donnyenglish said:

I am in Baltimore and the SDE is not available anywhere. They have lost a ton of sales in Maryland.

Don't you have Amazon in Baltimore?

EmmaMcG said:

homesquid said:

RODSERLING said:

RODSERLING said:

1) The price is way too high for what it is : A)66 euros for the 5cd+dvd edition, when the PR deluxe had 3CD+1 dvd for 25 euros, and it had hard time to sell already. 35 euros would have been an honest price. B) 190 euros for the 10 Vinyl version, common, that makes 19 euros per vinyl ! 90 euros would have been honest. Some material is clearly useless on vinyl in term of sound quality : the edit versions, the live... C) 64 euros for just the vinyl album + the edit versions ! That s pure thievery. 2) I know some fans who won't buy it because they already listened to this on YouTube on the official channel. 3) As I said before, 1999 is a minor album outside the USA. No wonder this week it is only at #58 in the UK. Personally, my girlfriend bought it for me for Christmas yesterday, so it's sale will count for the second week.

I don’t own the set yet (too skint at the moment), but it seems like a genuinely deluxe package and not exorbitantly expensive to me. The thing with truly deluxe boxsets like this is that they tend to hold their value. I’ve actually made money on a couple of the Miles Davis sets that I have (not that I'd sell them), and they were around the same price as 1999 deluxe new.

I can't speak for the rest of his fanbase, but for me, I'm just not interested.

EmmaMcG said:

homesquid said:

Ok but let's be real here. IF not for being able to get digital files for FREE illegally or cherry picking digital files legally almost any of us would buy this set for north of 100 bucks if it were a bootleg. Just imagine you had visited your local record store and found this set in the racks....I miss the old days on this front. I paid $30 for The Black Album on vinyl in 1988. I would've paid twice that.

Good point. I'm sure some people would buy it, even at that price, if there was no other way of getting it. I honestly don't know if I would or not. A few years ago I would definitely have bought it. Now, I find it hard to justify spending so much on 2 discs worth of music.

You know what...the days of forcing fans to buy redundancy for a fraction of new material is long gone (like the infamous "Best Of" with one or two new tracks) so you have just shown the smarter marketing roll out would have been to offer the two vault discs on their own. I would have still bought the Super Deluxe because I wanted the remsatered album, etc...but for someone who just wants the vault material it just isn't nearly as tempting. You would have snatched up the 2 Disc Vault CD, right?

Bruce Springsteen did this on one of his box sets. It was 3 cds (remaster, 2 discs vault stuff) and 3 dvds but they also sold the two CD set of vault material separately ("The Promise"). You can't force people to buy something they don't think is a good value anymore because people can get it for free (unless physical is yo' thang).

15k is not a huge amount of people but it still adds up 2 a chunk of money 4 just one week of sales because of the price of the box set. I'd suggest that the estate invest in some t.v. advertising dollars for the christmas shoppers. Nothing sells like t.v. advertising. Just my opinion.

I'm in Edinburgh and Fopp had it out on release day, blaring from the speakers.

I could see four formats of the release on sale, and they were giving away LP sizes prints of the photo from the front of the booklet. They said it was selling well, and that was only a few hours into release day.

I'd say that's a good indication it's not being ignored.

homesquid said:

EmmaMcG said:

RODSERLING said:

homesquid said:

1999 Deluxe is the third release from the estate. I can understand that some weren't thrilled with the first two but this one of his biggest albums and had four discs worth of unreleased material...and it couln't sell 15k in the first week?

I heard from some fans who didn't buy it and they said that a lot of fans are boycotting this release for ommitting to many essential tracks and Howe's comments on not releasing Extra Loveable and Lust U Always.
These fans are content with downloading the FLACs of this release and will buy the eventual more complete version when done right or better.

JorisE73 said:

homesquid said:

1999 Deluxe is the third release from the estate. I can understand that some weren't thrilled with the first two but this one of his biggest albums and had four discs worth of unreleased material...and it couln't sell 15k in the first week?

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For most people it's just (way) too expensive.

Let me explain :

Let's not forget, Prince isn't thàt popular anymore, that's one.

Second; by most people only known for his hits,

third; most people have songs like '1999' or 'little red corvette' on compilations, etc.

-

Also, like, i'm a huge music fan, but i'm not interested in let's say another vault release of Pink Floyd or The Beatles as a 5 CD box for let's say 65 or 70 EURO's (who have btw more and possibly bigger dedicated fans than Prince).

Plus, there are also A LOT of re-releases, new boxes and packages of so many older artists.

