Militant said:

Well, it's a difficult question because it depends on the aim of the artist. I have consulted many bands on digital strategy, and I've also guest lectured at one of my city's university to the music business degree classes, where the head lecturer is the guy who literally wrote the book on digital music (his writing was the direct inspiration for the guys who made Bandcamp and he consults for them). So while I said that tongue-in-cheek, I'm ready for P to call too The first question I'd ask would be if Tidal paid him an upfront cost, if so how much, and if money upfront is his primary motivator for picking a partner. Depending on his answer I'd suggest an all encompassing digital strategy on a tier-based system that supported both free and paid tiers as well as merchandise with back order support and full social integration and simple analytics. No heavy graphical content, no paywalls. He could invest into building his own platform, but also provide the "main material" to all other platforms. So while "the new album" could be streamed everywhere, bonus tracks and merchandise would be exclusive to his own site. Case point - a few years back Trent Reznor offered a limited edition coffee table art book with the NIN Ghosts set. There was only something like 500 of them made and they went for $300 each. They sold out in 3 days and this was only one of the options available. Prince could do a deluxe set of the album with a book similar to the 21 nights one, package it with some bonus material (a disc of outtakes maybe)? and easily sell a thousand of those at $300 each. What a lot of artists are struggling with is the concept that audio has essentially been rendered worthless by filesharing, but many miss that physical, tangible art is still high value to fans. Damn near everyone here would buy a Prince CD for ten bucks, right? What about a double disc with some really great packaging? We'd all pay 20 bucks for that. What about a collector edition box set of the new album, like the ONA live set - most people here would be happy to pay 50 bucks for that. Accept that 80% of your audience will hear the music for free - one way or another. Focus on the 20% that are happy to pay you the right price for the right product - and remember that 20% of THOSE people are big enough fans to pay more money for a more premium, limited edition collectors item. Prince can phone up the CEO of YouListen if he wants to. But tomorrow, there will be a new YouListen, and it might be based in Korea, or some island somewhere, and good luck getting them to remove any audio. It's digital whack-a-mole. The funny thing is that, DRM aside, Prince was doing the right thing with NPGMC - he won a Webby award for it, come on! And now it's like that never happened and he looks like Metallica trying to sue Napster in 1999. Whomever is advising Prince right now knows jack-all about digital music. They're scrambling in the dirt for ideas and strategies and calling all over themselves. Look at the reaction to the TIDAL news - the fanbase was unified for once, because 99% of us agreed it's a pretty terrible idea. I love Prince and he's done some pioneering shit with innovative music distribution in the past. But right now he's struggling with the digital landscape - Yes, there are battles to be fought, but he's not fighting the right battles right now.

Some really awesome ideas there. I think you are absolutely right about sites from other countries, there are a number of Far Eastern sites which simply have no interest in rights claims from other countries.

I also agree with you that filesharing is a huge issue for artists now but like you I would gladly pay more for a quality physical product. Release a collectors edition of the 2014 HitNRun shows on DVD and I would be there immediately!

jayspud said:

BobGeorge909 said:

jayspud said:

Some really awesome ideas there. I think you are absolutely right about sites from other countries, there are a number of Far Eastern sites which simply have no interest in rights claims from other countries.

I also agree with you that filesharing is a huge issue for artists now but like you I would gladly pay more for a quality physical product. Release a collectors edition of the 2014 HitNRun shows on DVD and I would be there immediately!

There was a couple of chicks on shark tank who worked with lables on special packaging set-ups. Their focus was die hard fans who craved physical set-ups. So they had set-ups that were pretty elaborate and even branched out to specially printed concert tickets in set-ups similar to the CD's. IMO...a market like that is too neiche to make enough money from the effort.

This ^^^ special product packages will cost way more than you can make back....

$300 packages need expensive photography, packaging, marketing and you'd have sell in the tens of thousands to make back the upfront production costs.

djThunderfunk said:

Noodled24 said:

"This could b us" (yet another ballad) has been released as a single. I'd have bought it if my 99p was subtracted from the cost of the album. But it isn't. You have to pay twice if you want both.

This has ALWAYS been the case. Back in the day when I bought the Kiss 7" single the price wasn't subtracted from the cost when I bought the 12" single a month later and the price for neither was subtracted from the cost when I bought Parade on cassette a few weeks after that.

