Just my 2 cents here, but 5 basic reasons, why Prince is not moving product like he used too. These are my opinions and my observations of his post 2000 output. Not every reason here applies to every album released since then, but at least 3 dog each Prince album. Would appreciate your feedback and suggestion though rather than "Your list sux" etc, if it does, why does it.

.

In order

.

5. Bizarre Releasing patterns. Releasing albums to British newspapers, online websites that cost money and to certain markets only. 20 Ten and Planet Earth are the most common examples of this. Making it hard to get and frustrating for fans does not help your case if you want to be respected as a master artist. If anything you are trying to kill your prime market (For Prince, mostly hardly core fans) and it makes look more like a pratt than ever. But at least the latest albums and a few others have been released using traditional channels - stores, downloads.

.

4. Segues, Instrumentals, spoken word excerpts. When producing music for a niche audience and mostly mature fans, we do not need spoken word segues like Affirmation, Darth Vader Voices, silly dub overs, 40 second long musical segues and the like. For goodness sake use quality control Prince. You notice there are no affirmations or 40 second jazz segues on SOTT or 1999! Also with Prince you know the number of quality songs left off an album to make way for a pointless spoken word sequence or 40 seconds of a conversation in Spanish or Pig Latin is frustrating.

.

3. Media gag in general. - Not promoting any released music is bad enough, but suppressing all forms of fan comment, reviews and videos on Youtube is just saying "Please kill off my career now". It also makes him look like a complete douchebag. If Prince put as much energy into making high quality albums, that he did shutting down Youtube videos and trying to gag fan sites like Housequake. Also hsi own media attempts of recent years have been laughable with Lotusflow3r.com and his one or two twitter and Facebook posts.

.

2. Plugging proteges and sexy muses - This is not a new problem with Prince, if its 19, got big tits and squeaks along to a Prince bassline, he will promote it. Forcing some of 3rd eye girl's lesser moments, Bria Valente and Tamar on his own projects does him no favours. Plus Prince you are in your mid 50s, chasing around 18 to 23 year girly girls and given them albums of your rejects and making us buy them is not a good way to keep fans. Even worse is that most of these vanity projects never do that well and seem to have less talent than all of the big boobed sex kitten fluff on the charts now. Seriously, if we had not had 3rd eye girl, we would not have been inflicted with Boytrouble.

Seriously does anyone still know of Tamar, listen to the Bria disc we were forced to buy or care about Andy Allo anymore?

.

1= Intolerance - Making music in the 21st century has meant that nearly anyone can be a star, we have Gays, Arabs, Trannies and all sorts of people making music and becoming stars now. Promoting outdated and hateful ultra Protestant Christianity in music is so passe and left to camp and frightening Christian music of the mid to late 20th century. We don't care that you love Jehovah or hate gays and write songs about Jews having family names. Also turning your back on everything that made you famous, sex, swearing and sheer inventiveness is also affecting your core base of friends. Although Prince is a JW and hardcore Christian, not that many of his fans are and many fans are likely to be liberal and intellectual, not briandead sheeple controlled by money based Christian hate cults.

.

1 = Lack of Promotion - Goes back to reason 5 with the lack of releasing for Planet Earth and 20Ten and also all the new singles have had no release, Prince has to have a gun held to his head just to make a video now. Every other chart artist promotes the heck out of their new songs/albums and Prince sits there twiddling his thumbs. Albums lately have charted highly, but have dropped like lead balloons due to lack of promotion. More of this would help erode the general public image of him as an eccentric weirdo who changed his name to a symbol and fought with his record company. Come on Prince, make the people want it. I noticed the few mates of mine who have heard songs of AOA have usually bought a copy and wonder why they barely knew of it. One even could not believe it was the Purple Rain guy and his 20 somethink album since then.

.

So just my feelings and ideas, nothing new, but something that has occupied my thoughts, now 3 months after its release, the new albums are nearly forgotten.

Thank God I grew up in the 20th century when there were no gays or Arabs making music.

And if you're producing music for a niche audience, then segues etc. are par of the course, right?Affirmation 3 is the only thing I liked on AOA. But I don't think this is what kills his commercial appeal.

