Hopefully with only days to go now, surely 1 [albeit great] Interview with a newspaper is not the only pre-launch publicity heading our way. I know that all Purpel headz are fully clued in BUT what about the wider global community?.
Anyone close to the action care to enlighten us [Graycap, Gio' where are you!]

Will the wider community even care? If Musicology and Planet Earth weren't forced on people at concerts or in newspaper give aways, they'd have sold next to nothing. Planet Earth would have done very small numbers in the UK without the freebies.

I'm not hating and I'm really hyped for the new stuff but can't see that the general public really care. How many did Planet Earth or 3121 sell stateside? According to this, 3121 sold about 80,000 in the UK http://www.telegraph.co.u...ns....html.

Fell for it too huh?

"Only days to go?"

Come on now...have you seen a specific release date? Are you new to following Prince? Only days to go before what? "January" changes to "February" on lotusflow3.com? The site disappears entirely?

There's no point in having any faith in what the man says or does about new releases until you can pick the item up in the store or get it in the mail. Many of us are still waiting for Roadhouse Garden, Crystal Ball 2, or 4 named & never delivered albums we were supposed to get through the NPG Music Club.

You cannot hype something until it exists.

toots said:

For what?

TheEnglishGent said:

Thinking prince will do something when he dont

viewaskew said:

EXACTLY what I was maeaning by my post you jsut explained it in more detail.
[Edited 1/21/09 5:33am]

toots said:

Prince is the king of contradiction.

toots said:

Ah I see. Thought you were replying to my post.

My guess is Prince does a live web concert on Saturday night at 8pm from his house in LA to launch the new site and that $77 dollars in the membership fee that includes access to downloads to the 3 new cds. Wishful thinking anyway...

3121 SOLD OVER 500,000 Copies in The USA and 1.1 Million World Wide!

Get the Facts Straight!

You missed the publicity hype.

Prince was shown in the audience at a recent Lakers game.

That was it.

Maybe Prince is putting the finishing touches to his master plan? , he's not using a record company so maybe he updating his NPGMC format or working with online stores like Amazon...or a newspaper to get the physical CD's out?

Music industry scrambles for cash

By Ian Youngs
Music reporter, BBC News, in Cannes http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/h...837605.stm


The music business has finally come to terms with file-sharing, according to executives at the Midem conference in Cannes. But now they have a different problem.

Until recently, the music industry was in a blind panic about illegal peer-to-peer downloading.

Millions upon millions of fans are spreading music around the world, and the people who made and own it don't see a dime.

A vast 95% of all digital music comes from unlicensed sources, according to a recent estimate from the global trade body the IFPI.

But the blind panic now seems to have stopped.

The Recording Industry Association of America, which represents US labels, has traditionally been the most aggressive in chasing file-sharers.

But it has just announced that it will no longer sue suspected offenders.

Digital rights management (DRM) - the lock placed on a track to attempt to stop you from sharing it - was once the central tool in the fight against "piracy".

But now Apple is removing DRM from iTunes, the leading download store, marking a resounding defeat in that particular battle.

'Hottest currency'

The industry seems to have reached a conclusion that the strategies for fighting file-sharing will not work.

It is now a fact of life.

But now there is a new panic.

It's interesting to be in a business where there's no issue about creating demand for your product. The issue is finding a way to get paid for it

Howie Singer, Warner Music

If we are not going to stop file-sharing, and with sales falling, the dilemma now goes "how do we make money now?"

That is the question dominating Midem, the main annual industry talking shop.

Howie Singer from Warner Music said his company wanted to see "compensation and not simply control".

"It's interesting to be in a business where there's no issue about creating demand for your product," he said. "The issue is finding a way to get paid for it."
That view was echoed by Marcel Engh from Sony Music Europe. "The good thing is we're sitting on the hottest currency in the digital age - music," he said.

"Lots of the web 2.0 destinations are driven by music - MySpace, YouTube, there are tons of those destinations. The bad news is it's damn hard to make money."

'Exceedingly challenged'

Former EMI boss Eric Nicoli said revenue needed to be generated in different ways.

"Any company that relies on music sales will be exceedingly challenged," he said.

A growing school of thought says that if you can't beat them, join them.

If file-sharing is not going to go away, then some leading figures favour finding a way of getting paid for it.

Feargal Sharkey, head of the pan-industry body UK Music, said 80% of file-sharers would be prepared to pay for a legitimate peer-to-peer service.

"We as an industry have to seize upon that agenda," he said.


Kanye West makes money from his prolific blogging activities

"To paraphrase Dr Strangelove - 2009 should be the year the music industry learns to stop worrying and love the bomb."

The industry's joint goal, he said, was to "unlock the true potential of digital music and give music fans what they want, legitimately".

Author and self-styled "media futurist" Gerd Leonhard said fighting file-sharing had been fruitless, and it was time to grant permission and collect royalties.