Granted, we usually got extra tracks in the form of b-sides & extended versions back then (something he should consider with digital singles) but this was not always the case, especially not with all artists.

Perhaps an alternative solution would be pre-orders where we could pre-pay for an album and receive the single in advance as a bonus.

I'm aware of all that. But we're no longer in the days of CD singles. Prince almost always included more than just "the" single on CDs. Now it's 99p to copy a file. Which you'll be paying for again when you buy the album.

I agree the "single as a bonus" when you pre-order solves that problem. However it completely negates the point of releasing a single. If the only people who are going to get it are the fans who have pre-ordered the album. Prince doesn't need to appeal to them, they're already his customers. Singles are used to get music out there and drum up some interest in the album.

Noodled24 said:

djThunderfunk said:

This has ALWAYS been the case. Back in the day when I bought the Kiss 7" single the price wasn't subtracted from the cost when I bought the 12" single a month later and the price for neither was subtracted from the cost when I bought Parade on cassette a few weeks after that.

Granted, we usually got extra tracks in the form of b-sides & extended versions back then (something he should consider with digital singles) but this was not always the case, especially not with all artists.

Perhaps an alternative solution would be pre-orders where we could pre-pay for an album and receive the single in advance as a bonus.

I'm aware of all that. But we're no longer in the days of CD singles. Prince almost always included more than just "the" single on CDs. Now it's 99p to copy a file. Which you'll be paying for again when you buy the album.

I agree the "single as a bonus" when you pre-order solves that problem. However it completely negates the point of releasing a single. If the only people who are going to get it are the fans who have pre-ordered the album. Prince doesn't need to appeal to them, they're already his customers. Singles are used to get music out there and drum up some interest in the album.

Well then, to your statement that you have to pay twice if you want both, yes, that hasn't changed. If you don't want to pay twice, wait, the album's coming out in a week. Problem solved, no?

Prince should have his own website. That much is glaringly obvious.

However. Simply throwing up a website doesn't work for Prince. This has been proven time and time again.

Putting together a professional website has become much cheaper, but don't fool yourself into thinking it takes no effort. You're going to need someone to make the site, they'll be on $30k a year if they're cheap. Right there, you now need to sell 30k songs just to pay their wage - that doesn't include the cost of recording the music, oh and if you're selling MP3s then you'll be paying tax on them. So you now need to sell 36k songs just to pay your web designer. How many decent sites have 1 employee? None. Customer service, someone to manage the day to day running, advertising, dealing with Prince's cryptic requests for a flamingo with a guitar jack for a head. etc etc.

But hey, for the sake of ease lets ignore all that. Here's what happens next...

Prince.music is up and running, he puts up an album (10 songs) £9.99 - You have an initial influx of people swarming to download the album. A week later everyone who wants the album has it. Your website is back to 5 hits a day... So what was the purpose of having a website? Spending thousands of dollars to break even.

Is Prince.Music EVER going to have the number of users itunes has? Spotify? Tidal? Not. A. Chance.

So why bother with a website when Tidal is willing to create his "page" on their service, serve up his music, market his music, make it easy for him to release or stream what he wants? Plus they're paying him for the privilege.

Noodled24 said:

So why bother with a website when Tidal is willing to create his "page" on their service, serve up his music, market his music, make it easy for him to release or stream what he wants? Plus they're paying him for the privilege.

.

Except that P & co did invest plenty of work in their Tidal page, demanding the "related" links were replaced by "influences", etc.

terrig said:

BobGeorge909 said:

jayspud said: There was a couple of chicks on shark tank who worked with lables on special packaging set-ups. Their focus was die hard fans who craved physical set-ups. So they had set-ups that were pretty elaborate and even branched out to specially printed concert tickets in set-ups similar to the CD's. IMO...a market like that is too neiche to make enough money from the effort.

This ^^^ special product packages will cost way more than you can make back....

$300 packages need expensive photography, packaging, marketing and you'd have sell in the tens of thousands to make back the upfront production costs.

.

This is just frikking hilarious. There's record companies who only license music from majors and conceive remasters and deluxe editions etc. According to you they should be in a financial hole, instead they advertise in mags like Mojo each month and continue to release lavish editions of shit that didn't sell well in the first place.

.

