robinhood said:

interesting to say the least, he pioneered independent music release online, shows us the way, then abandons it because he can't figure out why lotusflow3r didn't work the way he'd hoped.

He never pioneered releasing music online. He wasn't the first, nor last, to do it. He's showed us over and over that he doesn't follow through, and doesn't fulfill his promises. His fans have, in turn, showed him that they won't be taken advantage of anymore. That is why he thinks the internet is "over".

The internet isn't his "yes man" anymore. Any dude that's went through 36 guitar techs in his 32 year career isn't going to do anything for a long period of time, including but not limited to his business ventures.

BartVanHemelen said:

robinhood said:

had a feeling i might've been wrong about that.

guess its because he was the only one i knew of.

who was it that pioneered independent music release online?

AFAIK George Michael did it long before him.

Prince did what in 1997: take orders for a CD? Amazon was already doing that, and unlike Prince didn't write down orders on Post-It notes which were then put on a wall, and then take so long to get anything out that thousands of orders were invalid (because the credit cards were), plus the discs were already in stores before they started sending out product.

Oh, and they had the nerve to crow about sending out the discs: some dig at all the criticism, saying that disbelievers would "eat their words on toast". Of course, those words appeared on a website called "Love 4 One Another". Hipocrisy has always been a feature, not a bug.

The next thing he did was the special edition of Rave, IIRC, which was again just him taking orders and sending out product. Only by the first version of NPGMC (2001) he started "selling" songs online, and that wa sagain a massive failure.

Might be that he launched "The Work" via Napster before that, only to bitch about Napster six months later.

The next thing were the DRM-protected WMAs.

I don't see anything that comes close to pioneering in any of that.

Well, if nothing else, he certainly forsaw the potential of the internet early in the game. The Beautiful Experience "film" predicted the potential for direct artist/fan interaction via the internet long before anyone was putting it in practice.

Of course that "prediction" was a bit naive considering how things eventually evolved.

Prince has an extremely short attention span.

He doesn't stick with any particular idea 4 more than a few short moments.

Plain and simple. He rarely if ever lets an idea fully develope because he moves on 2 something else before u can even seen any results.

[Edited 6/29/10 8:02am]

ernestsewell said:

robinhood said:

interesting to say the least, he pioneered independent music release online, shows us the way, then abandons it because he can't figure out why lotusflow3r didn't work the way he'd hoped.

He never pioneered releasing music online. He wasn't the first, nor last, to do it. He's showed us over and over that he doesn't follow through, and doesn't fulfill his promises. His fans have, in turn, showed him that they won't be taken advantage of anymore. That is why he thinks the internet is "over".

The internet isn't his "yes man" anymore. Any dude that's went through 36 guitar techs in his 32 year career isn't going to do anything for a long period of time, including but not limited to his business ventures.

Correct. Public Enemy, Ani DiFranco & David Bowie were first artists to do the independent online thing.

[Edited 6/29/10 8:04am]

Graycap23 said:

BartVanHemelen said:

....saying that disbelievers would "eat their words on toast".....

Naysayers

Cuz the internet is some bullshit that can't be controlled-no matter how he tries to he can't and that's what makes it very scary.

unique said:

i think he got ripped off selling something on ebay

BartVanHemelen said:

robinhood said:

had a feeling i might've been wrong about that.

guess its because he was the only one i knew of.

who was it that pioneered independent music release online?

AFAIK George Michael did it long before him.

ok. thanks. is it true that Public Enemy, Ani DiFranco and David Bowie did it before Prince too?

robinhood said:

BartVanHemelen said:

AFAIK George Michael did it long before him.

ok. thanks. is it true that Public Enemy, Ani DiFranco and David Bowie did it before Prince too?

public enemy and george michael did it long after prince

unique said:

robinhood said:

ok. thanks. is it true that Public Enemy, Ani DiFranco and David Bowie did it before Prince too?

public enemy and george michael did it long after prince

ok, so was Prince the 1st or not?

ernestsewell said:

Although there were problems with NPGMC 2001, I have to give some credit to the people running the site. By the 3rd month, maybe 4th, they listened to their customers.

In the beginning it was the unholy alliance of QuickTime (a beta version which expired on the day it went live) + Java: slow, no easy way to extract the audio from the Ahdio, etc. Also, they didn't disclose that Paypal was the only way to subscribe until the day before or so.

They started offering HI and LO versions of the audio tracks.

Not sure if that was still during the first version. After a couple of months the bitching had become so loud that the original firm were kicked out and another took over, and they set up a fairly simple website.

I forget if they did that with the video, but I would imagine not.

Most videos were re-processed several times. Let's not forget the videos that were lame VHS-rips in B/W and at least oen released audio tarck that was ripped from a cassette-single (even though it was available on CD). Most audio files were replaced several times, and most of the MP3s were made using lousy codecs instead of LAME.

The real hiccup was the October edition, and them just releasing a preview of The Rainbow Children, which would later be released, thereby leaving that month void of any Ahdio show, or other "new" tracks.

They breached their contract virtually every month, for instance when they delivered the same content in audio and video.

I think mistakes are part of the game, Bart. Nothing is ever perfect from the get go.

They were still fucking up after a year.

Prince is a business, but he's a big ol' artist first.

That's why he should not be involved.

It is correct to say that people like Amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and Borders (among others) were already selling media online. Prince did not pioneer the idea. However, he might have had a generous hand in making it more of a "normal" thing for artists to do.

Plenty of artists had been doing that for years. Yes, it wasn't on the internet, it was via ads in magazines etc, but alt.rock bands were doing that all through the 1980s. Punk brought this on:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...cord_label

Prince used to say he loved the internet because of the interaction with fans.

