UPDATE Prince has 19 of the top 20 selling albums on amazon.com. He also has the top downloads on iTunes Top Albums, and then scattered through the top 40 spots are all the rest of his albums on iTunes.
Nothing sells like death, but Prince’s output is so huge– his catalog just goes on and on– that sales of his albums and singles are right now well beyond similar situations with Michael Jackson or David Bowie.
Jay Z’s Tidal service lucked out because a few months ago Prince pulled all of his music from Spotify and AppleMusic and put it on Tidal. It didn’t make sense, but that was Prince. Tidal is now heavily advertising their Prince playlists. You must subscribe to the whole service to hear the songs.
SiriusXM satellite radio has turned Channel 50, The Groove, into an all Prince station. I listened to it last night and it’s excellent.
Warner Music lucks out on the album and singles sales. Prince fought with them for 18 years, removed all his music, released it in other platforms. But last year he signed a new deal with them and made peace. It was the smartest thing anyone at Warner Music had done in 400 years (that’s right, four hundred).
There are Prince albums now on the charts that were never hits or even on a chart, too, which makes this all the more remarkable. And deeply, grievously, sad.