There's a Nick Kamen 2CD coming. A 33CD Bananarama CD singles box set. A 6CD Lloyd Cole box set. A 7CD Jaki Graham box set. A 14 disc Steve Hackett box set. Etc etc etc. But a Prince one would cause financial ruin? How do you lot come up with this nonsense?

why no black album, diamonds and pearls 3121 musicilogy on Tidal???

Prince has three real problems that contribute strongly to the piracy.

1 - He doesn't release the music that gets pirated. One of the keys to the early success of the iTunes store is they made it at least as easy if not easier to buy the music legally than it was to get an illegal copy (at least at the time).

2 - he doesn't view sites like youtube as advertising and wants them to generate as much direct revenue as a CD sale. Let more people find some of his amazing performances and it will turn them into fans that then will buy his music.

3 - finding his music turns into a scavanger hunt. You don't know if you can buy it in a store, buy it on iTunes, google music, of if you have to get a newspaper, or what. Some back catalog is of print.

BartVanHemelen said:

terrig said:

This ^^^ special product packages will cost way more than you can make back....

$300 packages need expensive photography, packaging, marketing and you'd have sell in the tens of thousands to make back the upfront production costs.

.

This is just frikking hilarious. There's record companies who only license music from majors and conceive remasters and deluxe editions etc. According to you they should be in a financial hole, instead they advertise in mags like Mojo each month and continue to release lavish editions of shit that didn't sell well in the first place.

.

There's a Nick Kamen 2CD coming. A 33CD Bananarama CD singles box set. A 6CD Lloyd Cole box set. A 7CD Jaki Graham box set. A 14 disc Steve Hackett box set. Etc etc etc. But a Prince one would cause financial ruin? How do you lot come up with this nonsense?

Bart is right, $300 special editions don't cost that much to make.

Besides which, when Trent did the Ghosts set, the product purchase place stated that the product would ship 6 weeks from release date. So, he had all the money before the product was even manufactured.

BartVanHemelen said:

terrig said:

This ^^^ special product packages will cost way more than you can make back....

$300 packages need expensive photography, packaging, marketing and you'd have sell in the tens of thousands to make back the upfront production costs.

.

This is just frikking hilarious. There's record companies who only license music from majors and conceive remasters and deluxe editions etc. According to you they should be in a financial hole, instead they advertise in mags like Mojo each month and continue to release lavish editions of shit that didn't sell well in the first place.

.

There's a Nick Kamen 2CD coming. A 33CD Bananarama CD singles box set. A 6CD Lloyd Cole box set. A 7CD Jaki Graham box set. A 14 disc Steve Hackett box set. Etc etc etc. But a Prince one would cause financial ruin? How do you lot come up with this nonsense?

I do agree with you Bart and also obviously these sets can be part of a wider strategy, it does seem that whilst obviously Prince's control is essential to him allowing a competent, talented set of people to run a popular and successful website of back catalogue and other box serts would produce a great revenue stream. As referred to in the article by actually relinquishing a little control Prince can make a lot of money, a smaller slice of a bigger pie.

BartVanHemelen said:

terrig said:

This ^^^ special product packages will cost way more than you can make back....

$300 packages need expensive photography, packaging, marketing and you'd have sell in the tens of thousands to make back the upfront production costs.

.

This is just frikking hilarious. There's record companies who only license music from majors and conceive remasters and deluxe editions etc. According to you they should be in a financial hole, instead they advertise in mags like Mojo each month and continue to release lavish editions of shit that didn't sell well in the first place.

.

There's a Nick Kamen 2CD coming. A 33CD Bananarama CD singles box set. A 6CD Lloyd Cole box set. A 7CD Jaki Graham box set. A 14 disc Steve Hackett box set. Etc etc etc. But a Prince one would cause financial ruin? How do you lot come up with this nonsense?

this is the frustrating thing.

Prince's catalog is pretty much the only major one

without a comprehensive make-over for

the digital age.

it especially hurts when the CD's sound muddy

and plain awful like sign of the times.

a Nick Kamen 2CD set,wow.......

BartVanHemelen said:

Noodled24 said:

So why bother with a website when Tidal is willing to create his "page" on their service, serve up his music, market his music, make it easy for him to release or stream what he wants? Plus they're paying him for the privilege.

.

Except that P & co did invest plenty of work in their Tidal page, demanding the "related" links were replaced by "influences", etc.

