I’m in the mood for some purple accounting

I've decided to weigh up whether or not my lotusflow3r.com membership has been a valuable investment thus far. Basically, I’m going to assign what I consider a reasonable price to everything that you can get from the club and then compare that with my original $77 payment.

Note that anything with a red asterisk (*) is material that had already been made available to buy in other official formats prior to lotusflow3r.com. So it really depends on how much of those you already owned prior to signing up. Of course, if you're like me, you already had all of this anyway

So here we go...


The T-shirt $20
I’ve valued the T-shirt at $20. Sure, it’s not the greatest quality, but it is an official and exclusive Prince T-shirt. Not something that comes around everyday. This is what I'm guessing it would go for on ebay.

The Lotusflow3r 3CD set $10
The original Target retail price.

Other Audio & Video
$1 for exclusive material, 50c for stuff that’s already been broadcast on TV or radio. $5 for feature length videos. More than fair prices given that most of these you can only stream and are of 'youtube' quality.

Audio $2
The Morning After $1
Feel Good, Feel Better, Feel Wonderful (live RTL 2009) 50c
Mountains/Shake Your Body (live RTL 2009) 50c

Live Videos $10
D.M.S.R. (Detroit 2004) $1
1999 (Leno 2008) $1
Guitar (Leno 2008) $1
7/Come Together (Coachella 2008) $1
Creep (Coachella 2008) $1
Shhh (Coachella 2008) $1
When Eye Lay My Hands On U (Montreux 2009) $1
Little Red Corvette (Montreux 2009) $1
I Love U But I Don’t Trust U Anymore (Montreux 2009) $1
Peach (Montreux 2009) $1

TV Appearances $2
American Idol (2006) 50c
Brit Awards (2006) 50c *
Superbowl XLI (2007) 50c
Turn Me Loose (Leno 2008) 50c

Promo Videos $9.50
I Wanna Be Your Lover 50c *
Dirty Mind 50c *
Uptown 50c *
Controversy 50c *
Little Red Corvette 50c *
Raspberry Beret 50c *
I Would Die 4 U/Baby I’m A Star 50c *
Kiss 50c *
Sign O The Times 50c *
Alphabet St. 50c *
Diamonds And Pearls 50c *
Cream 50c *
7 50c *
Te Amo Corazon 50c *
Somewhere Here On Earth 50c
The One U Wanna C 50c
Chocolate Box 50c
Crimson & Clover 50c
Everytime 50c

Feature Length Videos $10
The Undertaker $5 *
The Sacrifice of Victor $5 *

Other Exclusive Deals (ticket opportunities, art discounts etc.) $15
This is the hardest one to price as it really depends on whether or not you've had the opportunity (or the interest) to utilise some of these deals. So, I think $15 is a fair adjustment.

THE VERDICT:

TOTAL WORTH OF LOTUSFLOW3R.COM SHOULD YOU NOT ALREADY OWN ANY OF ITS CONTENT AND HAVE MADE USE OF EXCLUSIVE DEALS:
$78.50 +$1.50

TOTAL WORTH OF LOTUSFLOW3R.COM SHOULD YOU NOT ALREADY OWN ANY OF ITS CONTENT BUT HAVE NOT MADE USE OF EXCLUSIVE DEALS:
$63.50 -$13.50

TOTAL WORTH OF LOTUSFLOW3R.COM SHOULD YOU ALREADY OWN THE CONTENT THAT HAD ALREADY BEEN MADE AVAILABLE (ie. the red asterisks) YET HAVE MADE USE OF EXCLUSIVE DEALS:
$61 -$16

TOTAL WORTH OF LOTUSFLOW3R.COM SHOULD YOU BE LIKE TOEJAM AND ALREADY OWN THE CONTENT THAT HAD ALREADY BEEN MADE AVAILABLE (ie. the red asterisks) AND HAVE NOT MADE ANY USE OF EXCLUSIVE DEALS:
$46 -$31

So there you have it. If you're a complete Prince noob who's made use of the deals, lotusflow3r.com might just be worth it. Should you already be a fairly well versed fan (like myself), I don't think it's been worth it... yet. From my point of view, Prince has until March to make up for my missing $31 . Of course, I will update this thread should any new material be made available.
[Edited 12/23/09 0:16am]

You over priced "The Morning After", no way that track is worth a dollar, 50 cents max

You've also over-priced the *free* T-shirt.

You've over charged everything as you can only stream it...

I have a downloadable copy of a 3CD set that hard-copy with artwork retailed for $12 or something and a free t-shirt.

So I have a about $70 worth to come (or not).

