Do You Think MJ Was Trying For Big Commercial Success While Prince Wasn't Really Into It?

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This has been a topic in the community. Prince wasn't mainstream until later on and he would give free CD's on some of his concerts. he would also release music etc when he felt like it not because he always had a decline etc.


in my opinion Michael was more commercial success because he had a decline how things was gonna be release. when tours was gonna start etc.


so what your thoughts and opinions about this question?
 
Like Michael Jackson, Prince also wanted to achieve commercial success since the beginning of his career when he released his ‘For You’ debut album in 1978.

With his next three albums he also aimed at commercial success (‘Prince’, Dirty Mind’, and ‘Controversy’), that is why he toured those years in order to promote those first, four albums.

His later albums, such as ‘Purple Rain’ (1984), ‘Sign O’ The Times' (1987), ‘Batman’ (1989), ‘Diamonds And Pearls' (1991) were also albums with commercial success and a mainstream appeal.

Some contractual issues that arose in the 90s between him and Warner Records did have a negative effect on the commercial success of his albums released during that period mainly due to inadequate promotion (‘The Gold Experience’ in 1995 is an example, although its lead single ‘The Most Beautiful Girl In The World’ achieved tremendous commercial and chart success at that time).

In 1999, he achieved again commercial success with his ‘Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic’, a mainstream album aimed mainly at the pop market and for that reason it included guest appearances from some successful at the time pop artists.

In that regard, the main differences between Michael Jackson and Prince were:

Firstly, Michael Jackson was totally obsessed with commercial success and he could not live without being commercially successful.

Secondly, Michael Jackson’s concerts were far more organized and much better promoted than Prince’s ones.

Thirdly, Michael Jackson had an entire, very effective machine behind him that enabled him to control and influence better the media, radio stations, etc, whenever he was about to release new music.

Lastly, Michael Jackson's music overall was more mainstream than Prince’s music.
 
Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

I haven't listened Prince's music a lot so I don't know much about him but he did make the Batman album that was released around the same as the 1989 movie. He did try to get commercial success. Michael didn't do albums like that.
 
Prince did care about commercial success which is why he did the Batman album. According to this YouTube channel that I watch by the name of Prince’s friend, disappointing sales of Lovesexy was a big reason behind Prince agreeing to do the Batman album, as it was defiantly going to be a commercial success. However, once his issues arose with Warner Bros and became known as the symbol, I think he stopped caring about commercial success.

Tbh, I feel that Michael also didn’t care much about commercial success after the 80s.
 
Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

When your bank account starts piling up money thanks to your music you automatically start pursuing commercial success. I think almost every starting artist or band eyes commercial success this includes heavy metal bands. Later on in a carer this is different and I do think Michael Jackson was trying to go a different path and stop making pop music. I'm pretty sure though his record company didn't think the same because they made a lot of money through MJ's sales.
I also guess it gets addictive when you are a massive seller, it's good for your ego and when you loose sales it could get into your head.

I'm sure if he lived longer we would have got other projects like his classical album, perhaps a couple of soundtracks and maybe some stage shows who knows. But don't make no mistake these things would also be conceived with the idea of making money obviously...
 
mj_frenzy;4295062 said:
Like Michael Jackson, Prince also wanted to achieve commercial success since the beginning of his career when he released his ‘For You’ debut album in 1978.
If that was the case then Prince would have went with Maurice White producing him, which is what Warner Brothers wanted. He also blew most of the budget for 3 albums on For You alone. It would have been cheaper to hire a band or using session musicians than insisting on playing & singing everything himself, which takes a lot of studio time. So he was in the hole from the start. Prince would not have released Around The World In A Day after Purple Rain. He could have just made a Purple Rain soundalike album. He also refused to release a single or do videos for the album until Warners made him do it. It's also doubtful that songs like Sister, Bambi, & Head would have gotten him big hits. Then he declined to sing on We Are The World and Prince got a lot of bad press & jokes by comedians for that. Releasing a black & white movie in 1986 was not going to be popular either. Prince fired the professional director and did Under The Cherry Moon himself and he had never directed a movie before. Prince wanted to release more albums than Warners wanted to and they didn't. WB told Prince they couldn't promote so much material and he was going to flood the market. They refused the original 3 record version of Sign O' The Times called Crystal Ball. Prince would choose odd songs for singles which were less likely to get a lot of Top 40 radio airplay like I Wish U Heaven, Let's Pretend We're Married, & If I Was Your Girlfriend.


