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Prince 4 No. 1?

July 17th, 2007 · Posted by Skuds in Music · 9 Comments · Music

The Mail on Sunday are running a campaign to have the Prince album Planet Earth declared the number one album.  Is there any merit to this campaign?

No.

Well, that's the short answer. And remember the question is not whether it deserves to be number one (The answer to that is No as well – the White Stripes, Crowded House, Killers and Arctic Monkeys all have better albums out at the moment) but whether it should qualify.

The Heil on Sunday argument is that more people bought it this week than any other CD, but that falls down for so many reasons, including:

  1. The fact that lots of people have the CD doesn't mean they bought it.  Many will have just thrown it away.  Using the total circulation is misleading.  Maybe they could argue that any increase in circulation over last week is down to people buying it just for the free Prince CD.
  2. But even then the key word is "free".  The whole reason for the chart rules on eligibility of CDs is to prevent some unscrupulous company just giving away CDs and counting them as sales.  Even if the CD was for sale in the shops on its own for the price of £1.40 it would not be eligible.
  3. Most importantly, it would set a very bad precedent.  Every week there are CDs given away with newspapers, some of them with larger circulations than the MoS, and mostly of old tracks cobbled together for a cheap compilation.  And the same goes for DVDs as well.  Allow Planet Earth into the charts and next week we will find the DVD charts topped by an old episode of Bergerac or a dodgy old British war film.

But full marks for having the CD in a cardboard case instead of a plastic jewel case.  Less space taken up on the shelf and fewer natural resources used up.

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9 Comments so far ↓

  • Trance-Elbow

    I completely agree with your point of view. The only reason I bought the paper was for the CD, which I thought was quite disapointing. I wouldn’t have bought it if I’d heard the tracks first and because I didn’t buy it, it should count in my book. I may sit down and listern properly if I ever get any peace, which is rare.

    I haven’t read the paper either. I prefer to get my news on-line as it’s free and saves trees.

  • skud's sister

    The Bookseller (Organ of the book trade – oo-er missus) excludes from the bestseller charts any title sold for less than half its cover price. Hope that doesn’t bugger up Bloomsbury’s chances of topping the charts next week. Maybe Asda could start a campaign – they could get advice from the Mail….

  • Danivon

    I think it’s quite simple. All of the CDs should count, but be weighted by the cost. So the Prince CD will be worth however many copies of the Mail were sold multiplied by the stated cost – zero.

    Job done.

  • Skuds

    Jane, isn’t there still some doubt over whether Asda will actually be able sell Harry Potter and the Enormous Pagecount next week?

    Bloomsbury are refusing to stock them, citing unpaid invoices as the reason (and nothing to do with an Asda executive criticising Bloomsbury’s pricing last week. No,no, no.)

    Best to buy it (if you must) is Crockatt & Powell. They are selling the book at full price but donating the amount you pay over and above the supermarket price to a charity.

  • skud's sister

    Well, a couple of points here. There isn’t ‘a supermarket price’. One of the result of a free market (and the loss of the Net Book Agreement many years ago) is that we are free to sell the book for whatever price we wish. Even the supermarkets have no real concensus on price – word is they are worried about pricing it too low due to the huge quantities they will sell. When Asda or Tesco advertise a CD or DVD at a stupidly low price they do it in the sure and certain knowledge that they don’t have enough stock for it to bother the bottom line. 500,000 copies at less than cost might be a bit tricky.

    The whole Asda/Bloomsbury spat is allegedly sorted. After Asda apologised for the ‘rip off’ comment their order was reinstated. The real issue as far as I can see is that Asda wanted more discount so that they could make more money than anyone else on the book. Bloomsbury have said they wouldn’t offer huge discounts to the big players because it is unfair to stores like Crockatt & Powells. Bastards, hey…
    The final issue is the price. What other item would be called a rip off if it had doubled in size (at least) over 10 years and yet only increased in price by about 50%. The first book was £11.99 in hardback in 1997. Do you want to guess how much it costs today?

  • Danivon

    Yeah, but surely quality is as important as quantity, particularly when you are talking about literature (or should that be ‘literature’ when it comes to the Potter series?).

  • Skuds

    In terms of word-per-pound the Harry Potters are not bad value for money, even in hardback form.

    The real rip-off is something like Carry On Jeeves with a rrp of £7.99 in paperback for 256 pages and was written 50 years ago.

    Personally I would get more value from Wodehouse (I tried reading the first HP and found it very badly written and gave up. The whole thing looks very derivative too) but its good value for those who do actually enjoy it – and there are plenty who do.

    And its only half the price of a new video game AND if you don’t want to pay the price just wait for the paperback or visit the library.

    I am just amazed at the cheek of supermarkets complaining about another company’s pricing while they still sell milk for 10 times what the farmers are paid for it.

  • skud's sister

    If being badly written were a crime then I think we have firm grounds for putting away Lord Archer (if only for his non-fiction). I generally find that those who complain about how ‘badly written’ the HP series is have never read them. I wish I could be so knowledgable about stuff without having to actually have any experience. It is a bit like men telling women that they shouldn’t make such a fuss about chidbirth….

  • Skuds

    If bad writing was a crime then I would be banged up myself! Some of my favourite books are badly-written (guilty pleasures like Tom Clancy)

    If Rawlings can’t keep the attention of someone who does have a reading habit and went to the trouble of buying the first four books with the intention of reading them she has a problem.

    It must be the subject material. I am willing to suspend disbelief about magic spells, wizard schools, talking portraits and so on, but a ginger kid with two friends!?! That is pushing credibility a bit too far.