UK Newspapers Point Out That Prince's Anti-Internet Crusade Makes No Sense

from the logic-is-not-allowed-in-prince-world dept

We’ve already discussed Prince’s bizarre anti-internet stance, and it seems that it’s left an awful lot of people scratching their heads. As his latest album was released only via the UK newspaper, The Mirror, this past Saturday, the UK press is pointing out how this plan will backfire. Now, some will immediately dismiss these articles as complaints from competing newspapers who were not the go to offering for the latest Prince album. But their arguments do make sense. The Telegraph points out that, this anti-internet crusade seems like a huge commercial blunder, as most people will end up getting the album in ways that don’t benefit Prince directly, even though he easily could have set things up to gain some of the benefit. The Guardian is running a similar article, pointing out that it seems odd that Prince — who comes off as very much “anti-” the traditional music business seems to be going even deeper into traditional views of the recording industry: such as signing with Universal music and then shunning his fans online. Even if you don’t believe that there are reasonable internet-based business models online, it’s hard to see how pretending the internet doesn’t exist at all is going to help you.

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Comments on “UK Newspapers Point Out That Prince's Anti-Internet Crusade Makes No Sense”

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25 Comments
Jay (profile) says:

Something’s not right…

He owes the Irish 3 mil and the county $300,000…

Arrogance is great, but it will leave you on a street corner if you decide to just ignore your responsibilities.

Why he would stop trying to find ways to make money is just an odd choice. Especially with all of the things he can do. Let’s just pray he can make this work out for him.

Simon says:

It seems to me that Prince has decided to take the easy route of selling his album for the advance that The Mirror is willing to pay him, and forgo any possible subsequent royalties from sales. Basically he sold the scarcity (the album that isn’t out there yet) at a price that is acceptable to him and now doesn’t need to worry about deals with distributors, illicit downloads etc. If he’s happy with the amount they are willing to pay, then this actually makes a lot of sense.

All the pontificating about Internet being dead etc is simply marketing for the fact The Mirror will be giving away the CD.

out_of_the_blue says:

Maybe money isn't his only interest.

Though it’s the only possible reason some can imagine: “a huge commercial blunder”, and “Why he would stop trying to find ways to make money”.

Maybe he *has* more money than he can spend, and just doesn’t care. That’s rare for anyone Rich, especially with the hangers-on of a popular musician, but it’s possible.

OR, he knows that he’s lost his *edge*, and doesn’t want a “commercial” *flop* for material that’s actually *okay*, just not great. That plus the above mentioned ease of making the deal: he chose a modest success over a flop.

And probably there’s nothing much to the “internet is dead”.

Avatar28 (profile) says:

Re: We've already discussed Prince's bizarre anti-internet stance,

Mike’s not disputing Prince’s right to distribute the album how he wants. Just pointing out that doing it that way and then claiming the Internet is dead and over makes no sense. More specifically he is pointing out that UK Newspapers are pointing out that it makes no sense.

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