I didn't knwo where to post this so I'll post it here, who heard that new Mario Winans song that samples the strings (sloppily I might add) of Papa Don't Preach?

CynicKill said:

I think I saw part of the video. Sounds like he is going to be a one hit wonder.

VinnyM27 said:

Yes you're right. Did you see that article in the NY Post (ughhh) right before the NYC shows started titled "NY Shows Bombing" or something? The NY Post (and Faux News too) said thousands and thousands of seats would be empty at each NY show but all 6 of those shows were packed tight and sold out. They only interviewed scalpers for that article. For months on those scalper sites they had asking prices of literally triple (and up!) the face value for seats in the first 10 rows. Ha ha, two days before one of the shows I got on Ebay a pair of tickets in the 6th row for a bit below face value from one scalper because his scalper site couldn't sell their seats for the jacked-up scalper prices they advertised for months. He whined to me that Madonna screwed over the scalping business.
[This message was edited Fri Aug 13 11:42:31 2004 by Slyguy]

I'm glad she had a successful tour. I'm just trying to figure out why many Madonna fans get mad when someone says the tour didn't sell out all its shows. It didn't....allmusic.com had the mid-summer score and it was posted on this site just last month. Out of 21 shows from the beginning of the tour to June, she only sold out 7. Prince was listed as doing 55 shows and selling out 45 of them. He came in at number one and Madonna came in at number two. It's hard to compare the two tours based off of these facts, because Madonna's concert tickets cost 2 times more than Prince's and Prince did waaay more shows than Madonna. Celine Dion actually impressed me the most, because she came in third on that list and she only sold out 2 shows of her Vegas performances. Her tickets must cost 5 times more than both Prince and Madonna. She came in third and didn't even have to move from Vegas. Impressive. Madonna's tour didn't flop, but it didn't sell out either (waiting for the typical, angry Madonna fan response where I'm called a "hater" and yadda, yadda, yadda and so on and so forth )...but, I'm sure Madonna doesn't care, because she's laughing all the way to the bank at the moment. I'll watch it when it comes on for free on NBC.

estelle1981 said:

Well, they all sold out according to Billboard, and since they compile the figures, I'm going to trust them over allmusic.

Revolution said:

I remember first seeing that number and saying...What!! Then, imagine how much more surprised I was when I found out that the show only lasted for an hour and a half. That's almost 300 dollars an hour per person! She makes 10 times more than doctors who save people everyday. Man, seriously, I wouldn't even pay that much for a doctor, so I sure wouldn't pay that much to see some pop singer, even if it was Prince. Shit, I ain't delusional. I wouldn't pay that much to see Jesus go on stage, heal blind people, and then multiple two fish and five loaves of bread to feed the audience. He'd probably sell the show to one of the networks anyway and all my friends have good, stolen cable with the movies channels. Yay, for "free" TV!

Just so we don't keep running over this:

MADONNA MYTH #2233939A: "Not all of Madonna's US shows sold out."

FACT: According to Billboard Boxscore, ALL of Madonna's US shows did indeed sell out.

VoicesCarry said:

I'm not trusting either one of them. That's too many different figures and someone is either lying at one of the companies or adding just wasn't one of their better subjects in school. I've heard too many different stories from different sources that are all pretty accurate when it comes to concert ticket sales. One of them being Ticketmaster and even they don't have her down as selling out all of her shows...just 3 or 4. Plus, I've read stories from a lot of people on these boards that have said that the shows they went to weren't even close to selling out. So, basically, the scalpers bought all the tickets and couldn't sell them. Now, I'm actually proud of her for screwing over the scalpers....just like I'm proud of Prince for screwing over the Billboard charts and many record execs by giving his album out at all of his shows. I'm soo proud of these two right now.
[This message was edited Fri Aug 13 13:50:58 2004 by estelle1981]

estelle1981 said:

Well, if you quote allmusic for your box office information, you must also quote Casey Kasem for your chart information. They're both equally inaccurate.

Attendance doesn't matter. Did all the tickets sell out? Yes. So what if the scalpers couldn't sell theirs - they were asking hugely inflated sums (like 4 or 5 times a $300 face value). Of course people aren't going to bite.
[This message was edited Fri Aug 13 13:56:21 2004 by VoicesCarry]

estelle1981 said:

I'm not mad one bit and I don't think you're h8er. Billboard Boxscore leading up to this week have tabulated and confirmed all of her U.S. shows as sold out. I think maybe allmusic has a slightly different and preliminary measure/criteria for "sold out" from Billboard Boxscore the way HitsDailyDouble has a slightly different and preliminary measure/criteria of counting album sales vs Billboard Soundscan's methods. But it's Billboard that the industry values more as an authority. If people think Billboard's figures are invalid then they should go have Billboard investigated for fraud.

