http://digitalmusicnews.com/stories/071807prince
UK-Based Prince Giveaway Shifts Nearly 3 Million Copies
Prince shifted nearly 3 million copies of his latest album in the UK, though not everyone was thrilled with the result. The artist included his latest disc, Planet Earth, as a covermount within the latest edition of Mail on Sunday, an interesting twist on a well-worn concept. According to the paper, 2.81 million copies of the paper were purchased, nearly a record-breaking result. The stunning number beats average circulation figures of roughly 2.2 million, though it falls short of sales immediately following the death of Princess Diana in 1997.
Perhaps most displeased with the result was Sony BMG UK, which dissolved its one-album contract with Prince following the discovery of the Mail on Sunday plan. Physical retailers were also highly vocal about the creative play, though HMV did stock the newspaper.
it makes a lot of sense.
a. newspaper circulations are down. incentive for the casual buyer to buy a newspaper. and for whatever price that is. one pound, two pound? what's the shelf life of a newspaper?
a-1. extremely effective distribution methods.
a-2. extremely fast distribution.
a-3. extremely established retail methods.
a-4. cheap
b. prince's traditional record sales are down. if you remember, he tried to go consumer direct.
b-1. "oooh i dunno what all that internet shopping is all about"
b-2. "prince seems spooky, so i ain't touching his website"
b-3. "ooh, the paper comes with a free prince cd, i'll buy that"
b-4. "he's spooky but he comes with the paper anyway"
c. prince has had his own production capability/facility for well over a decade, close to two. he makes so much music that he probably is up there with frank zappa in terms of unreleased archive material.
c-1. production costs are low. he has his own world class studio.
c-2. he has musicians begging to work with him.
c-3. he probably has enough material to tailor make albums for certain clients.
d. he can keep selling his stuff to non traditional outlets.
d-1. he's already included cd's with his concert tickets.
d-2. i think he's doing some hotel residency stint. really makes sense. "i saw the midget 3 feet away and he gave me his new album, so i'll pay $1000 or whatever"
e. he probably makes real money out of shows right now and he probably doesn't need a lot of money, just enough to keep his commercial endeavours in motion.
e-1. i dunno, say $2 mil from newspaper
e-2. say hotel show tickets are $300/seat, for 300 seaters, 10 shows. $900,000 say he gets 50% $450,000
e-3. say conventional show tickets are $30/seat, for 3,000 seaters. 30 shows. $2,700,000 say he gets 50% $1,350,000
TTL 2 mil + 0.45 mil + 1.35 mil = $3.8 mil
these figures are all bogus, but you get the drift, he's using the album to drive something a lot bigger.
f. ideal promotion for prince, win-win no matter what happens.
g. the newspaper can see this as a promotion tactic, what, 2 million dollars or pounds for one or two albums that would give the paper a rise in profile? if the issues were made of quality, there would be enough new people left over to ensure increased sales over time.
as far as retail are concerned, they're fucked. they sound like old people complaining about their rotting teeth.
really. i went to tower shibuya right after i came back from ny, the selection there is dead. even at the experimental music section. as you know, any shop buyer with a decent sense of music and commerce said up yours to their employers and now pursue other avenues. retail should be going more specialist. anything with mass commerical value is going to become more accessible and cheaper via non "traditional" outlets. iTunes, ads, gnutella, pirated software, etc.
the real problem is that retail are clinging onto the old hits style of selling product.
the most recent hot topic of this is the closure of uk retailer fopp and rough trade opening a new shop in east london. i bought stuff at fopp (cos everyone was going on about them) whilst in london, it was pretty boring and only bargained with price. i bought some new stuff which is all whatever and eric dolphy i think, they had live at the 5 spot but only part 2, probably because that was cheaper and there was probably excess stock. i didn't care, i have had both on vinyl and wanted to check out rudy van gelder's sounds (this was just before i started the liars album so was seeking some inspiration). but for the serious music buyer? potential problem.
fopp: http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/retailing/article2005501.ece
rough trade: http://www.roughtrade.com/site/content.lasso?page=east.html
there's a limit to how much you can keep it all interesting with a plastic disc that costs 2000 yen. no matter how esoteric the contents may be. fopp probably closed due to price wars and over expansion in a short time, plus their staff are not likely to be conversed in the difference between joe meek and joe walsh, so what's the point of expanding? whereas, the staff at rough trade would be well conversed. and may even be able to tell you the history of these people, thus possibly inspiring more purchases. the old school style of record shops is probably dead. you can't expect kids to go to the shops to buy just music or cd's. they want a fix and it has to be quick and effective. it has to be condensed and probably sell other goods. oh, sounds just like starbucks.
