv didcuting the making of the album, the outtakes, it's cultural and historical impact, etc. - recertify the album 5*Platinum if necessary - make a one hour take of the live to broadcast it on international tv. - Use the unreleased Xtralovable music video shot by Prince in 2011, with the original 1982 outtake to make a music video on YouTube - remasterized the music video on YouTube. [Edited 6/26/19 7:25am]

Maybe, but more likely not. Prince already has too much released music for the average listener to care about hearing unreleased stuff. A super deluxe edition would do about as well as the Super Deluxe Editions of Roxy Music or Rolling Stones albums - fine, but not blowing up the charts and not selling by the bucketload.

It seems to be only Prince fans who have the deluded belief that if they don't sell 100 thousand+ copies then it'll all be over. The Marc Bolan estate have been churning out barrel scraping tapes of Bolan idling on his guitar into a tape recorder for decades for a tiny dedicated fanbase with no sign of stopping.

[Edited 6/26/19 8:08am]

they shot in their own feet. Even i as harcore fan didnt care about these releases one bit. If they just throw at us what they find first instead of releasing some coherent new old album with at least 70% unheard materials.

Or there's nothing more interesting to find in the vault of course. After this time you'd figure they already got their stuff together if they approached it a bit intelligently.

The thing you guys need to realize is that these sorts of projects have a different set of goals and benchmarks then your typical "new album" release.

I'm the PM at an agency that works with labels/artists on their album launches (in fact one of my current projects is also in the Hits Daily Double Top 20), and I can tell you from first-hand experience that Rhino (the catalogue division that is actually handling Prince at this point) is just fine with these results.

Originals debuts at #46 on the Billboard Top Album Sales chart dated June 29. This chart tallies physical sales (only CDs at this point, of course) and digital sales, but not streaming.

Its chart placement would probably be somewhat higher if the vinyl had come out on the same date. I'm also not sure of exactly the sales period it covers, because Madonna and the Boss debuted on the same chart week, but their release dates were June 14 and Prince's was June 21. I don't know why they would debut on the same week's chart. I guess Prince's numbers could just be from digital sales on Tidal.

Following up my own post, I now see that Originals debuts at #9 on the Billboard Digital Albums chart dated June 29. I'm not sure if this chart includes streaming. But that's all got to be from Tidal.

RODSERLING said:

Not even in the UK top 100 : https://www.officialchart...ums-chart/

Wow so this is the lowest selling posthumous release so far...

4ever and Piano & A Microphone outsold Originals...

At this point it might not even pass 50,000 world wide which isn't just a flop it means it might not even break even for the distribution cost.

Other than Purple Rain and the Batman album, Prince has never been a top seller as far as album sales. So, this shouldn't come as a surprise to us Prince fans. Most non-hardcore fans have no awareness of Prince outside of his 1999/Purple Rain era. So, an album titled "The Originals" sparks zero interest from the general public. I don't know what the goals are from the Estate, when it comes to album releases. But, we need to be realistic with our expectations with these chart positions.

Bishop31 said:

Other than Purple Rain and the Batman album, Prince has never been a top seller as far as album sales. So, this shouldn't come as a surprise to us Prince fans. Most non-hardcore fans have no awareness of Prince outside of his 1999/Purple Rain era. So, an album titled "The Originals" sparks zero interest from the general public. I don't know what the goals are from the Estate, when it comes to album releases. But, we need to be realistic with our expectations with these chart positions.

He has never been a "TOP" seller, yes he hasn't had Madonna or MJ numbers except for Purple Rain, but he had been a consistant seller from 1983 - 1993 all his albums sold in the millions and in the span he sold almost over 50 million albums world wide, which is a great commercial success.

Nobody did expect Originals to sell well, but tbh I did not excpect Originals to sell this low, way low than Piano & A Microphone.

I really think the estate should be releasing box set deluxe editions of his most popular albums first and a bonus cd that includes vault tracks from that era, but just coming up with these obscure releases doesn't benefit the fans nor the commercial potential.

feeluupp said:

At this point it might not even pass 50,000 world wide which isn't just a flop it means it might not even break even for the distribution cost.

Again, you're looking at this through the wrong lens. The label's and sales projections/expecations are much lower than you think they are.

scratchtasia said:

Originals debuts at #46 on the Billboard Top Album Sales chart dated June 29. This chart tallies physical sales (only CDs at this point, of course) and digital sales, but not streaming.

Its chart placement would probably be somewhat higher if the vinyl had come out on the same date. I'm also not sure of exactly the sales period it covers, because Madonna and the Boss debuted on the same chart week, but their release dates were June 14 and Prince's was June 21. I don't know why they would debut on the same week's chart. I guess Prince's numbers could just be from digital sales on Tidal.

The album was released early on iTunes (and possibly elsewhere), so pre-orders and any sales that occured prior to the Thursday night cutoff were shifted to the previous week.

TwiliteKid said:

feeluupp said:

At this point it might not even pass 50,000 world wide which isn't just a flop it means it might not even break even for the distribution cost.

Again, you're looking at this through the wrong lens. The label's and sales projections/expecations are much lower than you think they are.

I don't know what label would project lower than 50,000 sales world wide...

What about the cost for the deluxe edition, multiple vinyl colors, etc...