Prince: "The internet's completely over."

It takes a lot to get me to link to noted shitrag The Daily Mirror. One of my favorite musical artists and Highly Eccentric Persons declaring the entirety of networked communication "over"? Fine. I'll take the bait. Snip:

"You must come and listen to the album," he says. "I hope you like it. It's great that it will be free to readers of your newspaper. I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music." He explains that he decided the album will be released in CD format only in the Mirror. There'll be no downloads anywhere in the world because of his ongoing battles against internet abuses. Unlike most other rock stars, he has banned YouTube and iTunes from using any of his music and has even closed down his own official website.
He says: "The internet's completely over. I don't see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won't pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can't get it. The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

{facepalm}.

Prince - world exclusive interview: Peter Willis goes inside the star's secret world (via Chris Carter)

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

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Anonymous

Prince… is he still around? Who knew?
brix

this is actually sort of consistent with what prince has been up to since back when you first couldn’t pronounce his name.

the whole shift to, and then back from, the o}-> thing was at least in part motivated by disputes with record companies who owned the rights to the name of Prince.

it just turns out that prince might be driven, not so much by a principled stand against the record industry, as by a self-involvement so profound that he’s managed to overlook some rather substantive differences between The Internet and MTV, as social phenomena.

new marketing slogan:
MTV: Will Not Fill Your Head With Numbers.
Xopher

This is what happens when you surround yourself by sycophants, fire anyone who tells you something you don’t want to hear, and live for years with no feedback.

He’s not just an eccentric. He’s a wealthy loser.
thequickbrownfox

*throws shoes at whatever-his-name-is*
Anonymous

The monetary system’s completely over. I don’t see why I should sell my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it. The monetary system’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these banks and digital automatic transfer machines are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.
Anonymous

Internet: “Prince is completely over.
Kragshot

This is the same guy who openly denied the relevance and influence of the “Guitar Hero”/”Rock Band” franchise of games in influencing young people to get back into music.

Instead of allowing his music to be used in a Guitar Hero expansion, which would have opened his best stuff to a new generation of listeners who would have most likely went out and bought more of his music (i.e. Aerosmith, ACDC), he played the “cantankerous old man” role and “pooh-poohed” all over the offer.

His relevance to today’s musical environment is steadily shrinking…soon, he’ll be doing those dusties/retro act tours on cruse ships that are organized by Tom Joyner or Sinbad…you know the ones. The tours that cater to folks over 60, trying to relive their youth through the music they listened to when they were young.

Sad and pathetic….
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Well I agree with most of what you said…but don’t be knocking what the oldsters are up to until your odometer reads like theirs do.
  At different ages, people are subject to different levels of hormonal activity, as well as differing levels of neural plasticity and/or musculo-skeletal flexibility.
  Don’t judge the old by the standards appropriate to youth, in other words. Cut them some slack.
  And it’s surprising to me how often the old, in turn, need to be reminded not to judge youth by their own present standards, the fruits of their own lessons of experience.
  They should know, that youth needs to make mistakes for itself, if it is to profit from the experience.
  
  And experience counts, for far more than the non-experienced can know.
  
  Are you experienced?
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjyXsIYAp8o
Anonymous

right now it looks like that he only wants to make money out of his music instead of sharing it to let everyone listen to it and get more fans, but it’s his own decision.
Gordon Stark

He says: “The internet’s completely over.

Actually, the independent artist formerly marketed as Prince is making a very good point, and observation, worthy of much closer scrutiny, apart from the initial immediate apparent absurdity of his statement.

In 1999, mp3com was rocking, and the internet became the new hub of music distribution on a level global playing field, and the future was wide open for all independent artists, and then big record companies proceeded with their covert war on independent artists:

In the past 10 years, the promise which the internet presented to independent artists is over.

With Data from Gideon, at ArtistServer.com:

Closed/Shut Down/Destroyed Between – 2001-2010 (Partial List)
==============================================
MP3.com
AmpCast.com
Epitonic.com
BeSonic.com
IUMA.com
Riffage.com
THeDnB.com
JavaMusic.com
ZeBox.com
FunEnder.com
MusicV2.com
SonicGarden.com
Music.Download.com
GarageBand.com – (July 15th, 2010)

Still running: (Partial List)
=================================
ArtistLaunch.com
ArtistServer.com
AudioStreet.net
BroadJam.com
DMusic.com
Jamendo.com
LastFm.com
MySpace.com
ProjectOpus.com
PureVolume.com
ReverbNation.com
SoundClick.com
SoundLift.com
SoundCloud.com

The Latest Independent Artist site to be shut down is GarageBand.com, which is scheduled to shudder it’s former vast mp3com community on the 15th of this July, scattering and shattering the
community once again, and for the second time.

