Lotus2unfld said:

In fact, I think he needs management. i.e. proper artist management. Not just a team to take care of the day-to-day hassle, but someone that can take an objective view of things and help channel his creative whirlwind into something more focused and dare I say, marketable.

Say what you like about Steve Fargnoli, but Prince was never more revered, exciting or successful (and fans were never happier) than the years that he had Steve's guidance.

A good manager, faced with the kind of fan backlash that's going on now, would immediately go into damage-limitation mode, because any decline in goodwill towards their artist will damage future sales. They'd be making a public statement and trying to wrap things up satisfactorily. The last thing you'd get is silence. Although frankly, a good manager would have understood the implications of running a paid-for fan website and would never have allowed it to disintegrate in such a fashion.

(In fact, I expect they'd have looked at the numbers and thought long and hard before creating a paid-membership website at all. There are plenty of things more financially-prudent that you could do - like a GOOD live DVD - that aren't going to creep up and bite you in the ass in less than a year)

There's a reason why artists employ managers, agents, lawyers, publicists, etc. It's because there aren't enough hours in the day to do it all yourself... and even if there were, your job as a creative artist is to create your art, to the very best of your ability. You've got the best job in the world, why would you want to ruin it by trying to do everyone else's as well? Find honest, talented, music-business people (there's a ton of them) and leave them to do the business stuff.

i´m really angry! love the music, like the artist, but i hate his business.
i was "lifetime" member of the npgmc: great site coll musi, but all my drm 4 the music is gone! i paid 4 the songs but cannot hear it! FRAUD!
now the next big bang: lv is gone. 77$ 4 3 albums: fraud!
i never got these special tickets too.
p is coming 2 europe this summer. i tried 2 get golden circle tickets, but no chance! where are the tickets for npgmc/lv members?

FRAUD!

why is there no sorry mail 2 all members!

rogernp said:

I'm equally peeved. I didn't get a thing out of my mpgmc membership. Would have purchased all the online albums, but it was Windows-only, and I'm a Mac user, so I couldn't. I planned to find a PC with a CD burner and get downloading and burning. But they shut the site without warning before I managed it.

Then they ask $77 from me to start over? Not surprising I didn't go for that.

But it's typical of Prince since the mid-nineties - develops grand plans for projects that turn out to be unsustainable, then shelves them and starts another badly thought-out venture. Then ditches that. And so on. Compare with Controversy magazine. Straightforward concept, worked well, dedicated staff. No-one was making a fortune but the fans were pretty happy and it never missed an issue. Gained official support, but remained independent (so largely immune to any Minneapolis shenanigans) and ran for years until the rug was pulled out from under them... To be replaced with this sort of thing.

Couldn't he just register www.prince.com and make it FREE TO ENTER? Charge for downloads (charging for streaming is a con IMO), and keep it running. If he insisted on changing the design every year that'd be okay. But at least you'd know where to go. A sure way to annoy and eventually lose your fans is to keep burning it down (especially when your fans have been paying for it) and building it again somewhere else.

That's not mysterious and intruiguing. That's more like a con artist who shuts the doors, then starts up in another town under a new name. Not a good way to build a reputation.