Prince CD Sales Up, Bombing Online

Prince might think the Internet is over (or maybe not), but one thing is for sure, hype still works to sell product. As I posted a few days ago, Prince's comments on the Internet were well-planned in order to make people aware of his new album 20TEN.

As he did with his previous Planet Earth album in July 2007, 20TEN was released as a free giveaway attached to the London's The Mail on Sunday newspaper. In this case, the sales of the paper were up 27% (from 1,230,000 to 1,572,000). Planet Earth reached more people (2,801,000), but the increase was only 23% for the newspaper.

But that doesn't mean that the album has any Internet P2P traction though. According BigChampagne's Eric Garland, who's company measures the file sharing world, 20TEN has seen very little online activity, with downloads only in the low thousands. According to Prince, the album will not be available for digital distribution, but it seems that so far no one online cares anyway.

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