Thank U for whoever posted the tracks in lossless quality...I've only heard 3 songs so far and this album sounds great!! Illusion, Pimp, Coma and circumstance is funky as doo-doo...This was the first track that I listened to and it's an instant favorite..."A Million Days" is another classic Prince composition...Now I'm listening too Cinnamon Girl and it reminds me a little bit of "Never take the place of your man." There is a def "pop" sound to what I've heard so far...Cinnamon Girl even has a "taste" of "I like it there." I'll add more to this thread as I hear more...This reminds me of Prince during The Gold Exp years...So far nothing like The Rainbow Children...

Great to hear you like it. Sad to see it out like that

The NPGMC is apparently insisting on a download format that excludes Mac users and excludes iPod users under the false belief that it will somehow slow illegal downloads, yet before the store even opens, the whole album is already being downloaded. Can they not see that all they are going to accomplish is to prevent potential paying customers from spending money and to instead encourage people to search for illegal alternatives?
[This message was edited Sun Mar 28 19:56:29 2004 by alandail]

more
more!!!!

please

"If I was the man in your life" has keyboards that remind me of "The beautiful Ones"...Serious, I haven't been this excited during the first listen of a Prince album in a while...I downloaded from a free site but I'll dl from his 2morrow...I'll keep my word to support him anytime he releases music for us 2purchase...Besides, so far it's def. worth it...

what will the format be for the downloads (windows media?)?

Jhasten said:

The club posted tonight telling people to install WM9. They have stated in the past that they would be using a DRM that does not work on the Macintosh, does not work on an iPod, will not play on iTunes, will not work on older versions of windows. Then they later stated they would ahve alternatives for Mac users, never discussed the issues iPod users would run into, and now tonight they say "we don't know if it'll work on a mac." THey already told us it wouldn't with the planned format. Now they "don't know".
[This message was edited Sun Mar 28 20:03:55 2004 by alandail]

Life O The Party sounds good upon first lesson...I've heard this live a couple of times and loved it but was worried that it wouldn't transfer well to tape...I was wrong! This cd will sound great booming from the car's system...I know that they'll be people knocking this cd but I'm telling U-it's a nice return to form...While I liked Rainbow, I couldn't identify with it lyrically...It's always been the lyrics that made me such a die-hard fan. This album I can identify with...My man is human again!!! "I've only been gone 4 an hour but it seems like a million days" Just a sample from "A million Days." Get excited friends!

Crazy. Sorry for asking about something that was already posted. Its somewhat scary just how MSFT is pushing into most forms of digital media (example trying to get its compression technology in WM9 to be the next standard for hd-dvd). But makes sense from a business perspective.

Keep Goin!!



More detail

pleeease

Mr Man?

alandail said:

mac users are gonna be kinna miffed about this...sux that they're bein left out like that. and yeah, excludin the mac format ain't gonna help at alllll....

"The Marrying Kind" this sounds a little personal...It reminds me "in a good way" of 3 chains of gold. "I'm gonna put her on the same diet Missy went on-U know she eat 2 much." Prince, U did great!

I read in another post that alot of folks left their cd behind after Reno. They made a big mistake.

it's up illegally, yet the NPGMC is apparently preventing a significant percentage of their potential customers from being able to legally buy and enjoy the music. Customers with a Mac, customers with an iPod, customers with an older version of windows, etc. The claimed reason for doing this is to prevent illegal file sharing, the fact that the music is already being obtained via that very route BEFORE the store even opens shows how futile that is. The only thing they are accomplishing is preventing people who would buy the music from being able to do so.

alandail said:

has anybody mentioned this on the forums over at the npgmc at all? if not, someone may wanna hip 'em to this fact that folks are gonna be doin this stuff....and it's all their fault.

alandail said:

I have an iPod and a Mac; I'm not worried about the format that the club offers. I'll just burn the CD and transfer it to my iPod. I seriously doubt that excluding Mac users at this point will make that much of a difference to Prince. There just aren't that many users out there to make a huge difference. I kind of see his point in not offering up to iTunes, given the money he would stand to lose compared to offering it himself and getting the entire .77 per download. In addition, I think most serious music lovers see iTunes as a temp alternative to CD's. I only buy albums that I have a passing interest in; if I really like the music, I buy the CD.
Sure he'll lose some sales neglecting the Mac at this point, but it will be negligible. Should he cater to something he obviously thinks isn't good for his bottom line simply because he's "damned if he do, damned if he don't?"

BlackandRising said:

He gets .77 from the club, he'd get .65 selling it through iTunes. The .65 he would get has none of hte overhead involved in the .77 downloads, including credit card processing fees, internet bandwidth fees, etc. Also, this .65 would come from incremental sales as they would be from people who would not be able to use the files bought from his store.

