i know prince hates record companies but surely its still the best way to get your music out and hopefully get it heard...he has done it a few times since the break with warners but not with his latest album ??....why would a major act like prince make music and videos that noone will hear ???(apart from the hardcore fan)....
maybe thats fine with the odd album like n.e.w.s that is little more than a vanity project but a good rockin album like lotusflower , it just doesnt make any sense ??
. maybe it doesnt bother people who love his music but i am fed up never hearing or seeing ANYTHING from prince on either the radio or the tv.....yet i have to put up with beyonce 10 times a day in my face and ears !!!...i know he is in his 50s but so is bruce springsteen and madonna and THEY still get some exposure in the media.....come on prince.....throw us a feckin bone now and again.....

because he wants to.

blame the media for not playing Prince music.

Oh how I would love beyonce on my puss ten times a day!
[Edited 6/8/09 5:29am]
[Edited 6/8/09 5:29am]

thedance said:

.
prince has taken this i want my masters pish way too far....you cant blame this all on the media....prince has burned a lot of his bridges with his slave shit and acting like a spoiled rock star for most of the last decade...warners AND the media made him a multi millionaire pop star with a worldwide following and he has done his best to wreck it all with the latest $77 website another f you to his long suffering admirers....
....his genius has never been in question but the way he has wrecked his career is just a real shame...

thedance said:

piccolo7 said:

.
how can the media play something that hasnt been released ???....lotusflower is only available on import outside america...i havent seen the videos anywhere, have they been played anywhere ??.....

blackbob said:

I saw 'Chocolate Box' in Jakies Tavern in the Central Station! It went down a treat with the regulars.

you havent' seen the videos to Chocolate Box or Crimson & Clover???

MTV - VH1 won't play these, they are not fancy enough, I guess


Prince just don't fit in any more, so it seems....
[Edited 6/8/09 5:45am]

All artist do.

blackbob said:

Haven't you ever done things because you wanted to that was not meant for the world to see? It's his perrogative.

Dayclear said:

.
.
yes but not all the time...i would want people to hear the music i made if i was in his position.....i still think casual fans WOULD like to see a bit of prince now and again...HE is the reason why that doesnt happen....
.
i am not asking him to "play the game" all the time , it would be great if just now and then he promotes a good single and then an album the way he used to so that people know he is still around....then he can release another jazz album or whatever....just throw us a bone every now and then.....i will buy regardless , he is too good to be forgotten...
.
do you know that he hasnt had a top 40 single in the uk since the holy river hit 19 in early 97....nothing (reissue of 1999 not being counted) has made the charts in over 12 years....that isnt because he doesnt have a big enough fan base here, he does , but he hasnt released a single BEFORE an album in all that time....thats why he aint having hits no more....no proper promotion.....throw us a bone , prince.....
[Edited 6/8/09 6:46am]

blackbob said:

Prince 51 years old (congrats & happy b-day... ), he has been in the business longer and released more music than most artists,

He's older now and has given up on the media, (hasn't he?)... btw... the promotion work must be very tiring, I guess he wants to make new music instead of pushing/ promoting(?)

he's all about selling his music via his LF website now, too bad he ain't doing that better...


---
[Edited 6/8/09 6:55am]
[Edited 6/8/09 6:56am]
[Edited 6/8/09 7:16am]

because he needs unseen videos and unheard music to keep the fans
hanging on his lips, willing to part with their money.

mentioning "the divine" as a song too good or to beautiful to be
releasd only makes people want it more.

it's part vanity projects and part marketing i guess. it's just a
bit sad that he's been doing this for 20+ years and the only time
we've seen a tiny bit of all that material was on Crystal Ball.

the new website would be a great vehicle to get some of that stuff
out there. the kind of stuff that would never end up on a retail
cd anyway. but i guess he doesn't want to part with it, or doesn't
consider it good enough or whatever.

point is, if that's the way he feels, he should just say it and not
have people signing up to his new site in the hopes of releases he
will never permit.

why have a webdesigner say they sifted through 10 album's worth of
unreleased tracks, only to go ahead and release a few old video's
that everyone has already seen?

same old same old.

.
[Edited 12/29/09 8:22am]

I'd imagine it's because he makes music for himself....it's just a bonus that people like it.

blackbob said:

Fighting 4 what u beleive 2 b right is not "wrecking" ur career! He fought 4 the ownership of his mastertapes bcause the record companies owned his works and were able 2 make indefinate amounts of money from it while he recieved pennies. There's nothing wrong with wanting 2 own ur work and much less 2 fight 4 what's right!

Shorty said:

Actually that is closer 2 the truth.

Prince isn't relevant to music anymore. He hasn't been for years.

ernestsewell said:

Ha! that's a funny answer.

Shorty said:

Actually it's true. Radio doesn't give a shit about Prince. And don't give me that "radio isn't what it used to be" bullshit that Prince spouts off. He's bitter because he can't get a song on the radio, not even on the Urban stations half the time. The other half of the time, it's still iffy, but happens. So when someone or something has lost interest in you, it's an easy defense to save face and go on the offense and attack it. "Radio isn't what it used to be". Well Princey...neither are you. Neither is your music. Neither is the pot holes in my home town. Shit changes.

