http://www.suntimes.com/o...nce03.html



Prince yield control of tunes? When pigs fly

April 3, 2004

BY CHRIS MARLOWE Advertisement






LOS ANGELES -- Prince has always had an individualistic approach that frequently puts the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee at odds with the traditional music industry. So it's no real surprise that the artist has opted to launch his own Musicology Download Store.

Rather than entrust his latest songs to iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody or the other emerging leaders in the market, Prince's NPG company partnered with Entriq so that he could maintain complete control.

Most of the artist's most popular recordings are already available through iTunes, Napster, Rhapsody or other more established music services. By contrast, Prince's personal store features songs from his new album, ''Musicology,'' which will be released April 20, along with selected live and unreleased material.

The www.npgmusicclub.com store offers albums for $9.99 and individual tracks for 99 cents. Fans who have joined the fan club -- which costs $25 for a lifetime membership -- get the songs for 77 cents each and advance concert ticket sales.

Prince first made online music available to paying fans in February 2001 in an experiment that lasted about a year, according to Sam Jennings, director of online services and Web master at NPG. ''Now digital rights management and legal downloads are becoming pretty commonplace, so we decided the thing to do was to provide what consumers are getting used to.''

Entriq's CEO Jan Steenkamp said his company secures the content, provides the infrastructure, handles the back-end billing and supplies reporting information to Prince's team. Encoding, hosting and processing are handled by NPG.

''Our overhead is low and the costs are low,'' Jennings said, declining to give specifics. ''With that, and considering Prince gets all the money after expenses, it's definitely profitable.''

Steenkamp said Entriq was capable of implementing any business model or usage rules NPG desired. ''And it's not just music,'' he said. ''We can facilitate any media they want to monetize, in a safe, secure mechanism.''

Entriq has provided pay media services for 25 years. Other customers of the San Diego-based company include DirecTV, MTV Networks, M-Net, Shanghai Cable and Canal Digital.

Hollywood Reporter