Grieving fans are buying up Prince's catalog.
In the four days after the music icon was found dead at his home at age 57[3], he sold 650,000 albums (both digital and physical), according to Nielsen Music. By comparison, Prince sold 1,400 copies in the three days prior.
Sales were highest Thursday, the day the news of his death broke, but Friday came close. Hits collection The Very Best of Prince was the top seller (258,000 copies), followed by the singer's smash Purple Rain soundtrack (147,000), which has sold 13 million copies since its release in 1984. The albums claimed the top two spots on the Billboard 200 album chart[4] this week, while his box set The Hits/The B-Sides landed at No. 6 (64,000).
The Purple One sold 2.8 million songs in that same four-day period, including nearly 1 million Thursday and 900,000 Friday. His best-selling songs were led by Purple Rain (323,000), followed by When Doves Cry (245,000), Little Red Corvette (200,000), Kiss (184,000) and Let's Go Crazy (182,000).
"The activity has been pretty intense," says David Bakula, Nielsen Entertainment's senior vice president of analytics. With sales holding steady, "the number is definitely going to be higher this week than it was last. It wouldn't surprise me to see (Prince) stay up at the top for a very long time."
The jump is akin to that of Michael Jackson, who also died on a Thursday and posthumously sold 422,000 albums the week of his death in 2009. But it may be more difficult to match the longer-term sales of the King of Pop, who went on to sell 800,000 and 1.1 million albums, respectively, in the two weeks after.
A more recent example is David Bowie, who died Jan. 10. "As far as depth of catalog and how many albums spiked up, we're seeing a little more activity for Prince than we were for Bowie," Bakula says. In the week following his death, Bowie sold 308,000 albums and 375,000 songs, including 174,000 copies of his final album Blackstar, released just two days before he died of cancer at 69.
Prince released his 39th and final album, HITnRUN Phase Two, as a Tidal exclusive last December, before putting it on iTunes in January. He withdrew his music from all streaming services other than Tidal[5] last summer, which helped contribute to the stronger-than-anticipated posthumous sales.
"It's really quite a tribute to what fans thought of Prince and how much they wanted to enjoy his music," Bakula says. "The lack of a wide streaming availability has made these sales numbers greater than what anybody would have expected."
Contributing: Elysa Gardner
Prince's publicist says his friends and family gathered late Saturday to say goodbye to the late 57-year-old musician. Video provided by Newsy Newslook
References
- ^ Last Slide (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ Next Slide (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ the music icon was found dead at his home at age 57 (www.usatoday.com)
- ^ Billboard 200 album chart (www.billboard.com)
- ^ withdrew his music from all streaming services other than Tidal (www.usatoday.com)