Prince makes a very good point…

The Internet is over.

Sure, it’s still operating, but the promise was killed, and the high traffic channels have all been tied down, and access to the masses by independent artists via the net has been strategically engineered out of their reach by the rich competing music Cartels, which target the infrastructure used by the Independent Music Industry to compete.

Certainly, when Prince says “the internet is over”, what he is referring to, is over. The promise that it held, the excitement, the gathering of stars, only to be scattered time and again by the multinational anti-competative Non-Independent Music Industry which has continued it’s brute strength covert assault upon all it’s competition and customers on the internet.

In spirit, Prince is precisely correct about the net thing. A more translatable expression however, may have been, that the excitement about the net, and it’s promise, are over, and it’s now just more highly controlled media, up now, but the sparkle is gone.

Help Support and Promote Independent Artists!
- Yoully
  
  Excellent analysis of Prince’s comment.
- notv
  
  Thanks for the reality check. Prince is an artist, and conducts his business with artistry as well. He is obviously looking out for his own interests, but those of newer, stupider artists as well. What’s the problem? If the knee-biters don’t understand the subtext, whose problem is it, really. Prince will continue to rock while being saavy in the marketing world, and the canned products will languish and die. Seems fair.
AirPillo

Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.

Well, good to see successful people have such a high opinion of numeracy.
[/sarcasm]
S2

Ars Technica nailed it with this headline: Internet over, outta time: Prince releases tunes like it’s 1999 ;-)
Suds

Nah, He’s trolling us all! Prince WANTS us to have it for free. He also wants us to want it. The best way to make people want something… Tell them they Can’t have it! (while giving it away to others)
If I wanted to release an album on bit-torrent, this is precisely how I would do it. All the distribution cost are on the fans and FREE hype!
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Hype wants to be free.
Anonymous

Marketing tactic, plain and simple.
pst314

“They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

There’s a string in the middle of Prince’s back, and if you pull it he says “Math is hard!”.
LX

Prince was cool before the internet. So were other musicians who think they are above their listeners. Now that the internet connects artists and consumers, he’s just over and out.
scifijazznik

Christ, what an asshole.
Anonymous

Because of this, I will now download his album via bittorrent and not listen to it.
- Anonymous
  
  Hash –> 90c7daa47ad80eba348b62d9c85eef4abfdf2dcd
inveigle

This is what it sounds like when doves cry.
Patrick Dodds

Last time it was free with the Daily Mail if I remember rightly – the only time I have ever bought that piece of garbage (and no, it wasn’t worth it, sadly – the glory days of his princeness are long gone, though they really were glorious).
nixiebunny

If the Internet is over, why are we reading about this here?
- Felton
  
  I fear that we, as denizens of the web, are now obsolete. After all, Prince says so, and who are we to argue with royalty?
Anonymous

Internet over? I’m sure his favorite musical instrument is made from a broom stick, wash tub and a string.
ryanrafferty

My God, It’s full of numbers!
- Felton
  
  They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.
  
  The Matrix must have given Prince a few nightmares.
IWood

01000011011011110110110101110000011101010111010001100101011100100111001100100000011000010110111001100100001000000110010001101001011001110110100101110100011000010110110000100000011001110110000101100100011001110110010101110100011100110010000001101010011101010111001101110100001000000110011001101001011011000110110000100000011110010110111101110101011100100010000001101000011001010110000101100100001000000111011101101001011101000110100000100000011011100111010101101101011000100110010101110010011100110011111100100000010101110110100001100001011101000010000001100001001000000110001101110010011011110110001101101011001000000110111101100110001000000111001101101000011010010111010000101110
- Anonymous
  
  01011001 01100101 01100001 01101000 00101100 00100000 01010000 01110010 01101001 01101110 01100011 01100101 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01100010 01101001 01110100 00100000 01101111 01100110 00100000 01100001 01101110 00100000 01101001 01100100 01101001 01101111 01110100 00100001
Anonymous

Lies! All lies! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kOf_FJmb3V4
TuesdayWeld

Is he bipolar or does he have ADD? The story makes it sound like he can’t concentrate on anything but music. Let’s face it, he’s a musical genius sometimes, tiresome other times (often within the same album).
Anonymous

The problem is Prince old boy – you arent getting paid for your record! If you dont sell it over I-Tunes it will just get pirated anyway. Why not just cut a deal with a new label?
Anonymous

this is just another new marketing campaign!
With this kind of declarations, Everybody would like to download his songs: Some for curiosity, others for revenge, others will put in p2p networks and all this will generate a viral effect. Let’s see what happens in the next months.
Lucky

Facepalm eh? No, I think it’s a pretty clever idea. He’ll get his money and his music will get out.