As well as asking fans to pay, Mr Leonhard suggested money could come from advertising, sponsorship, subsidies from internet service providers or portable player manufacturers.

There are high hopes for a raft of expected new legal services from internet service providers (ISPs), which would see an all-you-can-eat music service offered as part of a broadband, TV and phone package.

A couple have launched in Europe and BSkyB is expected to be the first to launch in the UK.

Geoff Taylor, head of the BPI, which represents UK labels, said: "The record labels are in discussions with a number of major UK ISPs about licensed deals and I firmly believe that's the future."

Other solutions, like advertising, are not that revolutionary.

But a number of people plan to make advertising more sophisticated, using technology to help sell individuals stuff they are more likely to actually want.

'New currency'

And if the music itself will not be the main money-spinner, then more emphasis is being placed on selling music-related products.

The head of the new MySpace Music download service, Courtney Holt, said as well as being a music store, his site would sell ringtones, concert tickets and merchandise.


Lil Wayne's track Lollipop was the most legally downloaded single last year

It would also stage events and exclusive concerts that could be sponsored, packaged up and sold in ways that might be attractive to fans, he said.

Some artists have been taking matters into their own hands, reaching out to fans with new ideas to get paid.

Rock band Marillion have long asked their fans to directly fund their albums. But they also put their last one onto peer-to-peer networks, with a piece of software that asked anyone downloading it to give their details so they could offer them T-shirts and tour tickets.

Keyboard player Mark Kelly said e-mail addresses were "the new currency".

Some singers offer fans an annual subscription fee, in return for which they get live and rare songs. Josh Rouse, for example, charges $30 (£20.50) a year and has so far sent out more than 100 songs in nine months.

Kanye West, meanwhile, makes money from his prolific blogging activities, the conference heard, with his website turning a profit thanks to advertising and sponsorship.
The industry is still in the turmoil, and no-one knows how the future will look. But some are not convinced that the answers have yet been found.

"Let's face up to it. We're in a crisis, which is not getting better," said former Pink Floyd and Marc Bolan manager Peter Jenner. "The last 10 years have consistently got worse.

"The reality is that people are downloading for free. We've got to compete with free. I can't see that anything that's going on at the moment with the record business is going to solve what's happening."

Nothinbutjoy said:

DetroitMusic said:

I'm the only one that mentioned 3121 and I asked a question. Didn't present any facts, other than a link to an article about UK sales.

So thank you for answering my question, even if you didn't read my post properly!

he would rather play kid games with everyone and make them wonder when he will grace us with his new albums... not only is his lyrics starting to sound like high school, his games are too.

TheEnglishGent said:

Umm....I was

everyone is asuming once the site opens the albums will be there.

31/01/09 there's gonna b a riot goin' on in here.

mushmackalenta said:

But what if the CD's don't drop on 1/31/09? Will there be a "mutiny" up in here over that?
[Edited 1/21/09 11:32am]

They're not going to drop on 1/31/09 for sure
[Edited 1/21/09 11:53am]

I expect the site to launch in January - maybe 1 or 2 tracks available for purchase or something, but the album(s) will not be available then. It makes no sense.

i'm already tired of it..



fading away as the days go by
[Edited 1/21/09 12:05pm]

viewaskew said:

Abso. Although, that never really stopped Prince himself from doing it.

toots said:

So what was I guilty of falling for? I was just saying there's no point promoting because nobody cares outside of the purple community.
[Edited 1/21/09 12:25pm]

I guarantee you there will be plenty of publicity.
Why should he publicize it right now? once he has the deal in place with a certain mass retailer (details soon), they will be the ones that will use the marketing dollars to help promote this project.

TheEnglishGent said:

Well, people outside the diehards care. Not as much, and not as many, but people DO care :p

TheEnglishGent said:

That's not true. There are plenty of Prince fans out there who may not be as gung-ho about Prince the way that we are to come to a fansite about Prince that would love to hear or know what Prince is doing. That's why he needs to promote his stuff outside of the Purple Community.

To build interest in a new album, you have to release a song that instantly catches the attention of everyone. People here like to make up every excuse in the world for why Prince's new singles never have an impact (I used to do the same thing), but the likely truth is that he isn't able to write a hook that the people like.

Without that hot new song, there isn't much he can do.

purplecam said:

I agree, there are plenty of artists who I like that I don't follow to closely and often only here about new releases first normally on here.

PurpleKnight said:

Eh, you're begging the question. You need the hook, but you also need the massive and expensive hype machine behind you. There are hundreds of thousands of amazing artists and songs out there who've never even touched the Billboard Top 100 or even 500.

Prince *has* written plenty of great hooks in the last few years, but that doesn't mean anyone's even hearing his work.

I'm not saying that if people were hearing it they'd jump on board, either. I'm simply stating the logic of 'he isn't able to write a hook that people like' is a fallacy.