meow85 said:

Movie Tickets for 3 People = $30.00
Food/Beverages for 3 = $40.00
Total = $70.00

Techdirt as the name for a website, where anyone gets to submit a story.
I'll give this one a miss.

And Londonstyle you're right....fans come and go....
Prince just doesn't want to be commercial anymore and that's his right. Besides he's been there and done it. Sure we'd like him to connect more with the fans but the methodology of the fans just ain't gonna do the trick.

Bohemian67 said:

Because screwing people over and pissing off his supporters has been working so well for him.

meow85 said:

Of course! Haven't you heard? He's going to be the cover story of the June Ebony, with just oodles of surprises and that's going to make it all better.

This article is right on the money. It seems that Prince now sees his fans as he used to see Warner Bros.

Guess what Prince... we are your employer.

squirrelgrease said:

Now you've done it! You just went and told Prince the T R U T H!

Ooooooh! We're gonna get it now, for sure!

I'm scared! Somebody hold me!

This article is right on the money. It seems that Prince now sees his fans as he used to see Warner Bros.

Bohemian67 said:

Because screwing people over and pissing off his supporters has been working so well for him.

This article is right on the money. It seems that Prince now sees his fans as he used to see Warner Bros.

squirrelgrease said:

That's an interesting statement. Alex Hahn noted that since about 1987 or 1988, Prince really began to blame Warner Bros whenever one of this albums failed to really sell that great. He never looked at his own efforts, it was always about the record company not making people buy records. He never took responsibility for making 2nd rate music at certain times, or poorly throwing together a project and trying to hock it. It's a bit of a hypocritical statement if you think about it. He purposely didn't want any promotion for ATWIAD. He wouldn't let WB PR dept do anything when the album was sent to record stores in this month of 1985. Only a couple of years later, he was fetching over them not doing enough. It's like he was playing Simon Says with WB.

It's also why he pulled out of the potentially $100,000,000 deal with WB. He only got huge advances on his next album if the former sold over 5,000,000. He hadn't sold those sort of numbers on any consistent basis for years, not since SOTT. He barely pulled off 5 million with D&P. However, despite the short-comings of that album, WB heavily promoted the album, and it showed in sales. Prince toured, made videos, and was relevant again - for a while. But this "at least 5 million" thing is something Prince knew couldn't pull off. Yet in is infinite wisdom, he suppressed that and pointed the blame squarely on WB.

Even though part of his separation agreement was that he'd not talk ill of WB anymore, he did it in a sideways manner. When Oprah brought up the $100,000,000 deal, Prince said it was the terms of that deal that were undesirable.

Having said all that, Prince probably puts the blame squarely on the fan base (all 300,000 of them) for not making his online ventures, or albums, huge successes. He may very well not care about sales anymore, but he does care about getting paid. When he told Tavis Smiley "Target has taken care of me, and Bria is taken care of," it was clear that his one-off deals with random distribution arms is purely rooted in a lump sum of money up front, and possible residual royalties after the fact. Prince's biggest employer is his need for greed.

jdcxc said:

Ah, I got it. You actually paid to get in,

People still do that?

meow85 said:

Maybe Prince himself is looking for a new fan base. The fans that he has, loved him when he fresh on the scene, contraversial,prancing around in few clothes, where no one knew if he was gay or straight etc etc.

Prince has changed big time. He's gone from one genre to the next I think, probably hoping to rope in different kinds of fans. Jazz lovers, funk & rap more "black music" lovers. I don't know about Prince's finances but if he can afford to do that and risk losing his current fan base, he probably wouldn't mind recruiting new fans of different calibre.

Sure he'll lose some fans along the way but if you ask me, if someone is not into the commercial side of things any more and has enough money to do what he wants nothing is going to stop him. He'll keep making the music he likes. His live shows will always pull in the people. Musicians will always jump at the opportunity to work with him & if he's earning enough without having to make platinum album sales, what else does he need? he doesn't want to do a U2 or similar website, he's not into commercialism.