In all begins with music and songs. Yes, he loves performing in front of an audience. But in general it's always the old songs and for good reason. He might be spiritually growing, but apparently he knows it's not showing in his music.

[Edited 12/30/14 2:18am]

So what you're saying is, the season of goodwill is over and it's back to business.

There is a lot of truth to the points made in this thread but sadly the man's age plays a part of it too. Whether he looks it or not, the man will be 60 in a few years and I think pop radio's cutoff now is about 36 with a Pharrell Williams (early 40s) thrown in. There is no one in Prince's age group with pop hits right now, Madonna and U2 included. There are a few older artists who had albums with longer staying power than Prince last year but none of them had singles that charted. Had Prince not completely obiterated his relationship with radio years ago, the ravages of time would have aged him out eventually. Fallinlove2nite was an almost hit but having the young and hip Zooey Daschenal helped that one. And since Prince has completely banished the under 30 generation from discovering how freaking great he was and still can be by keeping himself off of Youtube, the kids don't know who he is anyway. Prince may not believe in aging, and more power to him for that, but radio programmers do.

Adorecream said:

Just my 2 cents here, but 5 basic reasons, why Prince is not moving product like he used too. These are my opinions and my observations of his post 2000 output. Not every reason here applies to every album released since then, but at least 3 dog each Prince album. Would appreciate your feedback and suggestion though rather than "Your list sux" etc, if it does, why does it.

.

In order

.

5. Bizarre Releasing patterns. Releasing albums to British newspapers, online websites that cost money and to certain markets only. 20 Ten and Planet Earth are the most common examples of this. Making it hard to get and frustrating for fans does not help your case if you want to be respected as a master artist. If anything you are trying to kill your prime market (For Prince, mostly hardly core fans) and it makes look more like a pratt than ever. But at least the latest albums and a few others have been released using traditional channels - stores, downloads.

.

4. Segues, Instrumentals, spoken word excerpts. When producing music for a niche audience and mostly mature fans, we do not need spoken word segues like Affirmation, Darth Vader Voices, silly dub overs, 40 second long musical segues and the like. For goodness sake use quality control Prince. You notice there are no affirmations or 40 second jazz segues on SOTT or 1999! Also with Prince you know the number of quality songs left off an album to make way for a pointless spoken word sequence or 40 seconds of a conversation in Spanish or Pig Latin is frustrating.

.

3. Media gag in general. - Not promoting any released music is bad enough, but suppressing all forms of fan comment, reviews and videos on Youtube is just saying "Please kill off my career now". It also makes him look like a complete douchebag. If Prince put as much energy into making high quality albums, that he did shutting down Youtube videos and trying to gag fan sites like Housequake. Also hsi own media attempts of recent years have been laughable with Lotusflow3r.com and his one or two twitter and Facebook posts.

.

2. Plugging proteges and sexy muses - This is not a new problem with Prince, if its 19, got big tits and squeaks along to a Prince bassline, he will promote it. Forcing some of 3rd eye girl's lesser moments, Bria Valente and Tamar on his own projects does him no favours. Plus Prince you are in your mid 50s, chasing around 18 to 23 year girly girls and given them albums of your rejects and making us buy them is not a good way to keep fans. Even worse is that most of these vanity projects never do that well and seem to have less talent than all of the big boobed sex kitten fluff on the charts now. Seriously, if we had not had 3rd eye girl, we would not have been inflicted with Boytrouble.

Seriously does anyone still know of Tamar, listen to the Bria disc we were forced to buy or care about Andy Allo anymore?

.

1= Intolerance - Making music in the 21st century has meant that nearly anyone can be a star, we have Gays, Arabs, Trannies and all sorts of people making music and becoming stars now. Promoting outdated and hateful ultra Protestant Christianity in music is so passe and left to camp and frightening Christian music of the mid to late 20th century. We don't care that you love Jehovah or hate gays and write songs about Jews having family names. Also turning your back on everything that made you famous, sex, swearing and sheer inventiveness is also affecting your core base of friends. Although Prince is a JW and hardcore Christian, not that many of his fans are and many fans are likely to be liberal and intellectual, not briandead sheeple controlled by money based Christian hate cults.

.

