It's really simple folks: both Prince and Scott are to blame.

Prince: He agreed on a website where you needed to solve a puzzle to subscribe. Hallo? He wants to make money with that shit, so he should make it as easy as possible for folks to subscribe, right? Then he didn't add any previously unreleased content. Put up two unreleased concerts from day 1, and the number of members will rise immediately.

Scott: He messed up the whole credit card payment and the support. I would have become a member, but since Scott was unable to implement a system which would accept my European credit card (amateurish!) and my e-mail wasn't answered, I just gave up. That spoiled the whole impression of the website from day 1, and in combination with first reports being not too enthusiastic, I'm sure many fans just didn't subscribe.

EmancipationLover said:

Prince is the pointman. Prince decides who he hires. Is he so lazy and ridiculous that he doesn't do any research to make sure he gets the best? He's like Michael Jackson who deliberately hires a hack because he knows this person will not question anything and will do his absolute will regardless of how ridiculous the requests are.

PRINCE IS SOLELY TO BLAME FOR EVERYTHING. FACE IT FOLKS!

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

It's pointless to discuss if Prince's part of the fiasco is 90 %, 70 %, 50 % or whatver. He is the responsible person, for sure, but Scott, on the other hand, is responsible to deliver quality as well. Bad performance by the employer, bad performance by the employee - simple as that.

EmancipationLover said:

Pointless to discuss Prince's part? OMG! Prince didn't want a professional. He wanted a yes man and that is what he got. Why blame the yes man for being a yes man?

It all falls on Prince's shoulders. All of it.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

The yes man still has a reputation to lose and should have professional standards, despite of being a yes man. So he is to blame as well. I don't see what is gained by exclusively blaming Prince - it doesn't strengthen your point.

EmancipationLover said:

The yes man is simply a scapegoat. It's like blaming a cat for being feline, it's pointless. Prince is to blame for this whole thing because this isn't an isolated incident. 15 years at this game, he simply figured out a new way to screw the fams over. This time, people complained. He's probably looking for a new baby he can savage with lawsuits. The man is running out of ridiculous way to make money. How about making your music and stop trying to control the ocean. It can't be done. The sooner he gets out of control freak mode the better.

SupaFunkyOrgangrinderSexy said:

The lotusflow3r problem is not the result of Prince being a control freak imo (otherwise, he would have cared for the payment system to work properly), it's a prime example of Prince losing interest too soon if things don't work his way immediately.

Anyway, I'm not his psychologist. He should just record music and play concerts, that will do for me.

Scott Addison

Clay said:

@ 'me 2.0' Brilliant!

I honestly don't think Prince was out to screw fans over, even if that is what actually happened.

I think Prince either (any combination of the following):

A) Truly believed that the content (T-shirt, 3 albums, streaming videos, handful of MP3s, random limited ticket offers) was worth $77.

B) Lost interest in the project and did not hold himself accountable for fulfilling his end of the bargain.

C) Intended to offer more music but lower-than-expected memberships did not provide enough money or motivation (in Prince terms) to make him want to do follow through.

Se7en said:

I'll go for B.

Se7en said:

Which STILL makes it his fault!

Rational thinking has to prevail Supa.

People who are deemed as fams are saying that Prince is mostly at fault so why is it that you can't give Clay some of the blame as well?

To be fair to Clay I think he did accept part of the blame in the article.

muleFunk said:

Huh?
For faMs he cannot do anything wrong.
He did. So the'd deny it.

But faNs criticize him all the time.

Se7en said:

It doesn't matter.
He is a public persona.
That means he should deal with that and think about consequences of certain actions/decisions/etc.
The trend in events shows that he doesn't plan enough.

FunkyDissCo said:

Thanks but it's still not working for me no matter which browser I use. I just get the floating orb type thing that then disappears and then there's nothing to click on! What is going on?

Can anyone help please?

eightiesmusicculture said:

Put a couple more quarters into it and hit it on the side a few times.

I got what i am paying for, so i was satisfied about the site.

No hard feelings.

catwoman555 said:

I just read the remark on your profile :
WHEN WILL ALL THE NEGATIVE OR FORMER PRINCE FANS STOP WRITING ON THIS SITE.
HOW CAN WE MAKE IT A POSITIVE PRINCE SITE WITH THE UNDERSTANDING OF PRINCE'S INTELLECTUAL WAY OF THINKING (OR BEHAVIOR)

I almost wet myself reading it. How much of an intellectual can you be if you can't even grasp the concept of keeping your customers satisfied ?

My esteem for Prince's intellect vanished together with his web ventures of the last decade.

No wonder that the idea of value for money totally escapes you - you had to stoop down to his intellectual level in order to "understand" him.

Prince : a musical genius but not the brightest bulb in the box.

(I'm sorry if I sound bitter because I am)
[Edited 4/9/10 6:09am]

I can agree with you if I thought that Prince was doing the day to day operations with his business but I don't think that's happening.

His management team is half stepping at best and Prince blindly thinks that he can put something out there and it will work with little maintenance on his part.

The problem IMHO with the internet as a vehicle for releasing music is that what ever is released can easily be turned into a bootleg venture for Sabotage,Eye, or whoever.Prince does not have the clout or the money to get P&D deals for 25 year old music that only 100,000 people at the most want to hear. So he is between the rock and the hard place.

Bottom line is you get what you pay for...

If Prince wants to have a positive relationship he is going to have to pay someone that's going to do the job and he is going to have to produce. On the other hand the Prince base (fan,fam,or hater) will have to BUY the product and not wait on the bootleggers to press and distribute the merchandise.

And that makes these free bootlegs that's popping up even more interesting.

So now it's all the bootlegger's fault?