going back, to prince. there are only a handful of artists that can pull off something in the caliber of what he is about to do. the rest of the world have to contend with artists that have no commercial recognition or backbone.
i think the key issues are, "establishing core market" "establishing income margins" and once the product gains momentum, "crossover methods".
i think this is where the excitement is coming from artists that have grounding. look at bands like the white stripes, arctic monkeys, modest mouse, wilco, etc. all of these bands would of have been stuck in indie rock cluster fuck land 10 years ago. they have their grounding at the core. they have a captive audience. their cd sales are probably not massive, but does that matter? linkin park only do 700k. these bands have a lot more longetivity. white stripes were number 2 this week in japan (international charts). arctics are still top 30 in japan international. simian mobile disco, who were number 14 last week and 23 this week in japan international, their album isn't even out in america yet!
also found this;
http://arts.guardian.co.uk/filmandmusic/story/0,,2119120,00.html#article_continue
The vinyl frontier
Fopp's gone bankrupt. Prince is bypassing the stores completely to give away his new CD. But Adam Webb finds that the future of the record shop might not be as gloomy as the past week's headlines suggest
Friday July 6, 2007
The Guardian
Spillers record store, Cardiff
A phonograph vendor
It's 1.30pm on a Tuesday afternoon and, aside from the metal gates encasing the front doors, it looks like business as usual for Fopp's Cambridge Circus store: Arcade Fire and White Stripes CDs on the front racks, piles of £3 books at the entrance and potential DVD bargains beyond. Peering through the darkness, the only other evidence of things being awry is a hastily-printed poster bearing a foreboding message: "Cash Only".
Article continues
And so it proved, in one way. After closing its doors for an "extraordinary stock take" on June 22, cash, it transpired, was precisely what Fopp needed. After the company overreached itself through the purchase of the ailing Music Zone group in February, the inevitable happened: receivers were called in and it was announced that all 105 of its stores would be closed at the expense of 700 jobs. Aside from the human cost - staff working a whole month with no wages at the end of it - there appears to be a genuine sense of loss at its passing. On Facebook, a few users have set up memorials (there is also a group for "Disgruntled Former Workers") and at this junction of central London, you feel the ghost of 50-quid bloke - that aptly-coined demographic who defined Fopp's customer base - howl.
But the misery for what older customers still call "record shops" didn't end there. Last Thursday, that once self-proclaimed "Top Dog For Music", HMV, announced a slide in profits of 73% for 2006, blaming "profoundly changing markets".
Meanwhile, this week, international music industry association IFPI revealed global music sales to have fallen by 5%. Speaking recently at the London Calling trade event, John Kennedy, the association's chairman and CEO, described the current music business as like being "strapped into a particularly hair raising rollercoaster".
Even Prince is putting the boot in, deciding to release his forthcoming album as, of all things, a Mail on Sunday covermount (see below).
With Tower Records' US bankruptcy still fresh in the memory, it looks as if we are hearing the death rattle of the record shop - a combination of supermarket price-cutting, rampant online piracy, internet shopping and the spectre of digital downloading forming what Paul Quirke, chairman of ERA, the record retailers' trade organisation, describes as "death by a thousand cuts".
However, according to Martin Talbot, editor of music trade magazine Music Week, although obviously in a time of great transition, the "music retailers in crisis" headlines are possibly exaggerated.
"We shouldn't really compare Fopp and HMV, as their situations are quite different," he says. "HMV is still profitable; it's still growing and still adding new stores. And although their profits are down year on year, they are still making money.
"You'd think from looking at the headlines that there would be no point buying CDs at the moment because it's a dying format," he adds. "But it still accounts for more than 90% of the market in value terms. And as far as albums are concerned, it's still the vast majority of the market. The perception that the CD belongs in the dark ages is totally wrong."
Certainly, the CD remains a superior product to any digital alternatives: cheaper, easy to rip and burn, secure and coming with all the added peripherals such as cover, liner notes and lyrics. They also have a tangible value. If you filled a 80GB iPod, costing £229, with tracks purchased direct from Apple at 79p a time (an exercise that could potentially cost around £15,800, not that anyone would ever do it) then the player itself would still be worth no more than £229. At least you can flog an unwanted CD on eBay.
The notion that physical music is the place for bargains is evident from a stroll around HMV's flagship store in Oxford Street in central London. It's hardly bustling with customers, but under a lurid pink 70% off banner you can pick up a classic like Marvin Gaye's What's Going On for three quid or a recent hit such as Klaxons' Myths of the Near Future for six. The overall choice is considerably cheaper than you would get from a download site. Even Steve Jobs has openly admitted that the average iPod only contains a tiny proportion of iTunes-bought tracks.