1 = Lack of Promotion - Goes back to reason 5 with the lack of releasing for Planet Earth and 20Ten and also all the new singles have had no release, Prince has to have a gun held to his head just to make a video now. Every other chart artist promotes the heck out of their new songs/albums and Prince sits there twiddling his thumbs. Albums lately have charted highly, but have dropped like lead balloons due to lack of promotion. More of this would help erode the general public image of him as an eccentric weirdo who changed his name to a symbol and fought with his record company. Come on Prince, make the people want it. I noticed the few mates of mine who have heard songs of AOA have usually bought a copy and wonder why they barely knew of it. One even could not believe it was the Purple Rain guy and his 20 somethink album since then.

.

So just my feelings and ideas, nothing new, but something that has occupied my thoughts, now 3 months after its release, the new albums are nearly forgotten.

Honestly while all the reasons above are sensible I think the only true reason is that P isn't doing the kinda shit that's played nowadays on mainstream TV channels and radio stations and all the better for it. I mean who from the 80's maintained the kinda success they had back then? Madonna, maybe U2 and Depeche Mode and that's pretty much it, isn't it? When I hear how they have to sell out to maintain their millions of sales I'm damn glad P just does his thing and doesn't give a fuck.

+ contrarly to popular belief some of his 00's albums sold pretty well given the global drop in record sales.

I must admit I have never really understood this point regarding commercialism. To be frank Prince was probably finacially secure for the rest of his life from his early twenties onwards. He has decided to continue to make music and perform because ultimately, he loves doing it. Yes, there were times when he seemed more interested in creating more 'mainstream' projects and times when he wanted to try more cult works.

Having an extra few million to somene with Prince's wealth is probably not that interesting nor is it likely to inspire you to get up in the morning and work as hard as he does. He is not primarily a businessmen in the genre of a CEO who's obsession is financial. He has had number one singles, number one albums, the amazing Superbowl appearance, an Oscar. If musically you can achieve it, he has. He has decided to explore his world, his philosophy and his art.

Also, as a final point, whilst some may argue his new albums could have sold more overall, the people who desire them have gotten them, they both made the top ten and Prince is in the almost unqiue position where he can release when and what he likes, record a song today and release it this afternoon, play with who he likes and attend any awards show or chat and, perhaps most rewardingly, can send a tweet and people will queue in London for over 7 hours on the chance that they can see this genius live. I think Prince has achieved an amazing balance of success and security, risk-taking and creativity.

Adorecream said:

Just my 2 cents here, but 5 basic reasons, why Prince is not moving product like he used too. These are my opinions and my observations of his post 2000 output. Not every reason here applies to every album released since then, but at least 3 dog each Prince album. Would appreciate your feedback and suggestion though rather than "Your list sux" etc, if it does, why does it.

.

In order

.

5. Bizarre Releasing patterns. Releasing albums to British newspapers, online websites that cost money and to certain markets only. 20 Ten and Planet Earth are the most common examples of this. Making it hard to get and frustrating for fans does not help your case if you want to be respected as a master artist. If anything you are trying to kill your prime market (For Prince, mostly hardly core fans) and it makes look more like a pratt than ever. But at least the latest albums and a few others have been released using traditional channels - stores, downloads.

.

4. Segues, Instrumentals, spoken word excerpts. When producing music for a niche audience and mostly mature fans, we do not need spoken word segues like Affirmation, Darth Vader Voices, silly dub overs, 40 second long musical segues and the like. For goodness sake use quality control Prince. You notice there are no affirmations or 40 second jazz segues on SOTT or 1999! Also with Prince you know the number of quality songs left off an album to make way for a pointless spoken word sequence or 40 seconds of a conversation in Spanish or Pig Latin is frustrating.

.

3. Media gag in general. - Not promoting any released music is bad enough, but suppressing all forms of fan comment, reviews and videos on Youtube is just saying "Please kill off my career now". It also makes him look like a complete douchebag. If Prince put as much energy into making high quality albums, that he did shutting down Youtube videos and trying to gag fan sites like Housequake. Also hsi own media attempts of recent years have been laughable with Lotusflow3r.com and his one or two twitter and Facebook posts.

.

