Damn, there's more conspiracy theories here than ever !

Firstly, the simple reason that nothing's been said is that as many of you know, I look after the Prince liaison and legal statements for Housequake and I've been snowed under with my day job - in fact I only found out HQ was closed by email from one of the other mods this morning.

As some have noticed, relations with official sources have been very good of late, however mostly because we've been "playing the game" and trying our best to not offend P. An example of this is how we've had a header that doesn't even mention Prince's name nor shows his photo.

A couple of weeks ago, one member put together some excellent lotusflower "inspired" banners that used a symbol that looked a bit like Prince's but with a flower modification. As they didn't infringe copyright, we took the decision to put these live, along with the official banners we were supplied directly by P.

Roughly 24 hours later, we got a very blunt email saying "this must be removed" from one of his team. We tried to discuss this explaining that it's very difficult to have a fan website that doesn't have a picture of Prince or even show his symbol, however P was adamant that we don't "imply official status".

As someone else noticed on this thread, this was quite frankly the straw that broke the camels back and Aaron came to the belief that this really isn't a fun thing to do any more. Please remember that this is just a hobby for Aaron. It costs him money to run (we can't take donations any more as it changes our legal status and this was used by Prince's legal representation to claim we were a commercial organisation - nice huh ?) and take up a great deal of his time. Would you spend time and money on something you didn't enjoy ?

Is HQ over ? I personally don't know but I've spent a great deal of time playing "united nations" to repair relationships between Prince and all the PFU members (I brokered the "ceasefire" between the PFU and Prince) so I'm not about to give up yet.

It Ain't Over !

ps - thanks for the notes of support for HQ. This isn't about Prince.org vs Housequake, this is purely about fans rights to support an artist in a reasonable manner.

Thanks Gav for clearing that up. Please don't turn this into a HQ v Org thing anyone. I am from HQ but have always been a member here. In fact i was here first. But i chose not to post here and posted over at HQ. Why? Simply because I don't have time to read through posts on two sites and cannot be bothered to keep switching and reading similar topics. I cannot even remember why i chose HQ over org. But it would've been insignificant.

Anyhoo... i digress... let's keep it positive and show the ungrateful purple one we mean to carry on.

Gav said:

Thank you

It Ain't Over !

As someone else noticed on this thread, this was quite frankly the straw that broke the camels back and Aaron came to the belief that this really isn't a fun thing to do any more. Please remember that this is just a hobby for Aaron. It costs him money to run (we can't take donations any more as it changes our legal status and this was used by Prince's legal representation to claim we were a commercial organisation - nice huh ?) and take up a great deal of his time. Would you spend time and money on something you didn't enjoy ?

Is HQ over ? I personally don't know but I've spent a great deal of time playing "united nations" to repair relationships between Prince and all the PFU members (I brokered the "ceasefire" between the PFU and Prince) so I'm not about to give up yet.

It Ain't Over !

ps - thanks for the notes of support for HQ. This isn't about Prince.org vs Housequake, this is purely about fans rights to support an artist in a reasonable manner.

I think we are fools to go out and pay for his products.

I can`t believe the way this man treats his fans..it is disgusting, and I think we are fools to go out and pay for his products.

Actually Prince was more pissed off about the recent Photoshop thread on here than he was about the banner.
[Edited 1/30/09 1:34am]

I know someone who was going to buy the new albums and now will only download it on a file sharer program JUST because of this st.

SEE PRINCE, YOU LOSE MONEY WITH THIS.

strange one. Surely , knowing P as we do Aaron should not even consider using ANY pix of P or his symbol in the way that the org. doesn't. I know that Aaron and HQ have a very strong case for Pix that are in the public domain etc BUT if I were running the site I'd strip it to the very barest essentials , show that the intentions are purely honourable and 'request' what they can provide in terms of pix, banners etc. Are we really saying that P hates the site so much that he won't allow the use of 1 single photo?.
I really feel for Aaron and the team as they have worked so hard at building bridges with P and it has had some decent results over the last 2 years or so. This makes it all the more surprising that horns are being locked again from both sides.
Let's be honest though, who else would be on the verge of doing a major 3 album project and then totally alienate his fans 1 day before the campaign kicks off!.
Let's expect that by Feb 1st we will only have a website and certainly no new music to download.

does he never say anything about the org then??

does he never say anything about the org then??

look the guy "thats prince" has put rules up , hq did not follow come on ..

...play by the rules P has reasons and i don't care what they are just follow them if not don't have the website.

great promotional tools there prince. i've gone from very excited indeed
at the end of december to caring little to nowhere anymore about when or
how you will release your new music.

it's also disturbing to see how rabid people flock to prince's side once
they think he might read their responses on here. or simply because they
believe everything prince says is gospel.

the fact that someone else spends their free time and money on a fansite
is obviously of no value at all to the people who visited it through the
years because as soon as prince sayd "i don't want this" everyone seems
to be willing to stab their friends in the back and shout "i told you so
i told you so. play nice. play the prince way".

puhlease.



and prince was upset over the photoshop thread? great sense of humor there
old man. ok, perhaps that thread was childish humor but for someone who's
50 yrs old and writes the lyrics you insist on writing these days, we had
expected teenage humor to be right up your alley.

guess what, you're a douche man. i should have checked out the minute you
started singing about intelligent design.

Damn, there's more conspiracy theories here than ever !

Firstly, the simple reason that nothing's been said is that as many of you know, I look after the Prince liaison and legal statements for Housequake and I've been snowed under with my day job - in fact I only found out HQ was closed by email from one of the other mods this morning.

As some have noticed, relations with official sources have been very good of late, however mostly because we've been "playing the game" and trying our best to not offend P. An example of this is how we've had a header that doesn't even mention Prince's name nor shows his photo.

A couple of weeks ago, one member put together some excellent lotusflower "inspired" banners that used a symbol that looked a bit like Prince's but with a flower modification. As they didn't infringe copyright, we took the decision to put these live, along with the official banners we were supplied directly by P.

Roughly 24 hours later, we got a very blunt email saying "this must be removed" from one of his team. We tried to discuss this explaining that it's very difficult to have a fan website that doesn't have a picture of Prince or even show his symbol, however P was adamant that we don't "imply official status".

As someone else noticed on this thread, this was quite frankly the straw that broke the camels back and Aaron came to the belief that this really isn't a fun thing to do any more. Please remember that this is just a hobby for Aaron. It costs him money to run (we can't take donations any more as it changes our legal status and this was used by Prince's legal representation to claim we were a commercial organisation - nice huh ?) and take up a great deal of his time. Would you spend time and money on something you didn't enjoy ?

Is HQ over ? I personally don't know but I've spent a great deal of time playing "united nations" to repair relationships between Prince and all the PFU members (I brokered the "ceasefire" between the PFU and Prince) so I'm not about to give up yet.

It Ain't Over !

ps - thanks for the notes of support for HQ. This isn't about Prince.org vs Housequake, this is purely about fans rights to support an artist in a reasonable manner.

LondonStyle said:

Could you please read my post above before making such a short-sighted comment.

IstenSzek said:

look guys how many times do you do a joke until its not funny...he's human if people kept photoshop my image time after time i'd get pis*ed..and i'm not even 50!...LOOK he gave hq rules they broke them game over...more than once...no ones stabbing anyone in the back or taking sides the rules are their because he's Prince and thats what why we are all here.....right...