After being a Prince fan for two and a half years now, it still pisses me off Prince keeps on removing his songs from Youtube. I know it's his right to do that, but if Youtube wasn't around, I still wouldn't even know who the guy is. I had the luck to come across a video that hadn't been taken down yet and only because of that, I bought The Hits/B-Sides and fell in love with it. Prince is the only artist I listened to on an (almost) daily base for that long. Prince should realize that there are plenty of other ways to listen to his music illegaly and that there is no way he's going to stop that. I think Youtube is more a business option for him than it is an enemy.

Well, that has been discussed many times on here, and I don't want to go into these discussions again. What I'm interested in: who of you all became fan because of Youtube, just like me?

(Oh, and to all of you older fans: it's great you're still around, but there are other threads where you can post how much you loved Purple Rain when it came out. Please don't flood this one )

mblevels said:

After being a Prince fan for two and a half years now, it still pisses me off Prince keeps on removing his songs from Youtube. I know it's his right to do that, but if Youtube wasn't around, I still wouldn't even know who the guy is. I had the luck to come across a video that hadn't been taken down yet and only because of that, I bought The Hits/B-Sides and fell in love with it. Prince is the only artist I listened to on an (almost) daily base for that long. Prince should realize that there are plenty of other ways to listen to his music illegaly and that there is no way he's going to stop that. I think Youtube is more a business option for him than it is an enemy.

Well, that has been discussed many times on here, and I don't want to go into these discussions again. What I'm interested in: who of you all became fan because of Youtube, just like me?

(Oh, and to all of you older fans: it's great you're still around, but there are other threads where you can post how much you loved Purple Rain when it came out. Please don't flood this one )

i think he wants to keep his music "exclusive" in a way

youtube sometimes cheapens artist music..

the fans make crappy montage videos and lipsnyc the songs

while its admirable and fans dont mean any harm by it

it cheapens the music and brand the artist worked so hard for.

I've had the priveledge of finding some nice material on Youtube that has since been removed. Nevertheless it doesn't bother me because anything (regarding this subject) on Youtube originated from some other source. Youtube however, is not how I became a fan, cold hard cd's bumpin' in my walkman are responsible for that. Youtube, at a time, was more or less an outlet for looking up other things, and uncovering new music, but it is only one method of doing so, and a rather poor one at that (due to the lack of material and copyright claims).

In all regards I can understand why an artist wouldn't want their material on Youtube (it's not just Prince that has his stuff taken down ), and on the flip, I understand why some fans want this sort of outlet. But at the end of the day, it's the artist's music and whether or not they want it circulating on Youtube is up to them.

YouTube is a mechanism for artists/record companies to promote their work for free so that they gain fans that will ultimately buy their product.

That said, I agree with formallypickles in that I think Prince does like a certain level of exclusivity and, quite frankly, elitism. Also, I don't necessarily think Prince is trying to grow his fan base. He has stated on several occasions that he was looking forward to "this point" in his career, which I interpret as the point where he doesn't have to work so hard to gain fans (or fams), but that he has a solid base of fans that appreciate his music and will support him. That is not to say that he doesn't want new fans like the OP, it is just to say that those folks are not the core of his fan base.

Also, you have to think about this from Prince's perspective. His fans had to pay an annual fee for access to the NPGMC site where they would get new music, promotional videos, performances, etc. Thus, in his mind sharing his image came with a fee. YouTube is a free site where he gets nothing when others enjoy that image Thus, it doesn't serve a great deal of purpose for him.

I agree with formallypickles in that sometimes YouTube can cheapen an artists' music. Prince regularly makes tatements like, "Real music by real musicians" and "It's important to respect the music." He is not interested in seeing videos of someone drunk singing Purple Rain off-key to share with his friends as some sort of joke.

Prince wants to get paid for his stuff being on YT that's what it comes down to - which I think is pretty fucking fair to be honest.

Of course it acts as a promotional tool any way, but with the 'free for all' that it currently is, you can understand some artists being p'd off about their current model.

True, it does ... I have to admit when I see a rare clip on YouTube of Prince & The Related Artist, I quickly download it with Keep-Tube so I can view it at my leisure. I dont' know what to say about P's feelings with the YouTube scenario. I get it, when it shows up, so I'm good, I have no complaints about that part of it ...

NouveauDance said:

NouveauDance said:

Prince wants to get paid for his stuff being on YT that's what it comes down to - which I think is pretty fucking fair to be honest.

Of course it acts as a promotional tool any way, but with the 'free for all' that it currently is, you can understand some artists being p'd off about their current model.

Who should pay Prince? The people who upload the video?

I think promotional videos of any artist should be up on Youtube, and while I first really criticized Prince for taking videos and any kind of footage down, I think these days it is not really Prince´s decision anymore because I see more and more other videos being taken down that had been on YT for a long time, and it´s mostly the big record labels who are behind this, not necessarily the artists who performed those songs.

I mean, go and try to watch some old school HipHop or RnB video by some people who probably wouldn´t even mind that there´s still a video of them on YT, yet they are all being taken down with the swiftness by their big record companies.

I don´t really believe that old school artists like Whodini, RunDMC, etc., really would mind that their videos are on YT, yet they are getting more and more hard to find these days.

To get back to your question....if it wasn´t for all the bootleg CDs, vinyl, tapes, VHS tapes and later DVDs that I got from different sources over the years, my interest in Prince would have been superficial at best. I mean, I´ve been a fan since 1984 but it´s the bootlegs that made sure that I stay a fan to this day. And I would still buy every official single CD or DVD if Prince decided to open his vault and release everything that I already have as a bootleg.

I think he doesn´t have the slightest clue about what his fans want, and how they want it packaged, edited, produced or marketed.