2. Plugging proteges and sexy muses - This is not a new problem with Prince, if its 19, got big tits and squeaks along to a Prince bassline, he will promote it. Forcing some of 3rd eye girl's lesser moments, Bria Valente and Tamar on his own projects does him no favours. Plus Prince you are in your mid 50s, chasing around 18 to 23 year girly girls and given them albums of your rejects and making us buy them is not a good way to keep fans. Even worse is that most of these vanity projects never do that well and seem to have less talent than all of the big boobed sex kitten fluff on the charts now. Seriously, if we had not had 3rd eye girl, we would not have been inflicted with Boytrouble.

Seriously does anyone still know of Tamar, listen to the Bria disc we were forced to buy or care about Andy Allo anymore?

.

1= Intolerance - Making music in the 21st century has meant that nearly anyone can be a star, we have Gays, Arabs, Trannies and all sorts of people making music and becoming stars now. Promoting outdated and hateful ultra Protestant Christianity in music is so passe and left to camp and frightening Christian music of the mid to late 20th century. We don't care that you love Jehovah or hate gays and write songs about Jews having family names. Also turning your back on everything that made you famous, sex, swearing and sheer inventiveness is also affecting your core base of friends. Although Prince is a JW and hardcore Christian, not that many of his fans are and many fans are likely to be liberal and intellectual, not briandead sheeple controlled by money based Christian hate cults.

.

1 = Lack of Promotion - Goes back to reason 5 with the lack of releasing for Planet Earth and 20Ten and also all the new singles have had no release, Prince has to have a gun held to his head just to make a video now. Every other chart artist promotes the heck out of their new songs/albums and Prince sits there twiddling his thumbs. Albums lately have charted highly, but have dropped like lead balloons due to lack of promotion. More of this would help erode the general public image of him as an eccentric weirdo who changed his name to a symbol and fought with his record company. Come on Prince, make the people want it. I noticed the few mates of mine who have heard songs of AOA have usually bought a copy and wonder why they barely knew of it. One even could not believe it was the Purple Rain guy and his 20 somethink album since then.

.

So just my feelings and ideas, nothing new, but something that has occupied my thoughts, now 3 months after its release, the new albums are nearly forgotten.

Yeah, number #3 on your list basically killed his career as of now. This generation basically don't know (or even care) who Prince is. But they definitely know who Michael Jackson is....and many of his longtime fans has grown tired of his anti-fan/arrogant ways.

[Edited 12/30/14 7:46am]

Lets start with his biggest contribution to his "COMMERCIAL" clout, not talking about artistically so everybody doesn't go up in flames...

It was ATIWAD

How can you go from Purple Rain selling over 20 m worldwide and follow up less than a year later with ATWIAD which sold just 3m.

That was the start of his commercial clout, he actually never really recovered from that.

Musically we know the history, with genius albums and eras such as Parade, Dream Factory, Camille, Crystal Ball, Sign O The Times... He had a great creative artistic peak.

But that ATWIAD album totally annexed the general music public just to his own hardcore fans. Sure he'd have a major hit every couple years with songs like Kiss, even though Sign O The Times was pure GENIUS it wasn't a hit album.

Batman was a hit album for Prince, but for Prince standards only.

He could've been selling over 10m per album if he slowed down his output, and hand picked what was for what instead of releasing everything so fast every year.

But it all started with ATWIAD... You basically just lost 17m fans.

you are missing the obvious. HE'S 55 YEARS OLD.

jayspud said:

I must admit I have never really understood this point regarding commercialism. To be frank Prince was probably finacially secure for the rest of his life from his early twenties onwards. He has decided to continue to make music and perform because ultimately, he loves doing it. Yes, there were times when he seemed more interested in creating more 'mainstream' projects and times when he wanted to try more cult works.

Having an extra few million to somene with Prince's wealth is probably not that interesting nor is it likely to inspire you to get up in the morning and work as hard as he does. He is not primarily a businessmen in the genre of a CEO who's obsession is financial. He has had number one singles, number one albums, the amazing Superbowl appearance, an Oscar. If musically you can achieve it, he has. He has decided to explore his world, his philosophy and his art.

