I recently smoked a joint and my mind wandered off into making comparisons between Prince's music and business accumen with unlikely entities such as big corporates. And out of this stoney haze, I somehow managed to correlate Prince with one of the biggest companies on the planet. Here was my (pointless) conclusion.

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Prince is like Microsoft and his music is akin to Windows. If Prince's 80s/early 90s output is Windows XP, his late 90's/ early 00's output is Vista, his late 00's output is Windows 7 and his 10's output is Windows 8.

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I know, bear with me!

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Windows XP was in pretty much every household and dominated the PC market and still, even to this day and despite no longer being supported, is still on a very large amount of PCs around the world. Windows Vista sucked. Sure, it looked fresh on the surface but underneith the hood it was just a polished turd. A lot of people bought it but very quickly abandoned it and reverted back to XP. Windows 7 still gets a lot of love by and large, but the only reason people stick with it is because Windows 8 is another polished turd. Some people love it, but most think it is pretty awful. It is trying to be too many things at once. As a consequence, very few people bought into it and stayed with XP or 7 (only the Microsoft die-hards kept hold of Vista).

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Microsoft were caught off guard by the mobile era and tried to create a product (Windows 8) that did all things on all devices. The result was a poor user experience. And whilst Microsoft still banks plenty of money based on its legacy software, Windows 8 contributes very little. In fact, they are now practically giving it away to try and grab market share.

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Prince, like Microsoft, needs to steer the ship in a different direction. He needs to change his management structure and have a fresh outlook towards the business. His product needs to improve so that he can get all those people that bought his legacy products to purchase his new products.

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Lets face it, Apple walked in the shadow of Microsoft for decades. they often copied what Microsoft were doing, and whilst they did have original ideas, Microsoft was the business they wanted to emulate. Then came the iPhone and, later, the iPad. People were now buying these devices and forgetting about upgrading their PC. The advent of fast broadband and pirate sites meant you could get Windows for free anyway. Now Microsoft is chasing Apple, and for a while tried to emulate Apple until a change in management is slowly adjusting the priorities. Microsoft now see that copying Apple is furtile and instead they need to concentrate on what they are good at - cloud computing, top of the range hardware (Surface Pro 3 anyone?) and the reinvention of its staple software (Azure, OneDrive, Office 365, Windows 9). And where Microsoft used to be slow to change (Windows upgrades would take years), they now seem to progress a lot quicker (Windows upgrades will be annual. Office 365 updates are constant).

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Now lets restate that last paragraph using Prince as the focal point.

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Lets face it, many artists walked in the shadow of Prince for decades. they often copied what Prince was doing, and whilst they did have original ideas, Prince was the artist they wanted to emulate. Then came the mp3, digital downloads and, later, iTunes. People were now downloading all these other artists and forgetting about upgrading their Prince CD collection. The advent of fast broadband and pirate sites meant you could get Prince music for free anyway. Now Prince is chasing other artists, and for a while has tried to emulate them without much success. A change in management is what is required and an adjustment in priorities. Prince needs to see that copying other artists is furtile and instead he needs to concentrate on what he is good at - live performing, music innovation and the reinvention of distribution methods. And where Prince now seems to be slow to release (last album was 4 years ago), he now needs to release a lot quicker (as he did in the old days).

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So there you have it. A fat dweeb smoked and this is the result - A most unlikely comparison.

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Another comparison I came up with was Prince was like the England football team. They won the World Cup once (Purple Rain), had the occasional good run in other cup competions (semi finals - SOTT, 1999. Quarter finals - Lovesexy, Parade, ATWIAD, Symbol Album), but on the whole, mainly dissapointing. Especially recently.

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Lets hear some other unlikely comparisons between the music and/or business accumen of Prince and the world at large (Joint not required!).

You're smoking the wrong joints. Makes me glad I've never tried it. If you don't see SOTT and 1999 as masterworks, and only some kind of semi-finals or whatever you said, maybe that theory about brain cells getting washed could be true. Even the all-time hacks like Bart Van Halen have more respect for those albums.

stillwaiting said:

You're smoking the wrong joints. Makes me glad I've never tried it. If you don't see SOTT and 1999 as masterworks, and only some kind of semi-finals or whatever you said, maybe that theory about brain cells getting washed could be true. Even the all-time hacks like Bart Van Halen have more respect for those albums.

Being a football analogy it was about performance, as in sales, not critical acclaim. But never mind...