By Scott Thill March 17, 2009 | 2:02:52 PMCategories: Advertising, DIY, E-Commerce, Music

Has link to online track!....but the comments are mixed on the website
http://blog.wired.com/und...zzlin.html


Offering his opinion of joint record deals in the new single "Colonized Mind," Prince sings "It’s just another way another man can still sleep while he’s sticking you with the bill." Good thing for him those deals are nearly dead and gone.

On March 24, the pioneering rock and funk lifer launches LotusFlow3r.com, a Myst-like portal tricked out in Flash animaton and 3-D modeling that will serve as home base for Prince's creative output. A membership model that functions along the lines of DavidLynch.com, LotusFlow3r.com provides enhanced access to Prince-generated content for an annual fee of $77.

The money pays for forthcoming downloads of his guitar-heavy LotusFlow3r, the funktronic MPLSoUND and Elixer, featuring Prince's latest babe protege Bria Valente. Throw in some exclusive photos, advances on tickets, streaming video along with unreleased music and Purple loyalists have more than a few reasons to embrace the digital age.

To celebrate the launch, Prince will play three venues with three different bands on March 24 in Los Angeles, followed by three consecutive nights of performances on The Tonight Show beginning March 25. He'll also return on May 28 to help Leno close out his penultimate appearance as Tonight Show host. Whattaguy.
And there's more: Prince has tabbed Target for exclusive brick-and-mortar distribution of the three releases, which land on March 29 in a three-disc package priced under $12.

Prince has always been one step ahead of the music industry when it comes to the internet: He released Crystal Ball exclusively online in 1997, and later received a Webby Lifetime Achievement Award. Here's hoping that LotusFlow3r.com takes another giant step toward a disc-free future unburdened by, paraphrasing the Purple One, record deals that totally suck.
[Edited 3/18/09 5:12am]

With all these reports (based presumably on the press release content) the thing thta keeps popping out at me is the exclusive photos and images.

Do you think Prince and his team have over-estimated the importance that we fans place on such things. Not just by promising it as content but by going after "unofficial" images over the last few years. I know there are loads of photo threads on the fansites but do people really go nuts over photos? Photo galleries on official sites are nice but I would have almost thought they were included as standard rather than a carrot to be dangled.

Am I alone on this? Are images of Prince so sought after that people are salivating over them?

KeithyT said:

I totally agree - for me pictures are great but music is what i want

what's the online track?

Shorty said:

oops, never mind. Colonized Mind

i wonder if these photos they keep mentioning have something to do with prince's new photography hobby.

Thanks for posting.