Except changing "related artists" to "Influenced by" - isn't a big change is it? I mean, you're playing fast and loose with the term "plenty of work".

They changed the header on the list, it now reads "influenced" instead of "related".

Also... and I hate to be picky here but since you usually are. Evidence that he demanded this be done? Or by "demanded" do you mean asked?

Noodled24 said:

Prince should have his own website. That much is glaringly obvious.

However. Simply throwing up a website doesn't work for Prince. This has been proven time and time again.

Putting together a professional website has become much cheaper, but don't fool yourself into thinking it takes no effort. You're going to need someone to make the site, they'll be on $30k a year if they're cheap. Right there, you now need to sell 30k songs just to pay their wage - that doesn't include the cost of recording the music, oh and if you're selling MP3s then you'll be paying tax on them. So you now need to sell 36k songs just to pay your web designer. How many decent sites have 1 employee? None. Customer service, someone to manage the day to day running, advertising, dealing with Prince's cryptic requests for a flamingo with a guitar jack for a head. etc etc.

.

There are companies that do this for you. Sure, for a fee, but it's a business. Hell, there are even companies with decades of experience, I think they're called... record companies.

.

Also, why even moan about "doesn't include the cost of recording the music" -- are you claiming Prince isn't in his studio several times a week already? How is NOT releasing those recordings a profitable affair? How many people are currently working at PP? Somebody must be printing those ugly-ass T-shirts. Somebody must be making his food. How are they getting paid? How's his band getting paid? Prince already has a fuckton of costs. But "hiring a company to have a worthwhile web presence that will generate income" will bring on his ruin?

.

FYI Amanda Palmer has a Patreon which pays her $36.000 each time she releases "a thing", which is about once a month. Hmmm, 36k, now what does that number remind me of? Oh yes:

.

Putting together a professional website has become much cheaper, but don't fool yourself into thinking it takes no effort. You're going to need someone to make the site, they'll be on $30k a year if they're cheap. Right there, you now need to sell 30k songs just to pay their wage - that doesn't include the cost of recording the music, oh and if you're selling MP3s then you'll be paying tax on them. So you now need to sell 36k songs just to pay your web designer.

.

So let's recap: something that is working fine for Amanda Palmer is impossible for Prince.

.

Though I have to point out that Palmer hasn't spend the past two decades alienating her fans and doing stupid internet shit. So there's that. Oh, and she actually fought her record company without self-sabotaging her career in the process by deliberately releasing sub-standard albums.

Noodled24 said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Except that P & co did invest plenty of work in their Tidal page, demanding the "related" links were replaced by "influences", etc.

Except changing "related artists" to "Influenced by" - isn't a big change is it? I mean, you're playing fast and loose with the term "plenty of work".

They changed the header on the list, it now reads "influenced" instead of "related".

.

Those things are usually done via algorithms. So now for this one guy they have to change the back-end, implement brand-new functionality. Don't forget they also worked on the pages for those related artists.

.

Also... and I hate to be picky here but since you usually are. Evidence that he demanded this be done? Or by "demanded" do you mean asked?

.

I'm pretty sure Prince told Jay-Z that this was something they "needed", that Prince didn't care for there to be links to "non-approved" artists.

By the way, this is an interesting read.

.

But I guess advice like this won't work for Prince:

.

You’re looking for your top fans who are going to spend at least $100 a year on you. The average music consumer spends $40 a year annually on all music related purchases. If you’re going to capture over 200 % of their yearly spend, you better be going above and beyond to earn it.

.

See: CB. NPGMC year two. LotusFlow3r.com. etc.

BartVanHemelen said:

Noodled24 said:

Prince should have his own website. That much is glaringly obvious.

However. Simply throwing up a website doesn't work for Prince. This has been proven time and time again.

Putting together a professional website has become much cheaper, but don't fool yourself into thinking it takes no effort. You're going to need someone to make the site, they'll be on $30k a year if they're cheap. Right there, you now need to sell 30k songs just to pay their wage - that doesn't include the cost of recording the music, oh and if you're selling MP3s then you'll be paying tax on them. So you now need to sell 36k songs just to pay your web designer. How many decent sites have 1 employee? None. Customer service, someone to manage the day to day running, advertising, dealing with Prince's cryptic requests for a flamingo with a guitar jack for a head. etc etc.

.

