To this day,I still can not believe Purple Rain only sold under 20 mill,when it tie the Bee Gee's record for being number 1 in a row[21 weeks],and the Bee Gee had the most records solded alltime until M Jacko broke their record,something still do not seem right about this.

Vannelli said:

Well, 50 million is an awfully high number. I think the numbers on Purple Rain are fairly accurate.

rialb said:

But the Bee Gee sold 30 plus and you known who 40,come on now!

Vannelli said:

What worries me more is out of 6 billion people on this planet only 4 million have any taste. They're the people who bought Sign 'O' The Times.

Prince is not a big seller in south america, africa, and some parts of europe i think. At least in brazil nobody has Prince records. and i just saw purple rain on the stores once in one store in my town.

Actually SOTT has sold more in the region of 7 - 8 million , it just hasnt been recertified for 15 years!

Hmm, i wonder if "musicology" has hit 2million worldwide yet!

Purple Rain would have been banned in alot of avenues and countries.

Also, Prince was at one time considered too vulgar for certain people.

That limits your audience. That is why movie studios try so hard to get their movies down to a pg-13 rating when alot of money is at stake.

Prince has always had limited appeal--however, that being said, it's amazing that he has the audience he currently enjoys considering the mind numbing switch in gears he's always going through.

These numbers are skewed because of the hundreds of mom & pop stores across the nation that did not keep accurate numbers of sales.

This is in comparision to the soundscan era where sales are skewed because a Wal-Mart can order 3 million albums and sell only 1 million but the 3 million will still count as a sale.

"Actually SOTT has sold more in the region of 7 - 8 million , it just hasnt been recertified for 15 years!

Hmm, i wonder if "musicology" has hit 2million worldwide yet!"

does anyone have updated sales info on past albums..
parade and sott last time i heard were around the 1.8 million marks in the US, but that was 17 years ago...

thanks

Vannelli said:

Actually, it was #1 for 24 consecutive weeks, 6 months. But there are politics in the music industry just as there are in every other industry. The sales numbers made public aren't always accurate.