Of course, I’m one of those few that actually pay for my music. Shocking.
Anonymous

god is dead … Nietzsche.
nietzsche is dead … God.
BookGuy

Hey, Prince!

3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582097494459230781640628620899862803482534211706798214808651328230664709384460955058223172535940812848111745028410270193852110555964462294895493038196…!

There, that should keep him busy for a while.
- Felton
  
  Now, that’s just cruel. :-)
- Anonymous
  
  Holy shit!! Prince has just been hit in the face with a PI!
Zadaz

I would go see Price live. Happily for him that’s the only thing he’s ever produced that can’t be properly reproduced.

He seems primarily mad that iTunes doesn’t pay artists an advance. They pay based on sales performance.

If I had produced the crap that Prince was producing lately, I’d want free money too and not a percentage of sales.

Ironically he changed his name to [symbol] because of a fight with Warner. He felt they weren’t giving him enough royalties on his wildly successful early albums.

Also, ironic is that most musicians who feel like they’re getting shafted by their labels are embracing the Internet and having pretty good luck with it.
- Felton
  
  I did see him live in Atlanta several years ago. He definitely hadn’t lost anything i the way of showmanship, although he didn’t do any James Brown-style splits.
  
  It’s interesting that he was once at odds with a major record label, and now he’s against internet distribution because of his problems with the mode of payment. Sounds like he really wants to make his own market. More power to you, if he can find a way to effectively distribute without the use of the internet. I won’t be holding my breath for him.
Ugly Canuck

He must have mis-spoken…surely, he meant “under”, as in , “The internet is completely under”.

It makes just about the same amount of sense, too.
- Felton
  
  Maybe he meant that he was over the internet, as in “internet, you’re dead to me!”
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    That’s probable, especially knowing how the Press tends to mis-quote by the non-provision of sufficient context to decode statements accurately.
    And perhaps especially so, if he is in fact as good a maker of pancakes as some intimate.
    For if one truly masters the batter, one masters life.
    
    Regardless of the guy’s views about tech, he can rock. And then some:
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJQZnK3RAv4
    
    …and that was 30 years ago!
Anonymous

You this is the second time that Prince has done this publicity stunt. He did it last the first time three years ago, for the album Planet Earth, released July 15, 2007 in the UK as a free insert in The Mail on Sunday.
Anonymous

On the other hand, Radiohead says the opposite, that the music industry will collapse within months and they’ve embraced the Intertubes.

Prince must either not need the money, or actually wants preferential treatment from itunes for his new stuff. I also tend to agree that the early hype and excitement surrounding the Web circa 2000 is over; at any rate the future will probably belong to personalized networks and “Mini-Webs”.
Anonymous

BAH! HA HA HA HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Daemon

“There’ll be no downloads anywhere in the world”

Prince… would you care to make a bet on this?
Tagishsimon

Like at least one other Boinger, I’m a bit nonplussed at the “noted shitrag” comment. The Daily Mail, sure. The Sun and The Star, ditto. The mirror has made some crass mistakes (but we seem successfully to have exported the main culprit, Piers Morgan, to the USA where he’s feted; go figure, but welcome to him). The mirror has a long campaigning history. They were one of the few to oppose the Iraq war debacle. I’m not sure at what point they got tipped into the shitrag category.
Ugly Canuck

And any way, just because it’s over for you doesn’t mean it’s over for me…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6GstsaVUk3Y

don’t kill the machine
don’t kill the machine
don’t kill the machine
Felton

Urgh. I really need to look into that little “preview” button thingy.
Halloween Jack

Yeah, Prince is kind of dumb. He could have made more money through iTunes than he’s seen in twenty years, but they won’t give him a check up front so no deal. Whatever, little man.
PS

“Excuse me sir!”

(On the sidewalk, running up behind pretty much everyone commenting here.)