Which was a lie. He never interacted, and simply told his minions to post his messages to the unwashed masses on his website.

unique said:

robinhood said:

ok. thanks. is it true that Public Enemy, Ani DiFranco and David Bowie did it before Prince too?

public enemy and george michael did it long after prince

I'm pretty sure GM was releasing music online via his website in 1996 or thereabouts.

UPDATE

Found this on amp from March 1998:

http://groups.google.com/...a8ddac748/

Well how about this 4 progress. Please 4give me 4 mentioning another artist
here, but what the hell. 2 words: George Michael. He went through almost
the same thing U did. He got his little deal 2gether now. He even has
website 2 BUY HIS MUSIC AND ASSOCIATE ARTISTS ONLINE. Please take the hint.
Go 2 www.aegean.net or com yourself and check it out. I supported it and
bought a few singles at $1.50 each. Well U R the master of your vault, U
have webspace now....... so what's the deal?

See also several entries here: http://www.yogworld.com/n...lash97.htm

November 10, 1997

George is once again leading the pack on the Internet. This time he is the first artist to have his fan club (Members Online) exclusively on the web, according to this week's DotMusic.

Members Online will begin on November 12th; it will include demos, unreleased recordings and links to George Michael fan-created websites.

Damn, finding info on what was happening online in 1997 is HARD. Like someone erased all traces.

[Edited 6/30/10 8:42am]

BartVanHemelen said:

Prince used to say he loved the internet because of the interaction with fans.

Which was a lie. He never interacted, and simply told his minions to post his messages to the unwashed masses on his website.

Actually he did interact. He often jumped in a chat room in the very late 90's and chatted with fans regularly. Unregulated, and just off the cuff. I remember a friend of mine, Connie, got the nickname "Mini Mayte" from Prince, because she does look like a younger Mayte (although I never asked her nationality). He did a lot of Q&A from time to time on the L4OA site. Of course he started to back off after a while, but early on the The Dawn and Love 4 One Another days, he was there. Wasn't there also a Paisley Park chat room on AOL? I forget if that was a Prince thing or not. I think not, but who knows.

The HI and LO issue was NPGMC 2001, the first year. In fact, it was you (among others), on alt.music.prince that brought up the fact that there were only one bitrate of files being released. The first few months were all one bitrate, and it wasn't a popular thing among the fans. The club started in February, but by April or May, the HI and LO versions of the MP3s were being put out. 128k and 256k were the options I think. I have all the NPGMC files (although I wasn't a member), that I downloaded directly from the site before year 1 ended.

Breach of contract is left to interpretation to some extent. To say that the Ahdio shows were too short and never equaled an hour is the other side of the coin's argument when people say the songs on Emancipation were boring because he stretched them just to make each disk an hour. Do people want straight-ahead content, or do they want filler? October was the biggest breach, because it was The Rainbow Children, and nothing else, which ended up being released. It should have been a streaming file to preview the album, aside from the month's normal released material.

In the end, it was still a huge amount of material for $100, including (at least) the One Nite Alone CD (which I've still yet to acquire otherwise - although my search efforts aren't very motivated). For those fans who got deals on concert tickets, and attended the soundchecks, the $100 was well worth the price. I think the NPG rehearsal tracks of "Return Of The Bump Squad", "Letitgo" and "Vicki Waiting" were worth a lot to me. Those are great tracks. We could go on and on about the inferior quality of MP3s, but the fact remains folks heard, and now own, some stuff they might not otherwise.

I'm not defending year one, but there has to be some give and take with it.

BartVanHemelen said:

unique said:

See also several entries here: http://www.yogworld.com/n...lash97.htm

mic

November 10, 1997

George is once again leading the pack on the Internet. This time he is the first artist to have his fan club (Members Online) exclusively on the web, according to this week's DotMusic.

Members Online will begin on November 12th; it will include demos, unreleased recordings and links to George Michael fan-created websites.

Damn, finding info on what was happening online in 1997 is HARD. Like someone erased all traces.

[Edited 6/30/10 8:42am]

i'm a big george michael fan, but i'm still not convinced that he sold his own music online before prince. it's not clear from your posts if they were downloads or cds, or if the music was his own, or that of his boutique label. he released older in 1994, and his next proper album was songs from the last centuary, containing cover versions of songs from the current centuary at the time, releaseed in december 1999. in between all he released was the ladies and gentleman 2cd hits compilation that had about 4 new tracks, 2 of which were new songs and released as singles, so he had no new material in 1997. he did some internet downloads years later, round about 2004. his agean label literally only released about 2 or 3 cd singles, walt darling was one and was a hit single, and the other dissappeared off the radar. i'm presuming the downloads that are inferred are of those artists, not GM tracks

unique said:

BartVanHemelen said:

i'm a big george michael fan, but i'm still not convinced that he sold his own music online before prince.

He was doing something in 1997/98, since at least one post on amp mentions buying music online from aegean.net.

Which is years before Prince.

BartVanHemelen said:

unique said:

i'm a big george michael fan, but i'm still not convinced that he sold his own music online before prince.

He was doing something in 1997/98, since at least one post on amp mentions buying music online from aegean.net.

Which is years before Prince.

something, yes, according to your posts it looks like he was, but his own music in the sense of most peoples understanding, ie. songs he has lead vocal, it doesn't look like it. it certainly wasn't anything of note, such as a reasonable collection or tracks or regularly updated, it sounds like it might have been a handful of mp3s, if that, of tracks from other people on his label. i'm not saying prince was the first, i'd be surprised if he was, but what GM did isn't quite comparable to npgmc or bowie.net