Also, as a final point, whilst some may argue his new albums could have sold more overall, the people who desire them have gotten them, they both made the top ten and Prince is in the almost unqiue position where he can release when and what he likes, record a song today and release it this afternoon, play with who he likes and attend any awards show or chat and, perhaps most rewardingly, can send a tweet and people will queue in London for over 7 hours on the chance that they can see this genius live. I think Prince has achieved an amazing balance of success and security, risk-taking and creativity.

Wisest post ever on this forum

[Edited 12/30/14 10:17am]

jaawwnn said:

Prince has demonstrated time and time again that he DOES care about money. He has repeatedly stated that he wants money upfront for his tracks. I don't think he bows to commercial pressure when writing them, and he surely writes and records for the love of it, but releasing is a whole different story.

Thing is when u spend as much money as multimilionnaires spend u DO need a shitload of income to maintain that lifestyle, you know servants, villas, private jets, limos, 5 star hotels suites, jewelry, charity, etc. 24/7, 365 days a year. It DOES cost millions and I ain't even gonna speak about the private recording studio complex and the personnel that goes with it. I know because my uncle used to work in high fashion and hang out with millionaire customers, so he told me about how those people live and how much they spend by minute. So yeah there's a balance to be mainatained on the bank account and it's possible that one of the reasons a show ticket for a megastar now costs 120€ instead of 30 for a smaller act is because record sales dropped so much ovrerall.

Another true thing is that yeah, somehow there seem to be a part of P who still wants to prove the damn world that he can still have a hit. I think it's been an inner conflict for a long time between the Prince who wants to release N.E.W.S. and the Prince who wants to have a hit with Musicology or even earlier the Prince who wants to be Purple Rain megastar and the Prince who wants to be ATWIAD/Madhouse/TBA underground genius. Maybe P needs to truly grow-up (he sure seemed to have in 2001-2003), or maybe he's been too spoiled and he can't, or maybe he has more than we'd think, IDK.

However whatever HIS expectations, financially and in terms of mainstream success may be and how out of proportion they may be (they always have, the dude in 1992 thought he could sell 5M of a new album EVERY GODDAMN YEAR and sell just as much of Carmen Fucking Electra for chrissakes!), I'd say Jayspud was addressing OUR expectations because in the end this is US talking and P sure ain't part of this convo. I find it totally unreal that Prince AND his fans may want MORE than the astonishing reality of what IS, but while one can't address P's possible lust for fame or money here, one can certainly address the delusions of his fans because in the end the fans are reading this, not Prince.

Many people here basically say Prince is a loser, a failure who fucked up his whole career, doesn't make a penny, doesn't interest anyone past his core fanbase, doesn't have anyone willing to pay to attend his shows and hasn't sold a single record well for 15 years. In the real world, in the world we live in, this is delirious, this is delusion, this is lie. Fact. End of debate. There's nothing to discuss. We sure CAN discuss whether he should or could have taken a Madonna strategy and sold-out or not but then again we could go back as early as 1985 if we're gonna go that way because he started to take the exact opposite way Madonna took the minute he released ATWIAD. But claiming that P's career is a failure is nonsense and is NOT something that can be debated because it's not a matter of opinion. Fact. End of debate. There's nothing to discuss.

I mean just look at that http://en.wikipedia.org/w...c_artists, according to this Prince is the 40th best selling music artist of all times (at least in the Western world since those figure basically only include Western developped countries artists).

Now let me ask you a few questions, in the developped Western countries alone:

- How many dozens (hundreds?) of thousands professional or would-be professional music artists have gotten a record deal over the course of the last 100 years?

- How many dozens (hundreds?) of thousands professional or would-be professional music artists have self-released their music over the course of the last 100 years?

- How many dozens (hundreds?) of thousands (millions?) professional or would-be professional music artists didn't even get the opportunity to record a single record in their life time over the course of the last 100 years?

So basically, throwing a random but probably not so far from accurate figure, Prince is something like #40 in a race that had at the very least one million participants.

And people come here and say his career is a failure.

Seriously?

Get down to Earth, boys! And also while you're at it if P is a failure, then ask yourself what YOU are, because whatever the job you're doing, I doubt you're #40 in the whole history of your professional field! Damn, I sure wish I was!

GottaLetitgo said:

And since Prince has completely banished the under 30 generation from discovering how freaking great he was and still can be by keeping himself off of Youtube, the kids don't know who he is anyway. Prince may not believe in aging, and more power to him for that, but radio programmers do.