Then, most young people stream music, and prefer to make their own playlist, rather then buying albums or box-sets.

Plus, and not to forget IF they still know who Prince ís (talking about the -30 year olds).

Think about it.

-

Personally I think 15k in the first week is a pretty damn good sell.

Plus (again), there are so many configurations of this re-release...

Do we count them all ?

-

And tell me who as a non Prince fan, but music lover like I am, would buy a second remastered version, if they already have the older CD/vinyl/cassette version, or a hit package with the known hits... ?

They possibly waith for sales.

-

Ramzoo said:

EmmaMcG said:

€66 where you are? It's €80 here in Ireland. Which is twice what I'd be willing to pay for it. Especially seeing as I'm only interested in the two Vault discs. So yeah, as much as I'd love to support a release such as this, they've priced it far too high for me to consider.

I confirm that the lowest price seen in Paris is 65€!

-

Here in Brussels (MediaMarkt) I payd 62,98 EURO for the 5 CD package,

And I ordered my 10 vinyl package in France for something like 183 EUROs.

-

I bought the set from the estate, and have been playing it on Tidal. Excuse my ignorance, but these days how many sales does that count as? If you pre-ordered , does that count as a week one sale, or will it count when the record is shipped? (mid January according to musictoday)
These factors might serve to confuse sales figures.

I've got everything crossed that I get it for Christmas, so I haven't bought it. I'll buy it (hopefully in the sales) should I be disappointed.

homesquid said:

and it couln't sell 15k in the first week?

.

its not the 80s anymore for any artist. unless theyre the flavor of the month pop/rap junk, who does sell #s like that the first week anymore? streaming kills sales. the fact that you cant (for the most part) just walk into stores anymore and casually discover a release kills sales. if anyone thought that this release was going to go platinum right off the bat, thats just some misguided nostalgia there.

mbdtyler said:

A lot of people are probably content with just streaming the album, or maybe some can't afford the whole set at the moment?

,

Half the USSA is on not so big incomes...

JorisE73 said:

homesquid said:

1999 Deluxe is the third release from the estate. I can understand that some weren't thrilled with the first two but this one of his biggest albums and had four discs worth of unreleased material...and it couln't sell 15k in the first week?

I heard from some fans who didn't buy it and they said that a lot of fans are boycotting this release for ommitting to many essential tracks and Howe's comments on not releasing Extra Loveable and Lust U Always.
These fans are content with downloading the FLACs of this release and will buy the eventual more complete version when done right or better.

That's pretty dumb. If this set doesn't sell, the Estate damned sure won't do a "more complete version".

JediMaster said:

JorisE73 said:

I heard from some fans who didn't buy it and they said that a lot of fans are boycotting this release for ommitting to many essential tracks and Howe's comments on not releasing Extra Loveable and Lust U Always.
These fans are content with downloading the FLACs of this release and will buy the eventual more complete version when done right or better.

That's pretty dumb. If this set doesn't sell, they sure won't do a "more complete version".

This is my concern as well, which is one of the reasons I am purchasing it.

[Edited 12/9/19 13:37pm]

JorisE73 said:

homesquid said:

1999 Deluxe is the third release from the estate. I can understand that some weren't thrilled with the first two but this one of his biggest albums and had four discs worth of unreleased material...and it couln't sell 15k in the first week?

I heard from some fans who didn't buy it and they said that a lot of fans are boycotting this release for ommitting to many essential tracks and Howe's comments on not releasing Extra Loveable and Lust U Always.
These fans are content with downloading the FLACs of this release and will buy the eventual more complete version when done right or better.

so they r willing to sabotage future releases?? dumbasses

homesquid said:

Purchased the 5CD/DVD Deluxe last Tuesday. Will wait until the holidays to dig into it.

EmmaMcG said:

homesquid said:

YMMV but this set is a deal compared to similar sets. The Freddie Mercury "Never Boring" set is three CDs, a DVD and Blu Ray (same content) with ZERO UNRELEASED MATERIAL. Just some remixing. For $100

[Edited 12/8/19 6:53am]

I see what you're saying but just because it's not as much of a rip off as other box sets doesn't mean it's not a rip off. A lower, more reasonable price point may have enticed "casual fans" to give it a go which would lead to more sales, more potential interest in future releases. But by pricing it so high they're clearly only targeting die hard fans, of which there are fewer and fewer as the years go by, and even die hard fans are reluctant to spend that kind of money. It's a short-sighted business plan that I hope doesn't come back to haunt them by further diminishing his audience.

The casual fan can buy the original album remastered by itself. I mean that's what they woud want; Not the rest.