“I think you dropped your sense of humor!”

Prince has the money, the power, and the trans-dimensional spiritual purity to do whatever Prince wants. Anyone getting outraged about him saying something tongue-in-cheek about “filling your head with numbers” is getting suckered.
- Felton
  
  Well, to be sure, it’s sometimes hard to tell if someone is tongue-in-cheek when reading it on the net. For instance, when I got to your phrase “trans-dimensional spiritual purity,” I had to wonder whether you were just being sarcastic.
Modusoperandi

You naysayers can hum & haw and clutch your pearls all you like, but it won’t change the fact that apparently Prince is still alive.
I know!
Anonymous

you find out who’s watching when you see over 100 comments in 24 hours…
Felton

I meant to say “if something is tongue-in-cheek.” Jeez, and I didn’t even drink this weekend. :-P
Anonymous

I smell a meme.

Prince sez, “Gravity is completely over”
Snig

As with most things in the world, I judge him by his relationship with Weird Al. He remains one of the few performers to deny him permission to parody his works. (Weird Al doesn’t legally require it, but asks permission out of courtesy.) He’s been in the cranky “get of my lawn” state for decades. I think giving free CD’s out will definitely help people appreciate his value, it worked for AOL didn’t it?
Snig

As with most things in the world, I judge him by his relationship with Weird Al. He remains one of the few performers to deny him permission to parody his works. (Weird Al doesn’t legally require it, but asks permission out of courtesy.) He’s been in the cranky “get of my lawn” state for decades. I think giving free CD’s out will definitely help people appreciate his value, it worked for AOL didn’t it?
lasttide

It’s OK. We’ll just have to purify the Internet in the waters of Lake Minnetonka and then Prince will love it again, or at least it will be allowed to join the Revolution as backup singer #3.
deckard68

Only harm his mental state has caused is his refusal to allow his most famous albums to be remastered.
Anonymous

Well, I would agree that the internet is bad for people, not in itself but in what it’s become, what people use it for. So many users on the internet are just sitting there “reblogging” funny tumblr posts and “liking” whatever their favorite celebrity said on facebook. It’s an environment that discourages creativity or actual grammar for anyone who is not super famous.

However, that’s not ALL of the internet. And even so, the fact that it’s bad some of the time does not mean everyone is over it. If no one cared about the internet why would people care enough to make a news article about you saying it’s bad? Strangely, I don’t see any news articles formed just because an artist decided not to release on Vinyl.
Anonymous

Well, if anyone should know about being ‘over’ its him, I guess.
filkertom

Haven’t seen anyone since Metallica so determined to destroy his own fan base.
Boomshadow

I believe it was MAD Magazine’s sendup of Purple Rain that referred to Prince as “Michael Jackson’s slow cousin imitating Little Richard.”
Master Pokes

In the interest of full disclosure I do have a bit of a personal beef with the tiny purple one because he annulled his marriage to a girl I went to high school with. But, anyway…

I refused to buy any of his music or see any of his shows after he sent cease and desist letters to all the fan sites on the internet for using his name and reprinting his lyrics. He said, more or less, that no one could use his name or even talk about him without his permission.

That from a man who made his living on the first amendment was more than I could stomach.
- Xopher
  
  Wouldn’t it be wonderful if no one used his name or talked about him without permission…if no one asked permission?
  
  I can’t think of anyone more deserving of utter neglect by all public media.
fidel_funk

I totaly agree, computers and gadgets are no good…. Well, neither was his Princeness last nite at the Roskilde Festival (Denmark), he’s kinda lost the sharpness….
- Anonymous
  
  At Roskilde? He. Was. Amazing!
asuffield

So what he’s saying is, he doesn’t want to get paid by any internet users. That’s okay, they’ll be happy to not pay him.
Beryllium

Uh … earth to Prince, the Internet thinks *you* are over.

(Let’s get Kevin Smith to weigh in with *his* opinion!)
Rider

I’m sure he realizes that by making it hard to find it will cause it to be traded more frequently online.
Anonymous

“They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

ha! he comes off as a complete idiot.
Beelzebuddy

You don’t have to be beautiful to turn me on
I just need your input, baby, from dusk till dawn
You don’t need experience to whip it out
You just leave it all up to me, I’m gonna show you what it’s all about

You don’t have to be rich to be the girl
You don’t have to be cool to rule in my world
Ain’t no particular sign I’m more compatible with
I just want your extra time and your bits
GroovyChk

This guy is – not smart.
monopole

The Prince formerly as an artist is completely over.
bardfinn

The man sent roadies out to retrieve a giraffe. At 2AM. In the middle of Nowhere USA. Doubtless so that it could make him a salad.

