How does this pan out for Prince finacially? (and Target?) Does he still make money off of it?

Do a search above. There are LOTS of threads around here discussing this subject.

BTW, Prince ALWAYS gets paid. WB or NPG or Target or Whoever.

prince alreay got paid... before it hit shelves.


i think

There's a LotusFlower forum, and sticky. It's best to go there.

OK, now I read the stick. My next ? is how much did Target pay Prince? I was gonna say why didn't P promote it but I guess he did. Was this a good deal for Target? Will P have problems doing this kind of venture again?

BEAUGARDE said:

The terms of the deal aren't fully known, or at least I personally have never heard of them. However, here's some conjecture on my part.

Prince probably got half of the sales price, at least. He noted Target as acting like a record company with the deal. That's a fair comparison because they have a lot of exclusive CD deals, especially at the holidays, and throughout the year (Pearl Jam, Tina Turner, Lionel Richie, etc etc etc). So, with that said, they probably covered manufacturing of the CD, and of course are the sole distribution. (That's a cheap thing to get done too, because there are companies online that do the LotusFlow3r sort of digipack/packaging for dirt cheap, especially in bulk.)

Prince did tape a commercial for Target, which was shown a lot on TV, and in the stores themselves. The merchandising displays well promoted the existence of the album too.

It probably was a good deal to some extent because they have exclusive rights to the album in the US, and probably will for a long time (it's not even on iTunes, Rhapsody, Napster, and the like). It'd be a bad deal if they can't move the product. There's always about 20 or so on the shelves at my local Target. I don't know about the other Targets in my area. Target even had the album on sale on Black Friday for $6 trying to move product.

Prince, as usual, lost interest in the project, producing no new videos, and making no real appearances until the end of the year, when he pulled out random songs to throw into a set list somewhere. There was the "Dance 4 Me" remix that was advertised by the remixer's production company, not Prince, and no one ever mentioned it again, although that remix is on iTunes.

Prince can try to strike a deal with whoever he wants to. His history w/ Target may or may not be a factor in that. Will the next company, like Best Buy, Walmart or Record Town, look at his Target sales and think the better of it? Or will they be starstruck by Prince, and say "Okay cool, whatever. Let's do it?" We'll see when the next record drops. He might just go independent totally again like he did with recent albums, sending it out to whatever retail outlet. He's not really repeated himself in this indie stuff. Sony a couple of times, EMI once, Arista once, Target once. Of course it's not the first time he's done one off deal either. "The Most Beautiful Girl In The World" was on Bellmark, not Warner Bros, as a single/maxi-single.

So who knows. Time will tell. But time is a trick. Does that make the telling a falsehood? (/sarcasm)

Now I'm starting to think P may have held back some with the product he sold Target

BEAUGARDE said:

Like quality?