Prince surges back into the Top 40 charts thanks to streaming

Prince’s greatest hits compilation 4Ever has jumped from number 189 on the top 200, all the way to number 33.

In life, Prince was infamously protective of his music and how it appeared online, but now that the legend has left us his music has, of course, found its way to streaming platforms as of a couple of weeks ago.

It’s not just a win for his fans, though, and the latest Billboard chart shows that the sudden influx of streaming has sent The Purple One to the top of the charts in one swift move, Billboard reports.

His recent greatest hits compilation 4Ever has jumped from number 189 on the top 200, all the way to number 33 – that’s a 263 percent increase in ‘units’, with the streaming and other sales tallying up to the equivalent of 16,000 traditional album sales, 7,000 of those being the direct result of streaming.

The album peaked at #35 in its debut week in late December and then tumbled down the charts, but these new number show just how valuable streaming can be for an artist’s chart performance.

The compilation brings together 39 of his hits released between 1978 and 1993, when Prince was releasing music under Warner (his non-Warner catalogue is not yet available for streaming under this deal), and also includes the previously-unreleased ‘Moonbeam levels’. His Warner output includes the majority of his shart-topping work, with only 6 of his 30 top-40 hits missing from the online realm.

In more depressing news, the Fifty Shades Darker soundtrack has predictably hit the #1 spot on debut. This is what it sounds like when doves cry.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.