There are companies that do this for you. Sure, for a fee, but it's a business. Hell, there are even companies with decades of experience, I think they're called... record companies.

Yes, however by the time a record company has your website up and running you're in debt to them to the tune of about $1 million. Unless there is a record company willing to pay Prince to let them put up a website?

Also, why even moan about "doesn't include the cost of recording the music" -- are you claiming Prince isn't in his studio several times a week already?

Of course he is. So what? Are you saying that since he records anyway he should just leave studio time off the balance sheet?

Also hiring an outside company to run a website leads to leaks - either music, traffic, sales figures. Things Prince doesn't like floating about.

How is NOT releasing those recordings a profitable affair? How many people are currently working at PP? Somebody must be printing those ugly-ass T-shirts. Somebody must be making his food. How are they getting paid? How's his band getting paid? Prince already has a fuckton of costs. But "hiring a company to have a worthwhile web presence that will generate income" will bring on his ruin?

What does his chef have to to with hiring a company to put up a website?

I never said it would bring his ruin. I said he wouldn't profit from it. So why bother? Tidal is easier and more profitable.

FYI Amanda Palmer has a Patreon which pays her $36.000 each time she releases "a thing", which is about once a month. Hmmm, 36k, now what does that number remind me of? Oh yes:

.

Putting together a professional website has become much cheaper, but don't fool yourself into thinking it takes no effort. You're going to need someone to make the site, they'll be on $30k a year if they're cheap. Right there, you now need to sell 30k songs just to pay their wage - that doesn't include the cost of recording the music, oh and if you're selling MP3s then you'll be paying tax on them. So you now need to sell 36k songs just to pay your web designer.

Do you think Prince was making 36k a month from Lotusflow3r.com? Or the NPGMC? I doubt they would have closed so quickly if that was the case.

So let's recap: something that is working fine for Amanda Palmer is impossible for Prince.

.

Though I have to point out that Palmer hasn't spend the past two decades alienating her fans and doing stupid internet shit. So there's that. Oh, and she actually fought her record company without self-sabotaging her career in the process by deliberately releasing sub-standard albums.

Right, and you know what else? Disney had a huge hit with that song "let it go". But Prince isn't Disney is he?

BartVanHemelen said:

Noodled24 said:

.

Those things are usually done via algorithms. So now for this one guy they have to change the back-end, implement brand-new functionality. Don't forget they also worked on the pages for those related artists.

Why would he change the back end? Why change the algorithm at all?

Click on Prince and here are the "related" names you'll see. James Brown, Carlos Santana, Miles Davis, Jimmy Hendrix, George Clinton, Sly Stone... I haven't checked but these are always the names seen in "related artists" list. Prince might also be using it to link to artists he wants to help/launch.

The only difference is that the heading for that part of the page now reads "Influenced by" where it once said "Related" - it's usually achieved by tagging other artists meta data with "Prince" in the "related/influenced/you mike also like.

That's how I'd have done it. Granted I'm not a tidal developer, but it seems the most efficient way. It's certainly possible that Jay-Z simply heard Prince's idea and had his people re-work that feature completely. But I'm not sure there would be any point, because the results displayed to the end user wouldn't actually be that different. It's still just going to query the database and artists who are marked as related to: Prince are then displayed to the end user.

Also... and I hate to be picky here but since you usually are. Evidence that he demanded this be done? Or by "demanded" do you mean asked?

.

I'm pretty sure Prince told Jay-Z that this was something they "needed", that Prince didn't care for there to be links to "non-approved" artists.

If no fists were slammed against doors or walls, it wasn't a demand... I'm pretty sure thats the rule.

If I was Prince, I'd be a bit miffed if some website was saying "Oh if you like Prince you must like Justin Beiber" because, NO.

[Edited 9/2/15 12:28pm]

If his music was avail to purchase we wouldnt have this problem

Everything on yourlisten was unreleased material he refuses to sell. As cool as it is to imagine it getting released by some mega-corporation 40 years from now when he's dead, fuck him. Burn the tapes and quit recording if you want nobody to hear it.

It drives me crazy how he creates the situation with traders/bootleggers and then spends big $$$ trying to attack everybody who just wants to hear his music.

Release it yourself or get out of the way. I'll be no slave to the whims of a powertripping purple yoda.

[Edited 9/4/15 19:07pm]