/What/ /do/ /you/ /expect/ – ?
Anonymous

GET OFF MY LAWN YA DAMN WHIPPERSNAPPERS!
Anonymous

He should change his name to The Cranky Old Man Formerly Known As Prince. “Hey you kids, get off my lawn!” The Internet is doing just fine. I think its TCOMFKAP’s name tag that should read “Over”.
bingbongboinger

So I guess his CD was produced without using any “digital gadgets” (mixers, synthesizers, audio processors, etc.) or computers. He must have really went old-school. I’d like to see his analog CD recorders and duplicators.
Felton

The artist formerly known as relevant.
Anonymous

An advance??? Ex-prince seems to fancy himself royalty!
coverandwait

He must be the grooviest crotchety old man I’ve ever known.
ProPuke

“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music… he has banned YouTube and iTunes from using any of his music and has even closed down his own official website” (oxy-moron, much?)

Well, it’s his call. Good for him :]
He obviously feels he has enough freedom/money to be selective about how he distributes his own works.
Which is totally his prerogative.

Chillax people! He’s PRINCE! He’s SUPPOSED to be eccentric. (True, he is also _crazy_ but you can’t have it all)

No need for hating, thou, folks
Tarliman

It’s rather difficult to feel sorry, or anything at all really other than bewildered contempt, for someone who expects to get paid by a middleman before the product sells. The days of advances are over. Mind you, this is the person whose icon became the “Get Over Yourself” award. And does the last sentence smell of tinfoil-hat?
Trent Hawkins

“Pancakes… pancakes.”

And I think that’s all that Prince will be remembered for by this generation.
Anonymous

“I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

It better be knockout stuff then. If it ain’t, well….
Anonymous

He’d rather fill his head with the numerology that comprises the foundation of the Jehovah’s Witnesses belief system. As an ex-Witness myself, I feel for him. I was a kid, however, without choice in the matter. What’s his excuse?
teleny

He sounds like the fellow who buttonholed me on the street (who I’d known from wayback…) who asked me about my computer. (This was about ten years back.) “You’d better be careful…”he said. “Those computers are talking to each other.”

I know. Mine talks to me.

“They have a language…computer language….”

How do I answer this?

“Yes, we speak together in C, quite often. As for her, I’m glad she has friends…”
- Sork
  
  “Yes, we speak together in C, quite often. As for her, I’m glad she has friends…”
  
  I’ve seen that C is a valid installation language in Ubuntu Lucid. Although I am fluent in C I chose English.
Anonymous

Thank you, Roger Ebert.

Hey, Prince? I wanted to let you know that I’ll be torrenting your new album as a matter of principle as soon as it becomes available. This doesn’t mean I’ll actually _listen_ to it (I could care less), but if you want to shoot yourself in the foot this publicly, I’m also happy to oblige you, as I’m sure a great many other Internet users will be as well.

If you’re lucky, your pronouncement will result in some additional interest and publicity for your latest effort that it might not have attracted on its own, though whether or not this results in actual sales will depend solely on the quality of your effort. Off hand, I suspect you’ve probably just assured yourself of a net loss, however.

Hopefully you learn from the mistake.
- highlyverbal
  
  “Off hand, I suspect you’ve probably just assured yourself of a net loss, however.”
  
  Net loss! Good one.
Felton

I should clarify that I grew up looking at Prince as one of the geniuses of pop. This doesn’t change that.
patregnier

I just checked iTunes. All the Prince albums you’d actually want to own are on there.

And that’s why you don’t read British tabs. They get nothing right.
gobo

Because I don’t understand it and I’m bad at math, it’s bad for everyone!

When did Prince become Andy Rooney?
gwailo_joe

Well, if the Nameless One doesn’t want to use the Net for his own benefit, I guess that’s his choice. . .he must be too busy to go on-line with his many hobbies; symbolism, music, playing basketball, making pancakes. . .
Rob Knop

What I’m still waiting for to be over is our paying attention to celebrities’ opinions on matters that they don’t know crap about.
- Stooge
  
  What I’m still waiting for to be over is our paying attention to celebrities’ opinions on matters that they don’t know crap about
  
  You evidently don’t know crap about Prince. I’d be surprised if you could name anyone who has more experience of distributing music on the web: his (and the) first web-only album was released two years before Napster was born.
  - bardfinn
    
    “I’d be surprised if you could name anyone who has more experience of distributing music on the web.”
    