This is very true. If I ever want to show one of my friends a song from an '80s artist and I don't have my ipod/phone on me or anything, my first stop is Youtube.

I also heard that since Gangnam Style became so big, record companies have been counting Youtube views towards the overall popularity of records.

You dun goofed there, P.

I agree with everyone's reasons so far, only I think that's why he lost 99% of his hardcore following. To the average young person, I encounter online or in person, Prince's name is either positive, or non-comittal, but certainly nothing bad. His problem is that he isn't making hit records anymore. Nothing on AOA or any other recent album, has that spark or sounds up to par with today's hitmakers.

Seriously he's got to have better singles.

{My reply to GottaLetitgo's post}

Exactly! This is the most honest and factual post I've read on this entire website! Thank you for not sugar coating this with the usual (he's already been one of the most successful yadda,yadda,yadda, drool). It's not hatered for merely pointing out the hard truth.

[Edited 12/30/14 11:44am]

I think it's a given that Prince peaked commercially in 1984 with Purple Rain. So, bearing that in mind,

can anyone name another artist who peaked in the mid '80's who is doing as well as Prince is?

Or better still, if we accept that TMBGITW was Prince's last big radio hit single,

can you think of another artist selling as many concert tickets who last had a hit 20 years ago?

I think from these perspectives, our man is doing great.

[Edited 12/30/14 12:08pm]

For me 1984 Purple Rain wasn't a peak but an explosion.

Prior to 1984 only two albums went Platinum, Prince sold 1M in the U.S. a very respectibale showing for a fairly new figure in music, and 1999 which sold 1M before Purple Rain at the end of the Purple Rain sold over 6m worldwide. After Purple Rain Dirty Mind and Controversy went platinum as well.

All though Purple Rain is always the album that referred Prince to global superstardom selling over 21M to date, he went consistantly platinum with every record in the 80's.

Even with Lovesexy at the time with over 750,000 U.S. sales but eventually went Platnium as well.

owen said:

Or better still, if we accept that TMBGITW was Prince's last big radio hit single,

can you think of another artist selling as many concert tickets who last had a hit 20 years ago?

Fleetwood Mac.

I think u forget the main point.

Prince doesn't care.

NouveauDance said:

So what you're saying is, the season of goodwill is over and it's back to business.

Pentacle said:

owen said:

Or better still, if we accept that TMBGITW was Prince's last big radio hit single,

can you think of another artist selling as many concert tickets who last had a hit 20 years ago?

Fleetwood Mac.

Group or Duo.

RJOrion said:

smh....another "how i would save Prince's career" thread... the man is soon to be 60...he came, he saw, he conquered.. and he's still doing his thing as he pleases... who else played 2 seperate SNL gigs, 33 years apart..and turnt it out, both times?..

Prince did 3 SNL gigs.

Adorecream said:

Just my 2 cents here, but 5 basic reasons, why Prince is not moving product like he used too.

When did Prince really used to sell a lot of albums/move alot of product? I mean, when did he ever have the biggest selling album of the year? 1984.

-

Other BIG sales years for Prince: 1983, 1989, 1991, 1996 (kinda), 2004.

-

Selling a million records in 1986 was nothing. Especially, for an artist as hot/famous/in the zone as Prince was.

-

There is this misconception that Prince used to sell albums like gangbusters. The truth is, he rarely sold more than to his fanbase.

-

Here, at the end of 2014, no one is really selling albums anymore. Not like they used to. The business has changed.

-

Compare Taylor Swift's sales of 1989 to Janet, Whitney, or Madonna in the 80's and 90's. Hell, compare here sales to Cyndi Lauper's She so Unusual. Scratch that, compare Taylor Swift's sales to Debbie Gibson and Tiffany. Puts things in perspective.

-

Bottom line: Yes, Prince could play the game better. However, all of the reasons that you listed arte things Prince has ALWAYS done for better or worse. You should read Alan Light's new book, Let's Go Crazy.

-

The book really details the fact that, though Purple Rain was one biggest phenomenons ever, Prince did things to end it/slow it down way before he needed to. Many of the things you listed, in fact.

[Edited 12/30/14 13:22pm]