I'm currently studying a degree in Creative Industries Management, focusing on the music business, and one of our subjects is called Entrepreneurship in the Entertainment Industry. For this subject, I need to profile an entrepreneur in the music industry. Not surprisingly, I chose Prince.

I need to examine ways in which his background may have created an underlying motivation for him to become an entrepreneur, the culture of his organisations, how he relates and responds to new ideas and any evidence of knowledge gained from past failure.

I also need to discuss possible character flaws - how they have potentially both added to and compromised his entrepreneurship, how he has pushed through them and how this may have affected harvesting and exit strategies within different ventures.

There are obviously a number of resources available for researching this, including interviews, books like Touré's recent release, "I Would Die 4 U", and Hahn's "Possessed", as well as previous discussions on this site and of course, accumulated knowledge, but I wanted to put these questions into one thread in case anyone was interested in sharing their thoughts.

I'd imagine that I'll be referencing Prince.org anyway, but if I quote anyone directly in the essay I will of course credit them - given the nature of the topic, almost everything is subjective to a point, so an insightful fan opinion certainly has value.

If anyone has had direct experience concerning this topic, eg. working in one of Prince's organisations or doing business with him, and wants to contribute privately (and/or anonymously), please orgnote me we can take the discussion to email.

Thread housekeeping:

- This is only one aspect of my research, for anyone on the verge of posting, "Do your own homework..." - I'm still the one compiling the info and writing the essay. I'm grateful for any meaningful contributions to the thread, but only jump in if you're interested;

- People will of course post whatever they wish, but I'm really after informed, thoughtful (and thought-provoking) responses, so can I please ask everyone to try to refrain from emotive, derogatory and deliberately inflammatory posts, especially when replying to such a post (in which case, please consider ignoring it instead).

Great topic.

From a psychological perspective, you might theorise how the lack of control during his early upbringing (when he was subject to numerous difficult and painful experiences) may have contributed towards his desire for complete control as an adult with certain repercussions within his artistic career? Numerous examples spring to mind, ranging from the staunch desire for control over the production of his first record, For You, to the heavy handed control he exerted over his infamous protege/side acts (e.g. The Time) leading to their demise, as well as the eventual need to leave his employment with WB as a result of his need for greater autonomy. In each of these examples, there were some clear advantages that emerged e.g. earlier development of the identifiable Prince sound, ability to experiment with product diversification into different markets/genres without diluting the Prince brand, and eventually greater ownersip of the artistic process and dividends. Naturally, there were also some significant disadvantages to Prince's business strategy, but perhaps like most innovators/entrepreneurs, these would have been unlikely to have been taken into account in advance in terms of risk, as he was somewhat hell-bent on forging ahead with his own uniqely identifiable path.

Spirit

Just wanted to tell you that I think your post is fantastic!

One failure I can think of is why have we never heard the story of Prince going into some

strange motel room for 6 weeks with an old Macintosh and coming out with a fully realized album ready for press?

Is Prince computer savvy? Does he know http versus https? Does he use Google? If not, then I would say that this might a slight failure on his part.

Not that I would forgo him giving us Sign O' The Times or The Rainbow Children, but sometime between 1986 and 2002, you think Prince would have sat down and learned how to record himself with a computer and some good mics.

Good luck with your essay and not for choosing Oprah (not there's anything wrong with choosing Oprah

I think around .. 2000 - 2003 or so there was an article in Time Magazine about Prince and how he was doing so well with marketing via the internet ... which had an entrepenurial tinge to it ...

then of course in 2004 with the big comeback and success of Musicology and the idea of packaging the tickets and the Cd together for sales boost etc ...

Many have said that was genius .

Chiquetet said:

I'm currently studying a degree in Creative Industries Management, focusing on the music business, and one of our subjects is called Entrepreneurship in the Entertainment Industry. For this subject, I need to profile an entrepreneur in the music industry. Not surprisingly, I chose Prince.

The music industry is one of the most shady and corrupt creative industries there is. Prince has been operating in it with various degrees of succes since 35 years. He has seen the top, the bottem and everything in between. And he has been shaped in many ways by it.
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I need to examine ways in which his background may have created an underlying motivation for him to become an entrepreneur, the culture of his organisations, how he relates and responds to new ideas and any evidence of knowledge gained from past failure.

His background is well known to be from having parents who were musicians and a home situation that was not stable making him leave home at an early age. Also, Prince is known to have been extremely talented from an early age on already and he was always occupied with making music. Those circumstances naturally drove him in the direction of becoming a professional songwriter, singer and multi-talented musician.

