Prince And The New Marketing Generation
It’s rare indeed for any artist to perform his concert for more than a few days at one venue.
Prince is currently doing 21 days in London alone!
And most of those dates have been sold out. In fact, at one point his tickets were selling at 1,000 per minute!
Why?
Because Prince:
1. Is a musical genius
He composes all his songs, writes the lyrics to all of them, sings them as lead vocal AND backing vocals and plays all the musical instruments used for those songs (up to 25 different instruments for one song)!
2. Is a prolific composer
He has composed hundreds of songs in his entire career, including hits for Celine Dion, Sheena Easton and The Bangles. He has released some of those songs on 46 albums so far - with many more yet unheard!!
3. Sells records
He has many hits from his albums and he has sold millions of them all over the world. The Purple Rain album alone (released in 1984) sold 20 million copies worldwide.
4. Is a great performer
If you’ve seen his Superbowl XLI halftime performance, you would have experienced an unforgettable musical performance.
I’m not a fan of Prince, by the way. Not of his music, nor his style - but I do appreciate genius when I see one.
His London concerts were originally supposed to run for 7 nights but when all 140,000 tickets for them at 31.21 pounds sterling (about $63) sold out in 20 minutes (!), he extended it to 15 days.
And when tickets to those extra 8 days started selling out, he extended it a further 6 days - making a total of 21 days!
He grosses an average of $1.2 million per concert ($63 x 20,000 seats) for this current tour if all tickets are sold out. By the time it’s all over, he would have grossed $1.2 million x 21 days = $25.2 million.
Give or take a few million.
Not bad for less than a month’s work.
And there’s still the US Tour to come.
How did this 21-date London concert come to be?
Here’s a combination of factors:
1. Prince’s an established music star whose concerts are a great spectacle
There’s plenty to see and hear. Prince is known for his flashy performances and he’s backed by some of the most talented musicians in the world, all hand-picked by him.
2. It’s summer time in London
Summertime means time out in the park, and concerts to attend!
3. London is home to about 8 million people
The bigger the population, the bigger is Prince’s number of prospects interested in his songs. 8 million is a big number for a city by any means.
4. London is a popular tourist destination
Millions of people visit London every year. Tour companies usually offer special packages that include free concert tickets as well. Prince’s audience will definitely include many foreigners especially when he’s not performing outside of the US and UK.
5. He has announced that this Planet Earth Tour is “The End” of his live concerts
There’ll be no more Prince in person after this, so this is his fans’ last chance to watch him live. Well, there may be a “Comeback Tour” or “Encore Tour” many years later but they don’t know for sure. In case he isn’t planning any in the future, this is all they have.
6. His latest album, “Planet Earth”, was given away for free by the UK’s Mail On Sunday
They distributed 3 million copies of it on July 15 2007 alone. The newspaper paid Prince a rumored 300,000 pounds for the rights to do this. This generated lots of additional publicity for his upcoming concerts in August 2007 (and sold lots of extra newspapers).
7. All ticket holders get a copy of his latest album, “Planet Earth” as well
This makes his 31.21 pounds ticket price a real bargain since the album sells for about 10 pounds in stores. Not only that, the distribution of CDs in this manner counts towards his final album sales as well - which will help it in music charts tracking album sales.
Since there are music lovers who buy albums according to their ranking in the music charts - this will help push sales of the album further.
8. He’s opening up his songs vault to present 150 of them during his London run
Yep, that’s right. He’ll be playing over 150 songs over the course of his 21-date London concerts. He performs only about 23 songs at each concert, which would leave plenty left over for the remaining dates.
Thus many of his hard-core fans will show up for the concerts multiple times over the next few nights just to hear more of those songs, many of which they’ve never heard before!
How’s that for repeat business?
You can do that only if you’re as prolific a composer as Prince…
The combination of all of the above factors - but especially “The End” of Prince’s live tours - makes for an irresistible series of events that hard-core Prince fans find hard to resist.
The US Tour should be even better. There should be one, because Prince grossed over $87 million the last time he had one in 2004 with the Musicology Tour that went on a run of 96 performances.
Talk soon.
Sen Ze
P.S. You can link to this post with the following URL:
http://www.SenZe.com/business-blog/prince/prince-and-the-new-marketing-generation.htm
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