How much would you pay for a new Prince album? If he does a Radiohead, would you pay or would you dupe him? And no, you wouldn't know beforehand if you'll like the album or not. There will be no samples, no singles. Just the album, and pay what you like. How much?

Had he done that before we had to go all PFU on him, I'd have paid him the current retail value of CD. I know this for a fact because with the exceptions of Musicology and 3121, that's how I bought all of his music since The Batman Sountrack anyway! I remember almost fainting in Harmony House when I saw The Rainbow Children, it was such a surprise to me! I also remember how I felt after I bought and heard it but that's another discussion.

Now that we do have all of this still yet-to-be-resolved PFU business and he was to try that, I wouldn't pay him one red cent!!!

$31.21 (altho his albums r priceless 2 me)

I'd pay 12,95 $ for Planet Earth

I pay the retail price of...say.. $9.99 -to- $16.99
(hopfuly get it on sale )

Funkyalien said:

What is a Radiohead?

mplsmike said:

Radiohead was a band that let people pay whatever they wanted for their new cd.

ToraToraDreams said:

Wow!...I give $5 -to- 10 dollars's up no problem

save what i can

Funkyalien said:

that's how life was 20 years ago

Flowerz said:

You got that right.

Flowerz said:

You mean that's how life's been for the last 20 years!

I'd pay up 2 17.49.

It depends. Which Radiohead would he do & would he do it with his Camille voice?

Whatever I had in my back pocket at the time of its release.
...which ususally isn't more than $5 or $10.

An even $20.00

I would download it for free.

If an artist is willing to give an album away for free, then why not take it? Radiohead's 'pay-what-you-want' trick is similar to Prince's 'giving-the-CD-away-at-concerts' trick. These days it's not about how much money the album can make you, but how many bums-on-seats will it get you at your next concert. With filesharing as rife as it is these days and the amount of mass-produced pop that's out there, touring is where the real money is (and so it should be IMO). An album is nothing more than a promotional tool for your live show. Prince made an absolute KILLING with his recent Musicology and Earth tour shows, and much of this success came from the publicity by giving the CDs away.

I will gladly pay whatever Prince deems necessary for his next album. However should he decide to follow Radiohead's idea, I won't pay a cent for it.

I'd probably slide him a tenski.

toejam said:

Actually, Radiohead made more on In Rainbows than they did on Hail to the Thief. The reason why they did the "choose your own price" was because they were free from their record contract. There were no royalties involved (which usually top at about $2 per album), and no distributing or anything since it was a download, so it was pure profit. They speculate that the average amount spent on the download was between $5 and $8. So, it gives the illusion that they're giving to their fans (and they are, in a sense), but really, they're making more off of the concept than they would any other way.

As for an album being a promotion for a tour, you have that backwards. Tours are used by musicians to promote albums. People go to shows of their favorite artist, most of the songs are from the new album. People like the songs and buy the album, or, in Prince's case, he wasn't "giving away" the albums as it seemed. The price of the album was added onto the vender's ticket prices. Everybody who went to those shows paid for the album, whether they wanted the album or not, which is a big reason why the Musicology album sales went through the roof. Billboard actually changed their policy on album sales because of this. Here's an article on it.

To answer the question, I'd do the same as I did for the Radiohead album. I paid nothing for the download so that I could hear it for free before the hard copy was released and paid for the discbox in full.

are u talking downloads?- none

i want my music from wrecka stows - damn it


and then id pay the going retail price

I've bought Prince merchandise for a lot of money, so I guess I would have to say anything.

.
[Edited 1/20/08 4:25am]

timorousme said:

Maybe it worked like that in the past, but certainly not like that for Prince anymore. How many songs did he do from Musicology on the tour? Maybe 2 if you were lucky.



That's exactly my point . The album was used as a promotional tool for the tour, not the other way around. There's no way Musicology would have done so well on the charts had it not been for the tour. The overwhelming majority of people who bought those tickets, bought them with the sole intention of seeing Prince live. Getting the CD was just a nice little way to encourage the casual fans, who may be sitting on the fence, to come along, thus ensuring more profit from the tour.

toejam said:

toejam said:

Please, somebody else tell me that I'm not crazy and that they're getting a giant mixed message from this as well. (I couldn't find an emoticon that fit my facial expression, so I just went with that).
[Edited 1/20/08 4:31am]

^Huh?

My point is simple. Prince makes more money from his tours than his album sales, so he uses the albums to promote the tour.

But it was the tour that promoted the album. You said it yourself "There's no way Musicology would have done so well on the charts had it not been for the tour." and "The overwhelming majority of people who bought those tickets bought them for the sole intention of seeing Prince live." That's the result of a tour promoting an album.

^Like I said, giving away the CD was a marketing tool to get people in the stadiums!! Sure, "technically" the CD sale was included in the ticket price, but we all know that was bollocks - It was first and foremonst a marketing tool to get people to go to the show - as that's where the real money was made (some $90million worth from memory). Keeping the album in the charts only encouraged more people want to go to the show.
[Edited 1/20/08 5:34am]

How does giving away a $15 CD get people to go to an $85 show?

You mean to tell me that say Prince were to start touring right now, shows wouldn't sell out in minutes without an album behind it? No, as I explained, it's the songs played at the show that get people into the songs on the album, thus get people to buy the album. In Prince's case, for Musicology and Planet Earth (I know I'm going to get stalked and killed by somebody for saying this), the songs on the album for the most part sucked, so he had to piggyback them into the tickets and give them to the people, so that was his scheme to promote the album and get sales up because he knew he couldn't do it with the albums alone.

SexyBeautifulOne said:

And yet good point too

timorousme said:

Well, I guess this is a chicken-or-the-egg situation and it's definately a fine line between the two points. But c'mon... Do you really think that many people wouldn't have paid the extra $15 anyway? Of course they would have. Look at the Earth tour now... Prince gave the CD away for free in newspapers and at the concerts - that wasn't built into the ticket price. Again, how many songs from the album were played at the concert? Maybe 1 or 2 if you were lucky. For the last time... the albums were used to promote the tour!!

toejam said:

I was thinking, sure the concept of album promotion has gone for a toss, sure, bums on seats are what makes money. But prince has seen the flip side, too, when albums promoted tours and not the other way around. If he gets too ill or too old or too tired to tour, and just went back relying on his album releases (like the beatles did in an earlier era, they stopped touring and poked their keisters in the studio), what would his strategy be? Would he still stick to fringe distribution systems, or go back to a major?