Since Prince passed away suddenly at his Minnesota estate on the morning of April 21 at the age of 57, the beloved artist has received an outpouring of support from celebrities, sports teams and fans alike. The "Purple One"s expansive catalog spans over the course of five decades, giving his fans a bevy of material to listen to in order to mourn and celebrate the life of one of the most popular artists of his time. By the looks of the charts this past week, his fans definitely jammed out to his hits over the course of the past week, because the amount of material that Prince has sold since his death has been staggering.
Prince has sold 654,000 albums and 2.82 million individual song downloads in the United States between April 15 and April 24, a staggering total of 3.5 million units sold. In the sales week ending on April 21, his album catalog sold 256,000 units. To compare, he only sold 5,000 albums in the previous week, ending on April 14. It is safe to assume that the bulk of those 256,000 album purchases came on the day of his passing.
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As it pertains to song downloads, 1.04 million were sold in the sales week ending on April 21. To compare, only 14,000 of Prince's songs were purchased in the week prior. A majority of that million songs sold likely came on the day of his passing, April 21.
The Prince sales frenzy didn't stop on the day of his passing. On Friday, April 22, people bought 227,000 of his albums and 960,000 of his songs. On April 23, people bought 113,000 of his albums and 521,000 of his songs. And on April 24, people bought 58,000 of his albums and 301,000 of his songs. The best selling album over the course of those days was The Very Best of Prince, which sold 259,000 units, while the best selling song over the course of those days was "Purple Rain."