LOL

man i was one of its harshest critics-but.....

surely its not just down to pennies or cents. Not for me anyway-i mean-you don't price an album by tracks-its not about he cash.

its the spirit of the whole thing-or rather lack of. The b/s build up-that actually started about now-last year-and what a damp squib when it eventually opened-and its been downhill ever since

some folk-alot actually STILL have no tee's-and still struggle to get ANY response

there is some great stuff on the site-but its plainly not what was expected

but its so not about pricing every little thing we got-its what it could/should have been-to what it actually is

or isn't

lol

PS-I'm actually pretty much over it now anyway. The lotus tv dvd helped-as did a great year for first 3 albums-then Conga Room, Montreux, Paris.....now if all there was out there was that site-then i would be pissed

luckily-theres alot more to Prince than a failed web site

You can itemize the shit out of all that and it still boils down to false advertising and a ludicrously crappy website.


I like 2 of the CDs though. Elixir I finally was able to stomach listening to, but still don't like it. It's shit, and Prince owes at lest $500 bucks in compensation for listening to it.

it isn't worth it at all. i prince all the video's at max 10 dollars
all together. you can't download them, or the audio, so what you have
is something to look at until prince takes it down. no value in that
for me.

the album(s), which are in stores for, what, 15 dollars? other bands
let you download the mp3 the day of release and still send you the
cd, for the retail prince. not with prince, you pay for a download
and only a download.

the tshirt, i don't include because it was a founding members shirt
and not everyone is getting one. i signed up the first day and never
got mine, but that's another story.

so imo the membership was overpriced by about $ 50,-.

the membership year isn't over yet but given the lack of interest he's
shown in it since it's "launch", i don't think we're gonna get anything
worth while out of it anymore at this stage.

i'm over getting worked up about it, but when push comes to shove, the
membership to lotusflower is a real rip off.

Imago said:

Thank You.....(Said this after uhm! Year 2002) as I always wonder "Where The Music" Prince?

I Joined 4 that reason and everthing else as an Xtra... but, this time FREE is how I get it Prince... tiyerd of manny missed Oppertunity's then again I'm just a Fan, then again from the LF CD bought @ HMV withought getting a T-Shirt then again as I hear it MANY LF Members still NOT get there shirts.

Doe's the shirt play music?
No!,Nevermind.


Elixir.. .. I pretend that's the Female part of Prince as said to Oprah... and She bought that shit too!

EMANCIPATION Ok! Uhm, TAFKAP!
[Edited 12/23/09 17:25pm]

asideorderofham said:

Did you forget how much he was selling shirts for at his last gigs ?
I think it was $35 and up ?

$20 is a bargain !

I can't agree with the math here at all. The T-shirt was supposed to be free. It was advertised as free as an incentive for people to join. Assigning it a value, especially a value of more than 25% of the cost of the membership, is just wrong, and even worse when you consider the sizable number of the audience that never got one. So the T-shirt has a value of zero.

The video files, all of them, are worth nowhere near what you ascribe. Both the audio and video qualities of them are poor, and you aren't buying them anyway. You're renting them at best, or renting the opportunity to watch them. I'd say the value of the entire video catalog on there and the ability to watch them is no more than $1 per month, so at best it's $12.

The exclusive deals are worth zero as well. I'm sure the people who took advantage of them appreciated them, but the vast majority of site members were not able to. Besides, every single time the site attempted to offer members a ticket opportunity, the site failed miserably and then they had to scramble to put things right. His poorly run operations are not worth $15. They're worth zero to most everybody.

^I agree with just about all your points. I was being generous in my pricing - but as you can see, even with generous pricing, the site still falls short.

toejam said:

I hope my tone came across as friendly, and sorry if it didn't. In rereading my original post just now, I'm not sure it does. Anyway, my issues are with the site and not your post.

Love PeachandBlack, by the way.

Lotusflow3r.com is a COMPLETE waste of time and $.
P E R I O D.

FunkyStrange said:

If it was $35 I wouldn't have bought it. If it was $20 I still wouldn't have bought it - I don't wear T-shirts and I don't like this particular T-shirt.

But it was free. I paid £0 for it, so I'll take it. I'm just saying it doesn't account for an amount of the cash spent on the membership.

Wait up - I paid extra for international shipping though. I guess I should have just said no thanks.

It was worth it to me because i gained access to buying tix to 2 of the 3 la shows & then i was lucky enough to snag a ticket at the venue for the conga room. That was the only reason i got the membership so in my mind money well spent, no ticketmaster juju up in here.
[Edited 12/27/09 23:05pm]

'Is lotusflow3r.com worth it?'

NO

.
[Edited 1/3/10 16:58pm]

Are there still alot of people who haven't got the t shirt yet ? with only weeks to go until Year 2 ??

FunkyStrange said:

Yes

Shit, I actually feel sorry for those of you that got fucked over by the purple nutjob and his nutjob site (and prior sites). I looked at it & moved on, as the intro, by itself, was just too fucking stupid to interest me in anything else.

He is really one wackjob motherfucker, nowadays.

Hell, he may have always been one...

I love the fact that he gets $0 from me, nowadays.