Prince experimented as much with the business as he did in the studio. Nobody’s making money now except phone companies, Apple and Google. He had made the executive decision to release his album 20TEN in CD format only (and, at the time, only for free in copies of United Kingdom paper The Daily Mirror) because he was looking for new ways to distribute his music without leaving his work susceptible to online piracy.
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The artist formerly known by his own “love symbol” never really got along with the Web.
“@Spotify how about streaming his catalog then?”
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) also lacks rights to stream Prince’s hits on its Apple Music subscription service, though the company does sell his music on iTunes and his latest album, “HITNRUN Phase Two” is available to stream.
This was by design.
While his live shows were packed with the sort of flamboyant showmanship audiences had grown to expect, Prince would often clam up during interviews with journalists. They care. See, everybody knows when somebody’s lazy, and now, with the Internet, it’s impossible for a writer to be lazy because everybody will pick up on it. In the past, they said some stuff that was out of line, so I just didn’t have anything to do with them. “Apple’s doing pretty good though, right?”
Of course, he eventually signed onto Tidal, perhaps out of faith that its big coterie of musician-owners represented a counterweight to larger tech and music biz demands and paltry royalties. I’ve been in meetings and they’ll tell you, Prince, you don’t understand, it’s dog-eat-dog out there.
In 2006, Prince received a special lifetime achievement Webby Award for being the first artist to release an internet-exclusive album, his 1997 LP Crystal Ball. But Prince at least helped establish an option of saying no. Just tell me the whole story – I’ll fill in the blanks. While in London, Prince hatched a deal with The Mail to give the album for free to the newspaper’s 2 million readers. Bands like Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails got the early credit for pioneering album giveaways in the post-mp3 era, but Prince’s name belongs on that ledger as well. His NPG music club (and later LotusFlow3r) was one of the first subscription-based digital music services, bundling his records and concert ticket sales into a catch-all Prince portal.
Cameras were strictly prohibited at all times during interviews, which is no surprise given how notoriously private the singer was and how much control he had over his image.
Not all of it worked.
In 1993, Prince went to war with his record label, Warner Brothers.
Years before, he faced off with another internet user Stephanie Lenz, who uploaded a video of her toddler bopping out to his song “Let’s Go Crazy”.
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Prince was adamant about protecting his copyrights. “My heart is always on because I want them to do well”, he said, adding: “When we win on this, none of us’ll gloat”. It’s an algorithm. I didn’t want to be a part of that. “When you stop a man from dreaming, he becomes a slave”.