JichaelMackson;4295081 said:
When your bank account starts piling up money thanks to your music you automatically start pursuing commercial success.
Success is not necessarily radio hits or selling a lot of records. The Grateful Dead records never sold that much, but they were a really popular touring act. They only had 1 Top 40 hit and that was in 1986, decades after they first recorded. Bands like AC/DC, Led Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, & Metallica didn't have many hit singles, but sold a lot of albums. KISS probably made more money from their merchandising than their record sales. What other act sells a casket you can be buried in? :rofl: There's also genres like free jazz, avant-garde, & noise music which are uncommercial and an artist is probably not going to get rich doing them.
 
Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

Prince most certainly was concerned with commercial success, at least early in his career.

One could argue that he became a lot looser after the 1980s because he'd already solidified himself with a handful of albums that are now regarded as all-time classics (Purple Rain, Sign o' the Times, Around the World in a Day), so there was nothing more he had to prove. Plus, neither he nor Michael were songwriters who worked strictly within the confines of what was charting; they both wrote highly experimental, genre-defiant material throughout their careers. But cumulatively, they both cared about how successful their albums were.

The notion that Michael was more sensitized to sales, in my opinion, partly comes from the fact that he had perhaps the most systematically successful career of any modern recording artist: it launched when he topped the Billboard Hot 100 at age 11 (an as-yet-unmatched record); plateaued when he released the best-selling album in world history at age 24; continued, albeit with a steady decline, straight through to age 50 and the unprecedented phenomenon that was the This Is It pre-sales; and persists even subsequently, when he became the first artist to have a Top 10 single in five consecutive decades five years after his death. Every album he released between 1979 and 1995 would go on to rank among the best-selling of all time. Even his least successful album (Invincible) earned a Top 10 single based entirely on radio airplay and was the 11th best-selling album of 2001, shipping 5.4 million units in two months. No other artist, then or now, can comparatively battle Michael Jackson in terms of sheer success.

Prince, on the other hand, was not nearly as consistent. It took him five albums to finally reach the Top 10 (and six to finally hit the #1 spot), his sales are wildly inconsistent, and his erratic release schedule was both exhausting and subjectively damaging to his overall status.
 
Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

Why do we constantly compare the 2? I believe Thriller sold more than all Prince albums combined. Prince has a lot of albums.
 
Prince

It took him five albums to finally reach the Top 10 (and six to finally hit the #1 spot)
Not true, that's only the pop chart. Prince had several top 10s on the R&B chart before the 1999 album. Some people seem to think that only crossing over to the Top 40 pop chart counts. There's a lot of artists that are popular with the R&B audience that had little or no pop radio airplay. Same for country, gospel, & jazz artists.
 
Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

Prince was also a phenomenal songwriter for other artists, which lead them to great commercial success. I'd say he was more into giving success to other rather to himself... Let's be real, Michael was a little more greedy about that, he never wrote anything big for other artists ("We Are The World" doesn't count).
 
Smooth72;4295107 said:
Why do we constantly compare the 2? I believe Thriller sold more than all Prince albums combined. Prince has a lot of albums.

I agree. Why do people compare the 2? Especially on a MJ board. In the Prince community, his fans and even the moderators get extremely angry, if you even mention Michael’s name. Their jealousy and hate of Michael is so intense that the moderators will close threads if MJ is mentioned. If a fan tries to start a thread that has Michael’s name, the moderators will either ban or close it.His forums don’t want to give Michael any respect.


Btw, Prince cared about success or he wouldn’t have done Purple Rain album and the movie to promote it. For years, his fans have claimed that he didn’t care about success and neither did they. That is a blatant lie. Since he died, his fans are as anxious about sales and chart success as MJ fans are. Anyone who says different is not aware of what’s going on in his fandom. It’s hypocrisy to say that MJ cared about success and Prince didn’t. Anyone with a brain wants their product to be successful. Michael was not any more “obsessed” with success than any one else. For years, I have heard that lie perpetuated. The bottomline is that he happened to be the most successful artist in history.Damn, he worked his ass off that success, and deserved it in spades. No one GAVE him anything.
Finally, I have always wondered why black artists have to be compared. I don’t hear that rampant comparison and jealousy among white artists or other races. IMO, It’s just a way to try and tear artists down when you constantly compare them. BTW, my community, the black community does it more than any other community. We tear our OWN down with this immature and silly rivalry and comparisons. It’s not funny or constructive in any way.
 
