It's great that Prince's NPGMC is finally starting to come together and I am optimistic for the future. The whole 7.77/9.99 thing for memebers non-members is great as is the compilation of trax into albums.

Now all that is missing (apart from a flood of vault trax, Roadhouse Garden, whole live concerts from each of Prince's tours etc) is ARTWORK!

It wouldn't be THAT hard to provide artwork for each these CDs so fans could download and print/package themselves.

Okay perhaps/probably Prince doesn't want people burning these trax to CD (was certainly not made easy) hence no artwork. But it would be great to have don't ya fink?

Exactly. Especially since there appears to be completed artwork for projects like

Xpectation and C-Note

I would love to be able to download those, even if they charged 50 cents more
for the downloads LOL.

It would just be nice to prince out a cd inlay and something to give it a bit more
of an authentic 'album' feel.

That's a great idea...and it could be very easily and cheaply implemented. Too bad everyone involved with running the club is a short SillyJack bitch.
[This message was edited Thu Apr 29 21:25:03 2004 by theblueangel]

Of course supplying artwork for download would make it almost impossible for them to spot bootleg cds from legit ones made for your own use...

basically it would make the bootleggers job even easier! The wouldn't even have to mess around designing a fake cover!

metalorange said:

Exellent point. I never thought about that. It doesn't matter to me if they give us art to download. I can make my own. But there is a website that has artwork. I think it's called npgartwork.at or something like that.

metalorange said:

Not if it had NPG logos/copyright information. And I would hope most wrecka stows could tell bootlegged product from official. Nah, I don't think it would hurt them to cough up some artwork with these downloads.

Sorry metalorange...I LOOOOOVE your avatar, but your point about making things easier for bootleggers sounds like the kind of completely asinine logic that comes outta the head of a certain PeePee I know.

Bootleggers have no difficulty making artwork that is (in many people's opinions) FAR superior to anything "official" since the 80s, or at least the early 90s. How could providing a downloadable cover make it any more different in terms of identifying bootlegs than the way things are now? Say a CD doesn't have a cover, but is The Chocolate Invasion...how can "they" tell if it's legit or not? It could be legitimately bought and burned, or it could be a bootleg...there's no way to tell when you're dealing with audio files burned to a CDR as opposed to a factory pressed CD with a barcode, etc.

Not trying to get aggro on you or anything - I just don't understand how artwork has anything to do with making things easier for the bootleggers...you think if bootleggers put out Musicology they wouldn't have spruced up the design a bit? You haven't seen any bootleg covers in the last 10-15 years. (I'm talking hypothetical "you," I'm not singling any particular person out.)

theblueangel said:

I've never personally seen a bootleg whose cover artwork was anything but shabby. Of course it will make their life easier - downloading and printing out is easier and less time consuming than messing around with photoshop for hours!

What I was thinking is that a standard cover could be presented as a legitimate release on, for example, E-bay. Someone on this site already posted a link to a copy of Musicology where the person had clearly added Michael Jackson tracks to fill up the CD-R! And then they try and pass it off to less knowledgeable fans as a collector's item or something.

metalorange said:

Maybe. But where's the point to buy a bootleg for, say, $25.00-30.00 when it's possible to download the original for $7.77 and, let's say, $1.00 for the artwork? Ok, you might add cost for being online and for the CDR itself. But that's nothing compared to a new bootleg.

What's really necessary is maybe some marketing to spread the word that downloads are easily available.

Wolf

wsenges said:

Well that's what I'm saying - some bootleggers are going to pass off cd-rs of 'The Chocolate Invasion' etc as official, legitimate but rare releases for £25 or more to less knowledgeable fans who don't know it's just a $10 download printed out at home and the 'official' artwork would just make it that bit easier to pass it off.