Prince may be gone, but he’s become a king of music sales.
Song and albums purchases have spiked since the music icon’s death Thursday, according BuzzAngle Music, which tracks music sales and streaming.
In the four days since his passing, Prince song sales have surged to more than 3 million. That compares to just 18,800 sold between April 15 and April 20, the five days leading up to this death, BuzzAngle reported. That’s a 16,000 percent jump.
Sales of Prince albums rocketed above 654,000 from Thursday through Sunday, versus just 4,263 in the five days prior to that — a more than 15,000 percent leap.
Prince died Thursday at his home in Minnesota at the age of 57.
Because of an on-again, off-again relationship with his music on the Internet, it’s more challenging finding places to stream his tunes than it would be for most other artists. He could swing from posting otherwise unreleased tracks on SoundCloud to pulling his music from most major streaming services — all within the same month.
Some of the biggest music-streaming sites lack most of his music. The world’s biggest streaming service by users, Spotify, pulled his catalog at the request of Prince’s camp. Pandora did too, even though its licenses actually allow it to play music even without the permission of whoever owns the rights to it. And Prince was never part of Apple Music, the subscription service that the gadget giant launched last year.
That left Tidal as the solitary place to stream the breadth of Prince’s catalog.