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somewhereinthedark;4295145 said:
I don’t hear that rampant comparison and jealousy among white artists or other races. IMO, It’s just a way to try and tear artists down when you constantly compare them.
What about Van Halen fans? They're always arguing about David Lee Roth & Sammy Hagar. Some Sammy fans will say Dave can't sing and Diamond Dave fans say "Van Hagar" is wimpy pop music for women. There's Beatles vs. Rolling Stones. Also try to compare anybody with Beyoncé, no matter what kind of music they make, and see what happens. :rofl: The Beyhive will shut that down real quick. Some Elvis Presley fans have also been known to put down other acts that have been compared to him, including Michael Jackson.

somewhereinthedark;4295145 said:
The bottomline is that he happened to be the most successful artist in history.
How is that when The Beatles sold more than anyone else?

 
Re: Van Halen

What about Van Halen fans? They're always arguing about David Lee Roth & Sammy Hagar. Some Sammy fans will say Dave can't sing and Diamond Dave fans say "Van Hagar" is wimpy pop music for women.

Both can be true at the same time. :laughing:
 
songwriting

Prince was also a phenomenal songwriter for other artists, which lead them to great commercial success. I'd say he was more into giving success to other rather to himself.
Prince didn't make them successful. People like Sheena Easton, Stevie Nicks, & The Bangles were already popular before working with Prince. The only one of his protege acts that had a lot of success was The Time, especially Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Maybe Sheila E., but she was a session musician before getting with Prince and worked with a lot of acts. Sheila also made a couple of albums with her father in the 1970s. Unlike what a lot of people think, Prince did not write a song for Sinead O'Connor. She remade Nothing Compares 2 U, which was on an album by The Family, another protege group. It's like Whitney Houston remade a lot of little known songs, so people think Whitney made the original version.

Not many people was checking for Prince's other acts like Apollonia 6, Jill Jones, Carmen Electra, Mayte, Good Question, Madhouse, etc. Carmen later became known as an actress, not for her rapping. Vanity 6 had a 2 or 3 R&B hits from their one album, but Vanity's solo records after she left Prince didn't do much.
 
Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

Michael did write songs for other artists and duet with some. just some of them are underrated. Michael wrote some of his songs but sometimes he would get others to help him with his songs.

some people Michael did write songs for was either never heard of again and some were talented but not as big at the time.
 
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Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

Lol! Lies!
 
Re: Do you think Michael was trying to big with commercial success while Prince wasn't really into i

Yeah but Michael is still one of the best male solo artist of all time. (black if you wanna put that) he comes in number one. he been gone almost 11 years and his music, singing, and of course dancing are still being listening to and look at etc.
 
Re: Van Halen

Well Michael isn't the biggest solo artist either.

There are many ways to count it. By sales alone I guess Elvis is bigger? But Elvis has released 100 albums - MJ has like 15...

By many (and not only MJ-fans) MJ is the biggest solo artist ever. - MJ only had 3 solo tours. - Nowadays it's normal for an artist to go on tour every 3 years...

It's very difficult to compare success. - And IMO stupid really...

Nowadays there are 100 different awardshows - back in the 80's there was like 5-10... So artists that are popular today will win a lot more awards than those who was popular in th 80's won. - So you can't count success on awards won either.

Album sales are also totally different today than it was in th 80s and 90s - even th 00s. - Now it's streams. But the old acts wil natually not have as many streams og views on YT as todays artist. Imagine if Spotify and Youtube had existed in 1980. - Thriller would have 30 billion views now and so many streams I have no idea - same goes for Billie Jean, Beat It - and many more MJ songs. - and naturally other 80 acts, not only MJ.

What I mean is just it is not possibly to compare success IMO. - And there is no need to either. No one will ever doubt MJ was/is HUGE. - like Elvis, Beatles, Prince, Madonna, Whitney Houston etc.
 
It's sad that some Prince fans lie and treat fans wrong if they fan of Michael as well. ridiculous. I don't think either of them would be please to know their fans treat each other wrong.

while i'm a causal prince fan I don't say anything bad about him. yeah their somethings I don't like about him same goes with Michael even though i'm big fan of Michael.

I feel both fan communities should respect one another even if they don't like one or other or both. smh.
 
Re: Van Halen

Well Michael isn't the biggest solo artist either.

