Prince = Friggin genius
Prince sells his new CD "Planet Earth" not to fans, but to UK paper the "Mail on Sunday" who in turn will give it away free with every issue of the Mail sold on July 15th.
The music retail establishment is totally left out - and of course they're livid. They argue this move perpetuates the notion that music is 'free" or "devalues music". Bullshit.
Prince gets paid - fans get the music, plus Prince sells out a tour of shows supporting a free CD. (concert goers get the CD free also)
I think this paragraph from Wired Mag gets to the heart of the issue.
"Prince's latest gambit also succeeded by acknowledging that copies, not songs, are just about worthless in the digital age. The longer an album is on sale, the more likely it is that people can find somewhere to make a copy from a friend's CD or a stranger's shared-files folder. When copies approach worthlessness, only the original has value, and that's what Prince sold to the Mail on Sunday: the right to be Patient Zero in the copying game."
We're going to see a lot more artists making these kinds of deals. Selling CDs directly to listeners is going by the way side as the "main event".
Just wait till artists realize the advertising sold around the "hits" played on U.S. Commercial radio generates at least as much - if not more revenue than the direct sales of said "hit" to individuals.
Sorry the RSS feed on the myspace blog isn't working - not sure why. I'll continue to post these in both places.