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Prince bypasses iTunes Music Store, others; launches own online music store

Monday, March 29, 2004 · 4:53 pm · 48 Comments

“Prince may have just signed a deal with major label Columbia Records, but that doesn’t mean he’s playing ball completely. The iconoclastic pop star — who once characterized a previous record contract with Warner Bros. as “institutional slavery” — is bypassing iTunes, Rhapsody and Napster in favor of his own Musicology Download Store at his site, npgmusicclub.com [New Power Generation Music Club],” RollingStone.com reports.

“The store features albums for $9.99 and individual tracks for 99 cents. Members of Prince’s NPG fan club may purchase tracks for 77 cents. The store carries Prince’s new material but not his most popular catalog works, like the 13 million-selling Purple Rain soundtrack, which are available through popular online music services,” RollingStone.com reports.

Full article here.

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Comment Feed

48 Comments

1 2 3 Next »

ndelc

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:04 pm · Reply

More importantly, what format will they be in?
Elvis

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:06 pm · Reply

Dumb greedy midget! Be nice if it mattered.
JJ

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:11 pm · Reply

“Dumb greedy midget!” – LOL!

Yeah, um, well, he deos havea cult following of sorts, so if they know to go to his store and get his music maybe it’ll work out for him. But I would thnik that a lot of consumers wouldn’t know this, and try to find him in iTunes or others and not be able to , so would just by pass the man in purple all together.

I bet’cha sooner or later ( probably later ) that you might see his name appear in the iTunes lists …
Anim8r

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:11 pm · Reply

So aside from Prince’s work… what else will be on there?
Nothing?
Oh, ok thanks for playing.
vid

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:14 pm · Reply

they are wma
mrcllv

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:17 pm · Reply

A survey of the site shows that the songs are in WMA format.

I love my iPod, and iTMS is great, but for my absolute favorite artists, I still get the CDs – call me nostalgic. I like the package =) I mention this because Prince is that kind of artist – not really mainstream anymore, but he has a devotional following.

I think artists are better off giving away special mp3s to their fans, and leaving the selling to music stores…
beatsme

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:24 pm · Reply

I knew they stacked it that high, but I had no idea you could download it
Joe McConnel

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:31 pm · Reply

Gad, I hadn’t thought about Prince in years. Weird skinny dude, won a boat load of grammies in the 80′s for…..nothing really, I figured it was liberal guilt at the time. His selection on Kazaa is huge, so I guess he still has a following.
cat person

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:36 pm · Reply

Uh, define “bypass”.

Parts of 14 of Prince’s albums are available on iTMS, and the eight full albums that iTMS carries are all $9.99 OR LESS.
Jimbo von Winskinheimer

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:40 pm · Reply

A quick check on iTunes Music Store shows all his old stuff.

I’m not a fan of Prince either, but I did like the fact that he rebelled against the music machine long before others. The original reason to change his name from Prince to “The Artist Formerly Known As Prince” was in response to some contract that said he could not record as Prince, wasn’t it?

He’s weird and I don’t find him particulary talented, but I pity folks like Joe who have to find some reason to blame the liberals.
Nagromme

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:44 pm · Reply

Interesting Unicode tip: in Mac OS X, pressing Shift-Command-Q will type the Prince symbol.
rlhamon

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:45 pm · Reply

Question is who cares? If this was Elvis or the Beatles people would be looking to purchase their music. Prince on the other hand isn’t a big deal at all
Road Warrior

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:49 pm · Reply

Is that the same guy that had the name formerly known as Prince?
Viridian

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 6:57 pm · Reply

You’re all missing the point. Prince has a huge, very devoted following (and yes he’s talented), and by having his own download service he has the luxury of giving the record companies the finger and keeping a much larger piece of the pie. He has never masked his loathing of the record companies, and has reached the enviable position (among recording artists) of not being beholden to them. He’s already made a shitload of money anyway, so it doesn’t matter to him if his catalog (which includes hundreds of unpublished songs) isn’t on any of the major services.
Viridian

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 7:03 pm · Reply

Oops! Hit submit by accident. Prince also has a reputation as a control freak, so this isn’t at all surprising. No loss, those who want his music will know where to find it. Move along people, nothing to see here.
MacBuddy

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 7:19 pm · Reply

Prince

control freak

.wma

M$

Former control freak
SpoiledMan

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 7:59 pm · Reply

For those that don’t think he has a HUGE following, check his tour dates and try to find a ticket. The almighty Miss Spears can manage to sell out a couple nights in LA. Prince sold out about 6 nights that are ALL local to the LA area and he did it in a few hours.

If you’ve never been to a Prince concert, you don’t know what you’re missing.
ndelc

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 8:01 pm · Reply

Music is subjective. Whether you enjoy Prince’s music or not is irrelevant. I find it very amusing that most of the people who make judgments on whether or not an artist is talented don’t know a thing about music. If you don’t like him that’s one thing, but to say he doesn’t have any talent merely displays your own ignorance. The man is a musical genius, and you should be able to make that distinction regardless of whether or not you enjoy his music.

That being said, I think we’ll be seeing a lot more of this. It is all part of the revolution that Apple made possible, and it’s a good thing. The only thing I’m disappointed with is the choice to go with WMA. I think it’s a big mistake, however, if there is DRM involved and Apple/Veridisc (whoever actually controls the FairPlay DRM) is not willing to offer it to anyone else, I guess I understand it. In these types of situations, I’d like to see FairPlay used.
Sailfish

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 8:08 pm · Reply

Prince sucks and so does his music, his format, his clothes and his mentality.

Apple be better of without him.

What’s disturbing is that other artists can realize that they too can just create a download site for their music, it’s not hard.

This may be a trend for new music to come, deals are inked that the RIAA has no control over a artist setting up their own download service.

This online music game keeps getting interesting, changes all the time, just when we thought M$ will steal the show later and undercut iTunes, by the time that happens every artist will be controlling their own downloading and the old stuff will be on itunes and M$.

Hopefully a lot of these artists will support ADC/fairplay as well as WMA/M$ DRM, since a lot of them like and use Macs.

Get folding cure disease for Stanford University
imageone

Monday, March 29, 2004 - 8:31 pm · Reply

GOOD!
no reason to take up sever space with junk!