    Do you feel small?
    Do you feel like nothing?
    Do you feel like you’re wasting your time?
    
    Can you stand sunlight?
    Do you feel too much?
    How will you know when you’re broken?
    
    *coughcoughcough*
  - Anonymous
    
    “I’d be surprised if you could name anyone who has more experience of distributing music on the web”
    
    Jon Luini (co-founder of IUMA, the Internet Underground Music Archive — the first such web site, back in the mid 90′s … and numerous other online music organizations; currently, as owner of chime.com, has worked with numerous high profile artists with their web presence).
    
    In fact, I’ll turn it back on you: I doubt you’d be able to name anyone who knows more about, or has more experience, distributing music on the web than Jon.
salgood

over as a trendy cutting edge thing yes, just boring old ubiquitous…
dhalgren

Hate on Prince much?
Felton

Prince also wants all of you off his lawn.
benher

What are you all still doing here?!

The Internet is over! Now skee-daddle! Shoo Shoo!

I have to sweep up so I can get home in time for Dallas re-runs.
funkyderek

CDs being given away with newspapers: two dead media trying to prop each other up.
Absent

Yeah, and The Daily Mirror is the best way to reach his potential audience.
Saurav Mohapatra

Prince just extended the Ted Stevens metaphor of the internet being a series of tubes to it being a broken Vuvuzela! :P
jamiethehutt

Is this because ICANN wont allow him to use his symbol as a URL?
Saurav Mohapatra

and in other news, Prince will be conducting his world tour in a Dirigible, ’cause airplanes are like so over! :P
- MrWednesday
  
  Now that actually would be cool.
  - Felton
    
    Indeed! Actually, I always thought P-Funk should tour in some kind of airship, just so they could call it “the Mothership.”
- MachineElf
  
  Saurav Mohapatra: “and in other news, Prince will be conducting his world tour in a Dirigible”
  
  You know, if that happened, suddenly the world would seem like it made so much more sense. Wearing a top hat, cloud guitar in hand, scattering candies for the children as he floated by.
  - Anonymous
    
    A beautiful vision!
Absent

For a long time his always been able to play to the majority of his audience when looking th The Mirror.
pidg

“Noted shitrag The Daily Mirror”? Eh?

Are you thinking of the Daily Mail?

I mean, newspapers are all shit to varying degrees (depending by what metric you measure them), but I’ve never seen it noted that the Daily Mirror is particularly shitraggy.
- Anonymous
  
  Yeah, that’s probably it. As banal as most tabloids are, the Daily Mirror isn’t so bad. It’s certainly not as bad as The Sun or the Daily Mail (or the Daily Heil as it’s commonly known).
  - Ugly Canuck
    
    Nah, they’re all bad: you have perhaps simply over time become inured to their tawdry and cheap style; that is to say, become accustomed to their (type)face:
    
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HroAq_E075Y
    
    Ah! The saucy old “Ladies” of Fleet street, smelling of ink, and selling it cheap and dirty!
suchprettycolors

Ah, well, it often doesn’t take much to cross the line from genius to crazy.
Anonymous

Wait.. there’s an Internet?
Anonymous

i like to think it hasn’t even started yet
.gtron
Purplecat

Clever.

A classic marketing tactic. Say something controversial just when the new album is coming out, and all the fuss and bother over it will serve to do three things:

1. Remind people that Prince still exists

2. And hey, he’s got a new album out.

3. Tell them exactly where top get it (with handy link).

Also, while the Mirror is a terrible, vapid waste of newsprint, it actually looks half-decent when compared to its other tabloid rivals.
- Brainspore
  
  I agree that this could be a very clever marketing tactic to get more people talking about Prince, kind of like that whole drama about changing his professional name back in the 90s.
  
  Prince: batshit loonball or self-promotional genius? Either way the public is abuzz about him more than they have been in years.
  - funkyderek
    
    As a marketing tactic, this doesn’t work very well as Prince is refusing to sell his album. So while he will no doubt move a few hundred thousand of his albums to builders who probably won’t even use it as a coaster, nobody will actually be buying it. The Mirror may see a small spike in sales as a handful of die-hard Prince fans buy it, but most fans will simply download it for free within hours of the paper going on sale. They will even have fewer conscience pangs than usual as they are not depriving an artist of a source of income.
    - Brainspore
      
      As a marketing tactic, this doesn’t work very well as Prince is refusing to sell his album.
      