When will Prince come to terms with the fact that he cannot and will not ever stop bootlegging or filesharing? That he should be POSITIVE about it, not NEGATIVE. Embrace it instead of oppose it. Use it instead of abuse it.

By the sounds of it: NEVER will he do that.

Tremolina said:

How would U feel if U lost millions of dollars from something U worked hard to create all your life? Only for someone to download it for free. U don't earn a profit from it when u should. U would want to fight for it to if U could afford to hire people like Prince has. He has a right to earn from what he created by himself. Whether it music, pictures, videos,concerts..etc

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

Shit argument. If Prince released it, we'd have bought it officially. We may get pissed off with his dumbass websites, but still buy his stuff if he releases it himself. He can't whinge about not earning a profit from stuff he hasn't released. that's stupid.

eightiesmusicculture said:

I really don't get what the problem is, it's all running fine over here. Maybe you could go to www.prince.org and ask for help?

erik319 said:

U have no idea what Prince is up to and what form he is trying to create to make everybody happy. It is not easy. The record industry is at its worse now. Most artist are not making much from record sells anymore. Its hard tring to create a place where an artist can profit and the fans be happy at the same time.

Be patient and stop complaining all the time. u sound very ungrateful and like hater.

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

"Lost millions of dollars"? From something he didn't even officially release? Something that is collecting dust instead of dollars in the vault? Please...

And why do you assume that his fans WOULDN'T pay him handsomely if he would release the vault? That says more about you than about his fans.

Lastly, one thing you and everybody else really needs to understand is that, unless the government closes the internet, file sharing will NEVER stop. No matter how much you may dislike it, no lawsuits, no DRM, no anti-piracy campaign or whatever, can ever stop it. So if Prince hates that so much that he refuses to release his music, he might as well stop making music.

Surely that's not what you want him to do, do you?

erik319 said:

But when others have, he can't?

Oh.

squirrelgrease said:

Surely you mean credit cards, don't you?

xlr8r said:

Ah, you obviously have trouble reading. I said that if he released it, we'd still buy it.

The longer he waits though, the less interest we have.

KCOOLMUZIQ said:

I think in this day an age an artist has to build trust in their fans and get across to them, "Look, I am creating this and want to keep doing so, but please be honest and actually pay for it". Unfortunately there are a lot of dishonest people.

However, with most artists, you have a peak where you can sell music without ever having heard it, based on a guess that it will be great (hence Around The World in a Day sold sooo good after Purple Rain.. or my other favorite Pink Floyd had a top hit with "The Final Cut" after "The Wall" despite little radio play. Once you pass that level and put out a few albums with little mass appeal, you gotta push harder to get people to pay attention. I think Prince now expects everyone to flock to whatever he records in the way they did to his most popular albums, so he gets disappointed when it doesn't go that way. It seems more realistic to just be happy with modest success and appreciate that you have a legion of fans to follow you (some of my favorite 80s artists come to mind.. Howard Jones, Cyndi Lauper.. people who no longer have the top 10 selling power yet they think and act realistically with respect to who will buy their music and how much will really sell. They don't treat it like "I deserve millions for bothering to put out music for you peasants and some day you'll appreciate how genius I am right now"
The music game is different these days than the 80s. The money isn't in the cds. It's in merch at shows, and concert appearances, and dvds which still sell..stuff like that.

Oh wow. The site did go black. I hadn't even noticed. I'll say a few things real quick. All my personal opinions and experiences. To each their own.

1. As I've said repeatedly, I never had any problems with the communication aspect of the website. The developers were obviously in a tight spot, not knowing exactly what was going on at any given time. But all my dealings with them were as smooth as with any other website I've belonged to. Be it free or pay.

2. Did the site look crazy good? Yes. Did I expect more? Yes. And from the very beginning. Plus, we didn't even get a tour. So unless the website goes back up and our memberships are still active, most of us got jacked on that aspect of the site. Was I disappointed that it didn't grow into something better, with more NEW (or old) exclusive content. Absolutely. Do I think it's odd that Prince chose not to have a chatroom or bbs when he knew that those things were important to his paying costumers? Yes. Beyond odd. Almost a purposeful snub, or scolding. Like, "You made this difficult before, so now you can't have it anymore". However, did I know that all of those things were possible going in? Yes. I sure did. And I still happily paid my $77. I got a nice t-shirt, the mp3 files and will always be able to talk about the experience.

3. I'm not really angry. It was a bad business venture, and I won't go so far as to say we got took, but we sure didn't get much joy out of the experience. It was about as polar opposite from the NPGMC as you could get.

4. Why was that? Was it really because Prince was disappointed, or because these people didn't have the slightest clue how to deal with Prince? Because, although the Club sometimes moved slowly, it did grow and change, and it provided us with quite a bit of content over the years of it's existence (even though we had to pay for most of it).

5. Prince is having a crap ass year. I imagine going back into last year even. I have to assume that all of this added to the annoyance of the site and/or the developers.

6. Prince doesn't NEED money. Anybody who thinks so is seriously confused. Even if he has no cash, brother man has enough collateral to get any loan he needs. Or he could just do a quick tour, which would probably be the smarter way to go. I imagine dude has plenty of cash, though. He just lives in Princeland and doesn't always pay attention to the way the world around him is operating. This is nothing new.

7. I liked the Lotusflow3r album, but it's still part of later day Prince. Everything from the NPGMC albums on (post TRC) falls into this category. A small group of people will continue to buy them and talk about them no matter how he releases them. But if he wants to really make his fanbase happy again the only alternative is getting into the vault, remastering all that unreleased material and selling it to us. This is old news and a huge, "no duh!" But at this point it's really all dude has left to offer that's going to make people really wet again.

8. I will pay to join his next website.
[Edited 4/9/10 15:17pm]