Either way both Prince and Madge are both playing to packed houses and laughing all the way to the bank having the biggest grossing tours of the year. The concert industry is doing terribly this year with Prince and Madonna (and Miss Celine!) being the only ones who are immune to the curse this year. Tours for some major artists have been cancelled to tepid sales and promoters are slashing prices at the last minute for some shows because sales are so low.

Meanwhile, American sensation and legend Jessica Simpson should probably consider playing in phone-booths instead. Look at the numbers for her shows. She played to arenas that only sold only 1/2 or even just 1/3 of the seats made available for sale.

6/20 - Alltel Pavilion, Raleigh, N.C.- $113,346- 6,894/20,000
7/18 - Journal Pavilion, Albuquerque, N.M.- $116,105 - 4,932/12,125
7/20 - Universal Lending CityLights Pavilion, Denver, Colo.- $110,264-2,630/4,454
7/21 - USANA Amphitheatre, West Valley City, Utah- $98,522- 4,305/7,000
7/23 - General Motors Place, Vancouver, B.C.- $106,495- 2,986/8,449
7/24 - White River Ampitheatre, Auburn, Wash.- $112,237- 6,691/19,976
7/25 - Ampitheater in Clark County, Ridgefield, Wash.- $109,555- 6,236/17,780
7/27 - Shoreline Ampitheatre, Mountain View, Calif.- $141,856- 6,739/22,000
7/28 - SleepTrain Ampitheatre, Marysville, Calif.- $137,240- 6,219/18,500

SO, Jessica Simpson was in concert in Los Angeles. However, and unfortunately, her concert was not necessarily in concert with what folks out there wanted. Her Universal Amphitheater venue definitely had seats available. Fifty dollar tickets got slashed to "Specials; $20." Come show time, things slid even further and the sales were: "Buy three $20 seats — get one free." Those who did got the eighth row.

Slyguy said:

Jessica, Jessica, Jessica. I'm still not surprised by her show cancellations. That album had to be totally re-released for it to sell as many units as it did, so I'm know her concert tickets are going for cheaper than the asking price. I agree with you. I'm not doubting Billboard, but I'm not going to just consider it to be all that up-to-date with some of it's information. I checked it constantly about a month and a half ago and realized one day that the dates at the top were almost three weeks old. I came to that conclusion after reading a post on this message board. Someone had stated that she had come in at number one the prior week (second week of June, I believe) and I said that couldn't be right because in "Entertainment Weekly", Prince had come in at number one that prior week. I was given the website address and after reading the date at the top, I realized the information in front of me at that moment was almost 3 weeks old. Maybe it was a technical error, but it stayed like that for almost a month. "Entertainment Weekly" did a top 15 tours of the week chart in the music section for almost 2 months and Madonna was barely ever on there. I know "EW" gets all of it's information from Billboard and probably Ticketmaster when it comes to their music section, so that's why I have doubts about Billboards numbers at times. But, Cest La Vie.

estelle1981 said:

Concerts are tallied and different sources print the results at different times. Billboard Online does not always offer the most up-to-date information, because they're catering to people who don't buy the magazine (unless you're a web member).

estelle1981 said:

The allmusic.com list you're refering to is the pollstar mid-year report...you need to re-read the list in order to really understand it.
This is the top 3 of the list you're talking about:

R Grs Artist Avg Price Avg Tks Total Tks Avg Grs Cts/Shws Agency

1 45.7 Prince 61.59 16,752 737,097 1,038,636 44/54 Concerts West
2 44.9 Madonna 174.17 36,864 258,046 6,414,286 7/21 Creative Artists Agency
3 40.8 Celine Dion 137.65 4,060 295,652 558,904 1/73 United Talent Agency

The 7/21 number you're taking as being 7 sold out shows out of 21 is actually 21 shows in 7 cities/venues...that's why Celine's listed as 1/73...because she only played in one venue.
You can also see Prince's,Madonna's and Celine's average ticket price.
Like some have said,all of Madonna's US shows were sold out.Although i haven't seen all of Prince's boxscore stats,all of his shows i have seen reported, were sold out too.

Hope this helps clear out the confusion.