My friend recently told me about a friend of his who had apparently made a fortune from having videos on Youtube that get tons of hits (admittedly, I think it was 1M+ views).

I asked him who was paying her and he said he wasn't sure, but he'd assumed it was YT, ie. they were giving her a cut of the advertising money. I'm guessing that she was releasing her video exclusively to them. I'm not sure if she was dealing directly with YT or going through a label.

If that's something that YT does, why not use it as a distribution channel?

Maybe that's exactly the point; ie. maybe Prince tried to negotiate a distribution deal with YT and they couldn't agree on the cut, so now he wants them to have nothing, which is understandable (otherwise, where's his leverage?).

Given that YT is, in a sense, the new radio/MTV though, it could be wise to try and find a middle ground...

Don't radio stations (even internet stations) have to pay ASCAP and other fees to be able to play music? What if the same rule applied to places like YT and Vimeo? You can upload whatever music video you like if you're prepared to pay a monthly fee to keep it up there (it could be subsidised by advertising revenue from that page - ie. if you get enough hits, your next month is covered, etc...)

You can argue that it's a good thing that artists get more fans because of YouTube, but there needs to be solid proof that YT fans translate to profits (en masse) if there's going to be a case for any artist to support the medium. How many people that see video clips on YT go out and buy the artist's album? How many people that see concert footage go out and buy a concert ticket?

Having fans is great - building a fan base when you're just starting out is crucial - but for an extremely established artist, it's no longer the number of fans you have; it's how many (%wise) are willing to pay for your product.

I think brand is also very important to Prince (and many other artists) and agree that it's likely to be a factor, particularly in amateur concert footage being taken down. WB is likely to be behind the older stuff coming down, but it's definitely (obviously) NPG Records that is quite aggressively keeping newer material off the net.

I know that the OP said that they bought The Hits/B-Sides as a result of seeing a clip on YouTube, but this brings up another complication for artists like Prince. Does he still get any revenue from the WB albums? Presumably so, but still it would be a tiny fraction of what he gets from his more recent albums (many of which, admittedly, you can no longer pay for baffling).

As for the original question, I became a Prince fan the old fashioned way - off the radio, many years ago. That said, I have bought several albums by other artists (Janelle Monae, Esperanza Spalding and Cassandra Wilson amongst others) as a result of seeing their videos either on YouTube or elsewhere. I am going to several concerts over the next few months, tickets to all of which were purchased after I checked out concert footage of each of the artists on YT.

I think it has a lot of potential, but it needs to be harnessed by the musicians, either independently or through their labels. No matter how useful it is as a promotional tool, it is completely unreasonable to expect them to have their product available, on-demand, 24/7, to all and sundry, without them seeing a cent in revenue.

[Edited 4/7/11 17:01pm]

I'm not a fan because of YT but I can see it has it's uses.

I do not watch Prince video on YT as the quality is usually quite poor, but there is another artist I am very fond of who has just launched an official YT channel. All the videos are in very good quality, some are in HD (for those with HD monitors), and it is updated on a regular basis with regular and more rare video.

YT is (at times) useful for me in hearing music I have never heard before, if i do a google search on a particular artist, 9/10 times there will be a link to a YT video, which is useful.

I think that it would be a good thing for Prince fans to have an official Prince YT channel as described above.

However, I doubt this will ever happen as long as Prince is alive.

And to the OP, not all long term fans of Prince are stuck in the 80's. I'm not sure what your comment about making posts about love for PR has to do with the subject of your thread.

TheDigitalGardener said:

And to the OP, not all long term fans of Prince are stuck in the 80's. I'm not sure what your comment about making posts about love for PR has to do with the subject of your thread.

Not all of them are (not even the majority I guess), but there are enough of them on here to derail a thread

I've had some similar threads hijacked that way, one starting "No, I didn't do [...], but I did do [...]" and then another poster would respond they did that too/that happened to them too, and three posts later the thread would go an entirely other way the OP (in this case I) intended. I wanted to prevent that from happening to this thread. It turned out to be not really necessary. That remark shouldn't in the least taken be personal, especially not by you, because you're clearly one of those fans who aren't stuck in the '80s.

mblevels said:

TheDigitalGardener said:

And to the OP, not all long term fans of Prince are stuck in the 80's. I'm not sure what your comment about making posts about love for PR has to do with the subject of your thread.

Not all of them are (not even the majority I guess), but there are enough of them on here to derail a thread

I've had some similar threads hijacked that way, one starting "No, I didn't do [...], but I did do [...]" and then another poster would respond they did that too/that happened to them too, and three posts later the thread would go an entirely other way the OP (in this case I) intended. I wanted to prevent that from happening to this thread. It turned out to be not really necessary. That remark shouldn't in the least taken be personal, especially not by you, because you're clearly one of those fans who aren't stuck in the '80s.

You should just err on the side of not beginning your thread with opening salvo insults.

I am a 100% youtube/Daily Motion fan. I would, however, love to attend a concert some day.

Actually being there must be a thrill.

BTW, I am currently listening to Marcus Miller's Moonlight Sonata on Daily Motion. Marcus

is pushing Jazz for Japan, now which is fundraising for Japanese people affected by the

Eathquake. http://www.facebook.com/#...0216376561

Anyway, the internet has been my sole source of music. I know how great Prince is because I have

listened to his music online I would not know a flippin' thing about him if not for the web.

funkyrake said:

Anyway, the internet has been my sole source of music. I know how great Prince is because I have listened to his music online I would not know a flippin' thing about him if not for the web.

I apologise if I've misunderstood but does that mean you've never actually paid for music?

Or does it simply mean that the internet is the only way you learn about artists and their albums before you purchase them?