Accessibility links

Breaking News

Sales Surge for Prince’s Music


U.S. musician Prince performs for the first time in Britain since 2007 at the Hop Farm Festival near Paddock Wood, southern England, July 3, 2011.
U.S. musician Prince performs for the first time in Britain since 2007 at the Hop Farm Festival near Paddock Wood, southern England, July 3, 2011.

Sales of Prince’s music has surged since the sudden death of the megastar last week.

His albums were reportedly topping the charts at Amazon and iTunes.

On Amazon, the albums “Purple Rain,” Sign O’ The Times” and others were among the top sellers.

Since his death, radio stations have been playing many of the artist’s songs, which could be helping to drive the sales.

Cable channel BET Soul played nothing but Prince videos over the past weekend as a tribute to the star.

Prince was adamant about not having his music appear on streaming sites like YouTube, Spotify and others, but did grant Jay-Z’s Tidal service sole access to his catalog.

Prince believed the Internet, and digital sales of music had been bad for musical artists.

Musicians have seen surges in sales after their death, including Michael Jackson, James Brown, Johnny Cash, David Bowie and Ray Charles.

  • 16x9 Image

    VOA News

    The Voice of America provides news and information in more than 40 languages to an estimated weekly audience of over 326 million people. Stories with the VOA News byline are the work of multiple VOA journalists and may contain information from wire service reports.

XS
SM
MD
LG