A few years ago Prince released an album on MP3 only.
This was one of the hugest undertakings in the history of music.

Well he sold his album without contracts, but did it sell as many as previous albums? Will he do it again?

And since he has no label how did he put Musicology out?

are you serious?

check out his website:

www.npgmusicclub.com

that's where he's been releasing his music independently
for quite a while now.

there have been several "download" only albums since the
club began. including a few handsfull of occasional songs
and snippets of live performances.

I'm not sure what album it is you are talking about and I
think you're getting "album" confused with the concept of
the npg music club.

The club was quite a new venture for such a big artist as
Prince at the time of it's conception.

Check out the music club store, which has free access and
requires only a creditcard to purchase all the music you
can find on there.

http://www.npgmusicclub.com/musicology/

just click on the mixing desks to access the catalogue of
available music. some of it has been released on albums
before, like "New Power Soul" or "Crystal Ball" but since
he owns the masters to those albums I guess he figured it
might be an easy way to make them available again without
having to go through the hassle of finding a chanell of
distribution for them.

Lastly, "Musicology" was distributed and promoted by Sony
and Prince still owns the mastertapes to the album. It's
a one album deal so no real contracts as such that keep
him tied to a record company for more albums.

I guess 'The Rainbow Children' was the first full album officially released by Prince as an mp3 release on his club site - but it was later released in stores on CD through some distribution label.

Currently, C-NOTE, Xpectation, The Slaughterhouse and The Chocolate Invasion are all mp3 only albums on his site.

As for how many albums Prince sells as mp3 downloads, no one knows because he doesn't publish the figures.

fluid said:

Was it fuck!