Yeah, great, right! Too bad he hasn't started giving away his music for free at concerts before, even though he's been bitching about it since 1993. Plus this is going to kill Musicology sales on the charts. A good idea would have been giving away a sampler, and EP with alternate mixes, or any other album, but not Musicology which should be charting as a major release... Prince, you never quite do things right...

If Prince has already budgeted in the cost of the cd into the ticket price, (is budgeted the correct term?anyway) then I don't see how this is a bad thing. It seems you want to see him on the charts but that isn't his concern.

I think its an excellent idea.

I think it is a great idea to! If you look on the back of the cd they do have a soundscan on there.

BUT who cares! That shows he loves the support of his fans:)

I think selling out 99% of all your shows in 20,000 arenas has told the Music Industry that Prince is huge.. the whole entertainment world knows this! thats why we are seeing him on magazines,tv shows, skit shows, etc..

The Arena Sell Out is more important & amazing Prince is making over $1 Million per show PLUS Merchandise

$50 Bucks for a T SHIRT! wow.. and I saw allot of people with them last night
[This message was edited Sun Apr 18 5:32:44 2004 by ElectricBlue]

Hopefully those CD's given out at concerts count as CD's sales. But i disagree with you in one thing: if Prince didn't really want to be on the charts he wouldn't release his music through a major, would he? Plus, he got a new publicist who'd helped to put Prince back on the media mainstream since the post-Oscars party appearance.

Rhondab said:

the man knows what he is doing. if this topic is really important to you, just trust princey he knows what to do. u r talking about a genius here.

ElectricBlue said:

That million is what the promoter is getting, but Prince is probably making a pretty tidy sum himself...maybe half.

Seems to me the amount of CD's he's giving away won't make an appreciable different when up against total worldwide sales...

but isn't this his point? "Back in the day", artists made the majority of their livelihoods from live performances and tours. The actual revenue from selling the records wasn't that significant...

Now, of course, with the music industry being what it is and $'s attached to everything... giving away the album at the concert illustrates his point entirely.

It's about the music, not the numbers.

ivdf said:

-----
It is smart because he is cutting out the middleman and keeping most the profit for himself.
Artist don't make a lot money off of the CD's. In addtion, I am sure he did not trust Sony to
do a good job with marketing the record. They are doing a good job but maybe he wanted to make sure the record got out to the real fans.

If you have read anything about Soundscan you would know that their have been allegations about record companies double scaning CD's to hype up sales. The whole the thing is a load of crap.

ivdf said:

Please hush...you dont know what you are talking about.

I indeed know what I'm talking about! But do you really know what you're talking about, or are you just a newcomer? I've been following Prince since 1986, so I have a quite an good idea of what I'm talking about. Are you just one of those who only knows kissing Prince's ass?

SENSHY said:

I doubt that Prince is as chart obsessed as some of his fans are, although no doubt he would love a big hit.

By giving away the CD as part of the concert ticket he gets the music lout to a whole lot of people and makes alot of the dollars himself. It also illustrates that he is not as hung up on the charts as some people think.

ivdf said:

WHat if they were Prince thmeselves... Boy, that would be good.

bkw said:

i thought that by buying a concert ticket the cd prince was already included.... so i assumed that everyone who bought tickets had already also bought the cd. doesn't that count???

for those of ya'll who are givin the thumbs-down to the promo copy of the album that's bein given out: do any of you diss those little booths at the supermarket, with the samples of food n'such?

ivdf said:

1986 aint shit..boy u betta recgonize..man o man I cant wait till I regin whats rightfully mine

SENSHY said:

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

U known these hypocrites are th e ones who sittin there waitng for that free shiet at costco etc to be warmed up to stuff they faces and then walk on..WAITIN for the microwave to go "ding" and the clerk to cut some shit in itty bitty pieces to give fo free.

These new fools will now be called Purple Warehouse Sto Skanks

SENSHY said:

true...cold-blooded, but scarily true

i don't think prince can really lose either way. giving the music away for free affords him the perfect excuse for any possible low record sales of an album. with all the positive talk surrounding him right now poor record sales may be seen as the only real negative of an otherwise very sucessful campaign and he has effectively insured against this. also if he does sell records it's seen as even more impressive, as he sells them in spite of the give away. perfect insurance for a mainstream comeback as the sales figures are difficult to read into e.g. whether the free copies would have translated into actual sales etc. also giving an album away is probably pretty good for generating interest via word of mouth while the concerts make him the major slice of money.

Paradisekiss03 said:

All the alleged experts here seem to suggest that the promo cd's given away do not count for the charts.

However, Prince can always claim to have shifted 500,000 copies this way I suppose.