Well it really is debatable. Obviously Elvis sold more he started selling records in 1956, Michael started in 1971. Other than that I think MJ had a bigger cultural impact all around. Elvis influenced mainly white people. Michael influenced everybody. I can't say for sure naturally but I think pure name recognition wise I think people are more familiar with Michael than with Elvis especially in Africa or Asia. That said we don't really know how big Michael was himself in Africa or Asia. I also think Elvis didn't have much competition, he was literally at the birth of "pop" music with his rock n roll. Black artists didn't cross over mostly resulting in lower sales and how many other white artists could be called competitors for Elvis? Not too many... Perhaps Buddy Holly but his career got cut short, The Everly Brothers had a brief period of smash hits. By the time MJ broke through the pop scene was huge and ever expanding and evolving.
But it really doesn't matter. Nobody solo is as big as Elvis or Michael anyway.
 
Re: Van Halen

Prince didn't make them successful. People like Sheena Easton, Stevie Nicks, & The Bangles were already popular before working with Prince. The only one of his protege acts that had a lot of success was The Time, especially Jimmy Jam & Terry Lewis. Maybe Sheila E., but she was a session musician before getting with Prince and worked with a lot of acts. Sheila also made a couple of albums with her father in the 1970s. Unlike what a lot of people think, Prince did not write a song for Sinead O'Connor. She remade Nothing Compares 2 U, which was on an album by The Family, another protege group. It's like Whitney Houston remade a lot of little known songs, so people think Whitney made the original version.

Not many people was checking for Prince's other acts like Apollonia 6, Jill Jones, Carmen Electra, Mayte, Good Question, Madhouse, etc. Carmen later became known as an actress, not for her rapping. Vanity 6 had a 2 or 3 R&B hits from their one album, but Vanity's solo records after she left Prince didn't do much.

My sentiments exactly! Thank you for pointing those things out and putting them in perspective.
 
Re: Van Halen

There are many ways to count it. By sales alone I guess Elvis is bigger? But Elvis has released 100 albums - MJ has like 15...

By many (and not only MJ-fans) MJ is the biggest solo artist ever. - MJ only had 3 solo tours. - Nowadays it's normal for an artist to go on tour every 3 years...

It's very difficult to compare success. - And IMO stupid really...

Nowadays there are 100 different awardshows - back in the 80's there was like 5-10... So artists that are popular today will win a lot more awards than those who was popular in th 80's won. - So you can't count success on awards won either.

Album sales are also totally different today than it was in th 80s and 90s - even th 00s. - Now it's streams. But the old acts wil natually not have as many streams og views on YT as todays artist. Imagine if Spotify and Youtube had existed in 1980. - Thriller would have 30 billion views now and so many streams I have no idea - same goes for Billie Jean, Beat It - and many more MJ songs. - and naturally other 80 acts, not only MJ.

What I mean is just it is not possibly to compare success IMO. - And there is no need to either. No one will ever doubt MJ was/is HUGE. - like Elvis, Beatles, Prince, Madonna, Whitney Houston etc.

Great Post! I agree with your points.
 
I think the fundamental difference between them is, Mike cared about his legacy and how he'd be remembered, whereas I think Prince cared a lot more about how people thought of him in present day
So when people look at their legacies together you can see Michael held onto to some really amazing ideas because the time wasn't right or it didn't gel within a record, whereas Prince felt it and then put it out regardless, because by the time he was about to release a record he was already on to the next project

Michael maybe wanted to make a near flawless album, instead Prince wanted to let his fans where he was at a certain point in his life and document within the music.
There's no right approach, I prefer Michael's because there is a lot less throwaway material in his discography, although I do wish he had been more like Prince in that he would get unreleased songs closer to completion rather than tossing them aside when a better idea came along.

I personally love how different they were as artists, the contrasts between them complemented them perfectly
 
They were two very different artists that came from the 'same school'. It's easy to say Michael had more of a commercial interest because his commercial success was like no other.

Prince was much more protective over the legality side of his music. That in some ways helped him, and some ways held him back from the limits he could reach commercially.

Prince was a musicians musician, Michael was the music.
 
Prince

Prince was much more protective over the legality side of his music. That in some ways helped him, and some ways held him back from the limits he could reach commercially.
In the internet era for sure. Banning his music & music videos from being online and expecting people to buy his CDs. People buying records/tapes/CDs began to drop with Napster & file sharing. There's an entire generation that grew up with free music. There isn't the same value on music as earlier generations when there was less competition for entertainment. I don't think its the cost of CDs because a lot of people buy $200 Air Jordans and video game discs. Video games cost more than CDs and even new vinyl. Cell phones & the bill aren't cheap either. Now the general public stream music. Why buy a CD when entire albums are posted on Youtube by the labels under the artists "topic" channel? Prince was about making money and artists make little money from streams.
 
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