Also, anyone in the US who burns a CD from windows and load that into a mac has broken the law. It's every bit as illegal as downloading these files off of the net. Even if you own both computers and you are doing it for personal use, it is illegal to circumvent the DRM encoded in the purchased downloads.

Handclapsfingasnapz said:

I will be sure to point it out as soon as I confirm they have not addressed the needs of Mac users despite promising to do so and also have not addressed the needs of the growing number of windows users with iPods.

thank goodness for living in canada where its all leagle as long as we dont share it. as long as no money changes hands and i download load it from a sorce outside of canada. Musicology is gold loved it cant wait to buy it.

alandail said:

.65? I don't think so. Unless things have changed, Apple gets 3 times as much money as the artists from each sale. Apple takes a 35% cut from every song and every album sold. Record labels get the other 65% of each sale. I don't think the record company is going to fork over a majority of what they get from Apple to artists. Which is why there's such an uproar over iTunes right now. Where did you see that artists get .65/song? That leaves very little profit for the record company and Apple.
And why sould someone burn a CD onto a PC and transfer it to a Mac? I don't think I'm seeing your argument here. Like I said, I think it's pretty easy. I buy the CD. I burn it onto my Mac. I transfer it to my iPod. Viola, I have the CD on my iPod. I have purchased at least 100 CD's since getting my iPod, and have had no problems doing this. The AAC format is good, but I want CD's for my home system. Where's the issue?

Do the math, Prince is making a TON of loot on this one. NO publishing cost , not middle man to pay. If he releases all of years 1-4 of the club and the new members download half of those songs, he'll make a mint alone from content that he a has already recieved some renumeration from. Artist don't make much at all from the Itunes, hell Apple doesn't make that much, They make it from the sell of the iPods themselves. You know I never heard the sample of that cash register ringing at Paisley Park when I first listened to my Musicology cd, I sure as hell hear it now.

NPG is the record label in this case, so NPG, thus Prince, gets the full .65. The iTunes music store is really no different than any other store in this regards. If you buy a CD at a record store, the record store has to first buy the CD from the record company and then charges more. The cut that goes to the artist is dependent on their contract with the record company. Same thing here - Prince owns the record company, so he gets the full record company cut.

The CD doesn't come out until April 20th. The downloads start tomorrow (or later today depending on your time zone).

I think you used the work burn when you meant rip. Burn is making a CD out of files on a computer, rip is taking the files off of the CD and reading them into a computer. You said burn a CD, which I took to mean buy it on windows, burn a CD and read it into the mac - which is an illegal solution that some have suggested for this problem on other threads.

Also, your intended solution to this download problem has a potential major problem itself. The press release said the store will have 7 albums at launch. It will likely add to that over time. It seems likely not everything sold through the online store will actually be released on CD. This means a significant number of people potentially have no way to legally buy and listen to the music.

can you tell me from which p2p platform you've got the downloads?

Thank u,
@rt.

alandail said:

LOL my bad...yes, I rip the CD onto my mac, then transfer it to my iPod. if I want a CD for my car, then I burn one from iTunes. I still don't think the number of Mac/iPod users is enough to affect his bottom line in this venture, so I don't think that they thought it was going to be a big problem.. They probably want to cater to the largest market, i.e., PC users, and work on a Mac solution in the meantime. In a nutshell, I'm betting that most Mac/iPod/iTunes users think like me, in that if it isn't on iTunes, I go out and get the CD, which is what I prefer anyway. Cause when you get down to it, buying a song encoded in the AAC format at like, 198 kbps, is kind of short term in my book.

I bet most people who are buying from their store will end up buying the CD - even quite a few who get free copies at the concert will end up buying it for the art work. There are still two problems, though.

1 - the 4 week gap between when the downloads go on sale and when the CD goes on sale.
2 - the likelihood that at some point there will be download only tracks that will never be available on CD.

And then there's the issue that the illegal downloads they are trying to prevent are happening before the store even opens. Their plan to limit that is actually causing people who otherwise would have spent money at their store to buy the music to instead take the illegal download rout.

That's great to hear it might actually be a good album. I'm lookin' forward to it.

I hope this whole thing doesn't affect his sales too much though.

You'd think any musical legend would deserve better than ppl stealing his music.

i'M WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT ON THE COUCH SOUND LIKE.

ILLUSION,PIMP,COMA,CIRCUMSTANCE COMPAIR TO.

AND RATE CINIMON GIRL FROM 1TO10.

I like Illusion Pimp ..... to describe it would be difficult, he's basically telling a story, kinda like shy meets new power generation

On the couch is cool, a little blues number, the album gets better the more you listen to it. A million days, Marrying kind and the forementioned are immediate stand outs.