All the fans complaining Prince is such a control freak don't realise that the more you try and control him, the less he'll give you what you want. He's the boss, it's not the other way around. He's not a puppet.
[Edited 4/7/10 8:13am]

meow85 said:

Sorry, none of my business to interrupt this discussion between you two.

First of all, I don't know how the rest of the world operates but here in Finland, there is always someone at the door with this device that checks the bar code of your purchased movie ticket. It is impossible to get in without a ticket. In other words, if you don't have a ticket the guy/lady won't let you in. Simple as that. Where in the civilized world can you just walk in without a ticket??

As for the $70, you don't need food/beverages in order to go to the movies. You could easily spend $60 for two movie shows instead, without the beverages that is. Incidentally, most of the films are rubbish anyway, as Sherlock Holmes and Avatar (ok, just my opinion!) so you get two rubbish films for the price of a Lotusflower membership.
As screenwriter William Goldman said "Nobody knows anything in movie business." Well, they still don't. But you would expect Prince and a few others know what they could offer their fans who have paid.

Now, I never subscribed to LF as I knew I would not benefit from it. I live in Europe and Finland, there is no way I'm going to fly to MPLS or anywhere else just to see a show or two. Free music online occasionally? Not that important. I prefer listening to music the old fashioned way from my records through my stereo or my Windows Media Player, not sitting on my computer chair and watch some dodgy quality of a video on my screen. I can also live without some T-shirt, I already have one shirt which I bought at his concert in Stockholm 1993.

And finally, the LF album itself? I actually went to Paris last April on holiday and bought it there for 19.95 euros! That's right, the 3-cd version. There was a huge display and a stack of albums just waiting to get picked up. Nobody seemed to talk about it at the time, I just happened to know that France was probably the only place where I could get a legitimate copy in Europe at the time. No, I didn't go to France just to get my hands on the album.

His business ventures have been questionable over the years. However, the mail order deal was alright though, the one they had around 1998. I could place an order on the internet and get a confirmation by e-mail. I could pay by credit card or money transfer through my bank.
Now, I didn't have a credit card at the time so the best way was to go the bank. I had to pay a service fee for the bank but it didn't matter since I was about to get something that wasn't available in Finland at the time (3-cd New Power Pak, "Warning: Funk Advisory"-baseball cap and "New Power Soul"-baseball cap)

Also, as I was about to collect my delivery I actually had to pay a custom fee as well.
But all this wasn't Prince's fault, of course. Everything costs money, there is always someone who wants a share of what you do.

By the way, the package was delivered fairly quickly, just weeks after placing the order. That's why I'm still amazed that certain people were disappointed with the service. I live in Finland and some fans in the US are still allegedly waiting to get their Crystal Balls or whatever, am I right?
[Edited 4/7/10 9:14am]

[Edited 4/7/10 9:16am]
[Edited 4/7/10 9:16am]

Im not buying into another thing of Prince's and have not since NPGMC was out...I saw the price and waited until someone else got it and told me what it was like. Looks like there was nothing to spend that much on I needed right away.

I actually think that Prince does far more personal promotion of his albums now then he did in the 80's

To me, Prince is promoting his stuff--- her performed 3 nights on Leno, once on Ellen, and debuted his stuff on radio 103 to name a few things.

TheVoid said:

Bullcrap. Go ahead, prove it, I dare ya.

TheVoid said:

Dude, that's nonsense. Promotion = touring for months, well-timed interviews, etc. Oh, and ACTUALLY PLAYING YOUR NEW SHIT LIVE.

I hear ya Bart but we all know P goes against the grain on the traditional means of promotion and album releases. We cannot hold P to the same standards as say The Rolling Stones. He's in a class by himself, like Madonna, I would think.

jdcxc said:

Ah, I got it. You actually paid to get in,

People still do that?

meow85 said:

Yeah, my sneak in days are over. Plus, bad example for the nephews. By the way, this texting during the movie BS is worse than any Lotus website controversy.

jdcxc said:

We are in agreement there. I'm not a violent person by any means, but next time someone near me tries texting while I'm at a movie I'll stab them in the neck.