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Since his youth was so chaotic and unstable, and music was his way out, it's obvious that in Prince's organisations Prince is King and Music his Queen, but everything else is kind of chaotic and is always revolving around and depending on his cashflow or his own particular ideas on what to do with all that music and talent.

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I also need to discuss possible character flaws - how they have potentially both added to and compromised his entrepreneurship, how he has pushed through them and how this may have affected harvesting and exit strategies within different ventures.

Considering the above it shouldn't come as a surprise that Prince's biggest character flaw is that he is a control freak. It has done him good and bad. Good because that's what you need to be if you truly want to make it in the music business and so he made it. Bad because that's not how you maintain stable, healthy relationships with co-workers, record companies and fans.

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A healthy balance seems to be missing, but that is ultimately only natural considering Prince's youth and background that was unstable and his 35 years of being a succesful artist and music entrepeneur in an unstable industry.
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[Edited 4/9/13 5:34am]

What I find interesting is that in the early 90's Prince tried to be an industry by himself, not only did he release a lot of music and compose a lot of music for others but he tried many ventures:

- Paisley Park Records, followed by NPG Records which was to become a real label before he decided to use it only for himself and his side projects in 1995.

- Paisley Park Studios, which was a proeminent studio in the late 80's/early 90's, before he chose to use it only for himself.

- NPG Stores in MPLS and London: these shops sell some Prince music as well as clothes and gadgets, but the offer was way too unsufficient for them to be profitable and they didn't last long.

- 1-800 New-Funk online/telephone shop, which was the correspondance equivalent to the stores.

- Glam Slam clubs, one in MPLS, one in Miami and one in LA IIRC, not sure why these failed, Prince supposedly sold them because he realized he didn't want to endorse selling alcohol. Much later there was the 3121 restaurant in Las Vegas but I'm not sure what became of it?

- Comic-books: Prince licenced 2 comics to an imprint of DC Comics, which belongs to WB.

- Movies and TV programs: well, we all know how THAT ended lol.

- Magazines: the 10,000 magazine in 94 lasted one or 2 issues I believe.

- Charity: I don't know what became of the Love4OneAnother charity from the mid-90's.

For some reason P believed he had enough in him to do just EVERYTHING but in the end he was only succesful in music (which he seemed to have understood after 95). It's also interesting how he totally dropped all productions for other artists in 94, most likely because, despite these productions' success, he didn't want to give his masters to record companies.

Prince is an excellent entrepeneur in that he's extremely creative when it comes to product distribution. I'm not sure there's a way to distribute music that he hasn't tried. Some worked well, some did not. But like any good entrepreneur, Prince didn't let a past failure stop him from trying something new.

In his industry, change is rapid and inevitable. That he recognized that so early on, and was aggressive in embracing change, is quite unique - especially for an older artist that could have sat on the couch and lived off royalties.

Good luck on your project. It will be fascinating!

There has been a documentary called "Liquid Assets", dealing with how "good" Prince was as an entrepreneur. Check that out!

Thanks so much to you all for your insightful replies and suggestions!

Absolutely, I think each reply has touched on key areas of his background that had a big part in his controlling nature and both the opportunities and challenges that this has created over his career.

(Databank - thank you for that list, I'd forgotten half of those ventures!)

I've had some interesting input from my teacher as well, particularly when I mentioned the frustration of many Prince fans that he doesn't allow for more outside involvement; ie. professionals to handle aspects of his business that he has not had specialist training in, but tends to exercise control over anyway.

He suggested that Prince trades heavily on his mystique - that if Prince, after 35 years of operating one way, decided to throw open the metaphoric doors to his business and allow others to start working almost autonomously within it, that it could be ultimately detrimental to his brand.

Perhaps initially there would be excitement amongst fans that he was doing what we perceive to be smart from a business perspective, but that eventually, the novelty that is Prince - the control freak that must do everything himself, the character portrayed in books and interviews, the bizarre person Kevin Smith talks about, etc... - would gradually dissolve and, despite his extraordinary music, Prince as a subject of fascination and discussion (as evidenced on this very site), would become "just another artist".

In that sense, the thing that he is so often criticised for could be (one of) the very things that makes him such an enduring entrepreneur in a traditionally and increasingly fickle industry.

In any case, there is so much that could potentially be discussed in this essay. I might struggle to keep it in the 2500 word limit!

[Edited 4/13/13 10:29am]

jazzz said:

There has been a documentary called "Liquid Assets", dealing with how "good" Prince was as an entrepreneur. Check that out!