Imago said:

Prince does not think of himself as a retailer. I'm sure the numbers on Npgmusic club were pitiful and he probably lost money on it. He wants someone like Apple to pony up a huge advance for the privilege of making a few pennies on his post WB music. Thats why they are not on his site. At some point I'd gather that he'll get the hint and realize its not going to happen and offer them up on the site.

udo said:

WTF?

They aren't even reprinted on CD. At least he could make them avalaible as downloads, which can be "decent" as long as the right format is used.

Maybe Prince wants to be forgotten?

Tremolina said:

CD-R's are not decent.
They are a last-resort effort in this situation.
He has the world as his market and would want us, you say, to burn his music onto CD-Rs?
There's no need to WTF here.
He should take care of this so that the albums are kept in print.
He doesn't, so he's lazy.

udo said:

WTF because with "we" you claim to be speaking for any fan. Some prefer downloads to CD's.
WTF because it's always better to offer downloads than nothing.


I do agree he should take care of reprinting his CD's. I don't think it has to do with laziness, but with money. It costs him too much to reprint CD's that hardly sell anymore.

This is just economics - in the first few months after a new Prince CD coming out, it probably achieves 80% of the sales it's ever going to. All the fans buy it, it gets all the press it ever will, it has its strongest retail presence.

Two years after a CD comes out, you can sell it at a bargain price, but who's going to buy it at full price? Not enough people to justify the risk of keeping it in print.

In the UK, there have been Prince promotions selling WB 80s albums (including Lovesexy, SOT 2CD) for £3. Less than the price of a large sandwich. I guess if people have waited 20 years to buy an album, it needs a radical price cut to convince them to do so now.

What I really don't get is why Prince doesn't offer the previously released material he owns the masters of for digital download on lotusflow3r.com. I mean, he's already paid for setting up the site and for the webspace, if he just offered high-quality mp3s for, let's say, $5 per album, he could cash in a bit without any effort. Especially if he decided to create a 'download shop' on lotuslow3r.com which one could access without being a member of the site.

EmancipationLover said:

Way too easy and makes way too much sense.

NouveauDance said:

P.S.: Did I really write "lotuslow3r.com"? Must be something Freudian...

Tremolina said:

Calm down.
You interpret. Not me.
The some you refer to need to get wiser.
What when your ipod drops a tad to hard?
Or when the 'doze PC crashes?
Or do you wnat to keep making backups?
Or do you have a NAS runnign just for your music?
(how green is that?)


And we argue here that there is demand!
How much is the production of a CD (including everything) nowadays? $2?
So what is the overhead to produce 10 or 20K or whatever every once in a while, of each title, and to store them and/or directly distribute them?
10 cents per CD? More?
So he doesn't earn that little on them.

udo said:

What if Prince handled his catalog the way Disney does it's animated releases? When they release one of their animated features to DVD (or bluray or whatever) it's only available for a limited time and they make that point clear. Then, a few years down the road, they release it again, with some sort of "tweak" (like extra features, a bonus disc of stuff, whatever), He could do that, like maybe 5 years or whatever from now he could re-release an album like, say, Musicology that is remastered, has a few outtake tracks and maybe a music video or 2. He could control production costs by only making a set number of copies. This could very well be a way of everyone getting what they want : Prince gets to keep his back catalog alive and out of the markdown bins and fans get access to physical copies of (by then) older releases as well as "vault" goodies.



.
[Edited 5/10/09 13:45pm]

Interesting idea.
At least it means that there are opportunities enough.
Yet, they are not seen?

I dont feel it would be foolish at all. Many of his releases can easily be redone and redistrubuted "remastred" as many of them I personally have a hard time litening to anymore for their sound quality. Technology has come along ways since than. And than if added bonuses were added on top of that such as remixes, B sides, and unreleased tracks than it would even sell better.
I find it kinda sad in many ways that just like several other artists that Prince would have to be dead first before we will start seeing alot of these things happen. Why not now?