      Maybe his long-term goal isn’t to make money off this particular album but to build hype for his music in general. More people thinking/talking/blogging about Prince means more ticket sales for Prince concerts and more likely buyers of future albums.
Barry

I wouldn’t even steal his music, let alone buy it.
squirrelist

Prince is completely over.
Stumpadoodle

Phew, I was wondering when this whole internet thing would pass. Now I can go get a life.
squirrelist

An audio CD is a computer gadget that “fills your head with numbers”
Ichabod

The artist formerly know as Bitch.
Anonymous

Too quick on the trigger amigos. . . you’re not listening deeply enough.

He’s one-hundred percent correct at a very high level.

All love, dpd
- Ugly Canuck
  
  Well to be honest I’ve kinda felt the same way about the ‘net since Usenet got wound up. And the way people get sued and sometimes jailed for internet activities is a change, too – those things never used to happen, either.
  
  So, Prince does indeed have a point: the internet, like rock’n'roll, simply isn’t the latest hot new outside rebel thing no more. And to that extent, it IS over.
  
  It’s become mature.
  Like this music here:
  
  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvaH8bPkWD4&feature=related
hbl

Who the hell is Prince?

And yes, the Mirror is an especial shitrag. I wouldn’t use it as touchpaper to start a fire in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that exists now that the internet is like so over.
RyanH

Actually, in many ways this is exactly what many opponents of IP laws have been predicting. One of the most common things you hear in anti-IP discussions is that great art was still produced long before legal protections existed. Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dickens, Bach, Beethoven; none of these benefited from copyright or trademark.

But one thing they did have in common was they expected cash on the barrel.

They worked for wealthy individuals or the (incredibly wealthy) church. And not a dab of paint or note or sentence was written before cash was paid. Artists slaving away and releasing everything free-of-charge with their income then magically appearing has never existed.

In the last century IP laws have let this be flipped around so payment happens after the art is released. If Prince (or any other artist) no longer thinks the system is going to support that arrangement then it is time to fall back to the previous way of doing things. So he found an organization to bankroll him and got cash up front for his art.
- Anonymous
  
  So paying in advance worked pretty well for those masters of ancient times.
  
  Today’s artists have found out, that it’s much better for them to get paid for years and years after the work is done, every time somebody buys a one of their CD and every time their song is played on the radio or used by somebody else. Even after they are dead, some copyright heir gets paid.
  
  That’s why the most succesful artists today are wealthy enough to get on MTV Cribs. :)
  
  If Prince wants to be receive cash in advance it’s fine with me. I suspect that this is not the only thing he wants though. He might want both to get paid in advance and in the years to come for the same piece of work.
- squeakyanimal
  
  “Da Vinci, Michelangelo, Dickens, Bach, Beethoven; none of these benefited from copyright or trademark.”
  
  Dickens did, actually, at least at home in Britain.
Kozlow

I couldn’t listen to anything at all, since my head exploded.
Anonymous

I’m sorry, are you from the past?
psulli

3. Tell them exactly where top get it (with handy link).

4. Post it to my blog.
Anonymous

It’s a shame that Prince was last “hip” about the same time MTV was. Maybe that explains his thought.
Anonymous

Did he died?
Anonymous

Clearly Prince needs to make his money the old-fashioned way: whoring proper.

His best bet is servicing rich women close to his own age in exchange for their patronage of his art.

This is how it has always worked.
Anonymous

I see a ton of his albums in my iTunes…
Anonymous

PT Barnum?
franko

“There’ll be no downloads anywhere in the world…”
that sounds like a challenge to me. very well, mister rogers-nelson, lacy gauntlet thrown down and accepted. we shall see!
adonai

The Internet is over? Has someone checked Big Ben?

I tell you, the Elders won’t be pleased about this…
Anonymous

My head! It’s filled with numbahs!

Incidentally, who’s this Prince guy? I thought Prince drove a purple motorcycle off a cliff in the 80′s. I could be wrong…
unicorn breath

Uh, are you guys really getting butthurt over the fact that Prince is an eccentric?

QUICK, YOU MUST DEFEND THE HONOUR OF THE INTERNET.