Yes, Radio is corporate at times, but there are college and independent stations that can play whatever they want without the shadow of a corporate overseer. WVCR is a college radio station here whose slogan is "We'll Play Anything". They still aren't playing new Prince stuff. I'm not sure who is requesting "Crimson and Clover" either, opposed to wanting to hear "Batdance" or something.

In the end though, no one cares about Prince music. Not the way they used to, or even should. You know who 90% of those 178,000 people were that bought LotusFlow3r? It wasn't John Q Public. It was US. The hard core fan base. THAT is who he is relevant to. Imagine how it might motivate Prince to really do something mind blowing if he knew just by his name alone, he'd sell a million copies in the first month of a release? When he puts his mind to it, he can create relevant music. "Cream" is a great example of that. But it was also his last #1 hit, and that was 1991. (insert typical "charts don't matter" rant here, cut and pasted from Prince's bibliography).

The artists today that are mimicking or borrowing from Prince's style are NOT borrowing from New Power Soul, or Musicology, or 3121, or Rave Un2, or The Rainbow Children. They're borrowing from one of the few times Prince was truly at the peak of his game musically - the 80's. As an example: Justin Timberlake's last album had a good handful of throwback tunes to old school Prince, and he said as much. I wasn't listening to "Te Amo Corazon". He even took those tunes to the next level of 80's R&B/Funk on the supporting tour. I expected Jam and Lewis to pop out from under the stage at any moment w/ their own keytars to play long. Of course it might have helped that Blackwell and Mike Scott were part of his band, as was music legend Terry Santiel on percussion.

On the flip side, Prince's influence is still in music today, but it's not based on his CURRENT music of the past decade. The stuff he puts out now isn't considered groundbreaking by the media or press or public like stuff even 15 years ago was, which is when he was releasing gems like COME, Gold Experience, Exodus, (and finally The Black Album), and eventually Chaos. Even I have mimicked and/or sampled Prince in my own music, but I didn't have The Rainbow Children as a source of inspiration either.

Even Prince knows his music doesn't matter like it used to. He'll always have my respect for his music, accomplishments, genius, or whatever, as he will everyone's. But I, nor other artists, are blindly following his release every 2 years touting it as "the best yet". Someone said Prince is about selling the BRAND of "Prince". There's some truth to that. It's a PRINCE record, not a great album necessarily. I WISH it were that way, but it's not.

It's fun to have a new Prince album, but I'm beginning to wonder who loses interest faster in his latest project d'jour: Him, or us.

^

Prince never said he wants another success album, he just plays and records what He likes (Take it, or leave it!), that is his artistic freedom, thats what He wanted, come on! Do U really think a guy like Prince who has millions and millions of dollars on the bank, needs or even wants to put out a successfully album? Why the pressure? Just record a album, release it, promote for 2 weeks... maybe tour... and go record another one! Don't make a fuss about it, leave it... he doesn't need a top charting album... he had those!

ernestsewell said:

wow...all that after a 5 word response. and in the end...it doesn't matta!

lotusflower said:

And that's the bullshit rhetoric I'm talking about.

ernestsewell said:

mmm thts interesting !!!! but has he tried all different radio stations tht would play his music ? but in the UK we do hear some prince stuff play on few radio stns....l just dont understand why they dont play any of his stuff compare 2 all others whom are not as good as prince....

ernestsewell said:

as fans sure we would like all of his projects 2 succeed and put him in the main spotlight once more (like a lot did during the musicology tour) and there is a sense of pride when that happens, so once u get a taste of it, his fans tend 2 want him 2 do it over and over again. now u can say no 2 this but when ur pointing out that his music was irrelevant past the 80's then that speaks of personal taste then.

that's when i start my eyes when press releases still reference purple rain or sign o the times in their reviews. now that's some bullshit rhetoric right there

because he is Prince, beeeeyotches...

Is Prince still relevant today? Yes, look at his performances at the O2 and the Superbowl. As far as a live act goes he is still on top form. He's got some exposure recently on TV in the States, look at Jay Leno.

But either he doesn't follow these moments up well / he doesn't seem to be supporting any of these with an album. The Superbowl was blistering hot but no album behind it. When Planet Earth came out he played the shows in London but there was no CD to sell cause it had come out as a free CD in the papers.

If he wanted to get big, having a record company behind him, telling him what to do, would be the answer, but does he want this? Probably not I'd say, unless it was a one off. So I guess, referring to the heading, I'd guess that he's making singles, albums, videos for himself or hardcore fans. There are certain missed opportunities, muddled opportunities I feel: a DVD of the O2 performances for example or a one album Lotusflow3r album (rather than the three CDs)

Maybe he has the hope that there is the chance that he can make a commercial comeback as an artist again on his own but since Emancipation .... - some great songs (and albums IMHO) but no selling staying power.

ernestsewell said:

This is all true, esp. the bolded. Besides, where do they play videos anymore except at 3 am anyway? I don't undertstand why Prince fights the net so much. You Tube is quite ideal for videos, esp if mainstream outlets won't play them. See Grace Jones for proof.

ernestsewell said:

Dreamer would have made the top 50 if it was promoted right and a single