LiveToTell86 said:

unless the whole hour is reserved 4 a particular artist, musical guests usually only get 5 mins on the air..so Y would he waste that time doing a old song when he's trying 2 promote his new product? makes no sense what so ever

Some interesting new and not-so-new info:


...Despite the chatter such moves have sparked, and the unflagging popularity of Prince's live shows, he hasn't had a single in the Top 40 since 1999. "His business savvy has superseded his musical artistry in some ways, and I think he has to get back to the balance," Mr. Powell says...

WoW! I can't believe it's been THAT long since a top 40 hit...Before that, there were so many years of Prince songs hitting # 1 on the charts...I used to love hearing new Prince songs on the radio...

In addition to his Web design duties, Mr. Clay has been serving as Prince's spokesman and sometime negotiator. He helped work out the agreement with "The Tonight Show," whose representatives knew better than to ask Prince to perform classic songs on air, Mr. Clay says. "That does not go over well with him," he adds.

Papaj said:

So the web designer now negotiates for him, too? I'd be interested to find out how that happened. . .

Lotusflow3r.com Web designers Anthony Malzone and Scott Clay attends Prince's party held at Avalon on February 22, 2009 in Hollywood, California.

Copycat said:

These are the guys we've been hearing about?? oh man...

Lotusflow3r.com Web designers Anthony Malzone and Scott Clay attends Prince's party held at Avalon on February 22, 2009 in Hollywood, California.

Maybe "balance" is in the
of the beholder.

Some interesting new and not-so-new info:

http://online.wsj.com/art...90905.html

Prince Aims to Prove He's Still King

For his new album set, the artist has a deal with Target and a gig on Leno

By JOHN JURGENSEN
Prince, a musician so protective of his independence that he operates without a manager or a record label, has recruited some mainstream commercial allies -- Target and "The Tonight Show" -- to help him mount a three-album release on March 29.

At the same time, he's flying solo online with a new Web site that will deliver content directly to fans.
prince should just concentrate on music and 4get bout all that business jazz, its taking away from his creativity,,in 1980's he was hot because all he did was music, not business. now he has to go back to that time or just become a business manager.
The split strategy reflects the 50-year-old star's stepped-up -- and sometimes contradictory -- efforts to burnish his legacy, in a climate where even music legends are struggling to draw attention to album releases.

Prince's triptych offering consists of "LOtUSFLOW3R," a collection of psychedelic rock songs, "MPLSoUND," featuring an electronic sound, and "Elixir," an album by singer Bria Valente, the latest in a string of Prince protégés. The CD bundle, priced at $11.98, will only be available in Target stores, putting Prince in the growing ranks of major artists who have done exclusive deals with big-box retailers, including Guns N' Roses (Best Buy) and Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles (Wal-Mart). In exchange for exclusivity, retailers promote the artist heavily in stores and usually agree not to return unsold copies.

Prince has a hometown connection with Target, which is based in Minneapolis, Prince's home base until a recent move to Los Angeles. Target's team negotiated directly with the singer, a spokeswoman says.

To get the word out, Prince will perform on Jay Leno's show for three consecutive nights starting Wednesday. Don't expect to hear "Let's Go Crazy" -- a representative for the singer says he'll perform only new material, and doesn't plan to sit for an interview with Mr. Leno. (A "Tonight Show" spokeswoman says the final song list has not been discussed.)

Such TV gambits, increasingly common, yield a burst of publicity and days of promotion on the TV host's network. But the payoff for the act can be tough to measure. U2, promoting its new album "No Line on the Horizon," recently did a five-night run with David Letterman. The show's ratings didn't spike, however, and the album sold 484,000 copies in its first week, a tepid showing for one of the world's biggest bands. (A new Coldplay album sold more than 700,000 copies in its first week last year.)

Mainstream partnerships still leave room for the rogue tendencies of an artist who once changed his name to a symbol, says Kevin Powell, author of several books on culture. "Since Prince was starting out at 19 years old, it's always been about having one foot in, one foot out" of big business, he says.

The recent result has been a batch of experimental release strategies. The artist bundled his 2004 album "Musicology" with tickets to his run of nearly 100 shows -- boosting the album's official sales tally, which now stands at two million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In another controversial move, last year he struck a deal with a British newspaper to give away some three million copies of his "Planet Earth" album in copies of the paper, causing his music distributor, Sony, to cancel the album's release in U.K. stores. He has also taken more traditional publicity steps, like a performance at the 2007 Super Bowl.

Despite the chatter such moves have sparked, and the unflagging popularity of Prince's live shows, he hasn't had a single in the Top 40 since 1999. "His business savvy has superseded his musical artistry in some ways, and I think he has to get back to the balance," Mr. Powell says.

The primary channel for Prince's coming output will be his Web site, which goes live Tuesday. Despite being one of the first major music stars to foster Web fan communities, Prince has been largely absent online in recent years. In 2006, he shut down his official site, the five-year-old NPG Music Club, which offered fans access to new music releases and premium tickets for subscription fees of up to $100.

The new site, Lotusflow3r.com, will charge an annual fee of $77 for access. The site has a galactic theme: Users can click on three "virtual planets" for music from the new albums, videos and clues to unlocking other content.

As artists hunt for alternatives to traditional album sales, such subscription sites are proliferating. But holding on to paying subscribers can be tough. Jim Guerinot, who manages Nine Inch Nails, a rock band known for its online initiatives, says that most subscribers are there for the same reason: access to tickets. "Nobody wants to pay for random content -- unless you can get me in the first 20 rows," he says.

The job of satisfying Prince's subscribers will likely fall to the site's creators, Anthony Malzone and Scott Addison Clay. Mr. Clay says premium tickets will be available there, including about 150 seats for the "Tonight Show" and access to three Prince concerts in Los Angeles on March 28.

A vice president of digital marketing at the Cimarron Group, a Hollywood firm that created sites for the films "Twilight" and "The Dark Knight," Mr. Clay was vaulted into Prince's inner circle after being contacted by the singer last September through a mutual colleague.

In addition to his Web design duties, Mr. Clay has been serving as Prince's spokesman and sometime negotiator. He helped work out the agreement with "The Tonight Show," whose representatives knew better than to ask Prince to perform classic songs on air, Mr. Clay says. "That does not go over well with him," he adds.

Genesia said:

I would think that it did on the R & B chart.