A key issue for mainstream retailers, says Eamonn Forde, editor of Five Eight magazine, is simply injecting a sense of excitement back into music, beyond slashing prices. "People will queue up for games consoles or the iPhone, but not for music," says Forde. "Ten years ago you had Oasis' Be Here Now on the news and there was this huge demand and feverish build up, but, with the exception of the Arctic Monkeys, there really hasn't been anything since." The notion of the pleasure to be gained from simply spending hours riffling through the racks of a record shop just to see what's there seems to have disappeared from the chains.
Whether HMV's plans for "refreshment hubs" and instore downloading portals will restore excitement is open to question, although, as the heavens open, New Young Pony Club's drum tech starts soundchecking for an instore performance of their re-released single Ice Cream.
However, it is beyond the mainstream that things get really interesting. A few hundred yards into Soho are a score of different worlds: the specialist retailers. Take the dance and electronic music specialist Phonica. Tastefully decked out in wood and with a Perspex bubble chair in the window, it is defiantly leftfield, with 90% of its sales coming from vinyl.
These days, a small independent store dabbling in anything remotely mainstream would be commercial suicide, explains the store's manager, Simon Rigg. "It's moving towards small runs of collectable records, which you might only sell a thousand copies of," he says, picking up a random CD from the office. "For instance, there's this Map Of Africa album, which was a single LP in a nice gatefold sleeve and we sold 300 copies for £20. They've all gone, but if you went to HMV they'd never have heard of it. It's very trendy and collectable, but that's £6,000 from one record."
"The guys here have huge passion about this music," says Aaron Morris, a 34-year-old customer, picking up an Anders Ilar 12-inch from the racks. "What makes it special is that you have to look and you have to find. It's come round full circle with shops like this and vinyl's come round again. It's like an addiction and there's a new generation getting into this music."
A sidestep over to Berwick Street, once the capital's record store Mecca, reveals a slightly more troubling picture, with stalwarts Mr CD and Reckless Records both recently disappearing. The remaining beacon is Sister Ray, which celebrated its silver jubilee in 2006, although co-owner Phil Barton says profits are disappearing.
"If Radiohead brought an album out 5 years ago, I'd know that I'd need 1,500 copies to last me a month," he says. "We'd sell that many copies. But if Radiohead brought an album out tomorrow, I reckon 50 would last a couple of weeks, and that's because they're now a supermarket band. I'd sell more copies of a Sunn0))) album, but we are still here, so we must be doing something right, and we're still positive and buying more deletions and putting stuff in front of people that they can't get anywhere else."
However, a Central Line trip to Brick Lane in east London finds the most optimistic view of the independent record store. This is where Rough Trade will open its ambitious superstore later this month, after closing its minuscule Covent Garden branch. The 5,000 sq ft space will incorporate a coffee shop, a "snug" (in other words a lounging area, with free wi-fi) and a performance space. The aim, says store director Stephen Godfroy, is to "rediscover the joy of browsing" - connecting retail with the overall music experience, and attracting en masse the sort of fans who will pay a premium for this kind of service and recommendation.
"The point of an independent retailer is to pass the baton on," he adds. "As soon as a band hits the mainstream then they are no longer your market - the role of the independent is to break new acts. This is what is so important about this store, you'll discover the artists that even labels are yet to find out about. The back catalogue is important but breaking new artists is the most important thing and that is done face to face over the counter."
Given current market trends, it's one of the bravest retail ventures of the year and, for all the emphasis on digital and social networking, Godfroy is certain the physical album and human interaction will retain their place in the music industry of the future.
"The popularity of music is stronger than ever," he says. "It's retail that's failed." He could be right. But can it succeed? After all, 50-quid bloke is going to need a new home.
Sign of the times
Prince's decision to give away his forthcoming album, Planet Earth, as a Mail on Sunday covermount on July 15 was received with predictable howls of derision by both high-street retailers and the record industry. HMV chief executive, Simon Fox, described the move as "absolute madness", while, perhaps more understandably, the artist's UK label, Sony BMG, quickly dropped him from his one-album deal.
For retailers in particular, the move was tantamount to betrayal. "It's not just about the units they would have sold," says Music Week editor Martin Talbot, "because in reality Prince albums haven't sold in huge volumes for some time. I think it's more about the signals of disloyalty that it sends out to the retailers who supported him through his career. It's a slippery slope and it sends out a really damaging message about music."
But is it that much of a surprise? And is the loss of an album from an artist way past his creative peak really that damaging? For starters, it's not as if the man who once scrawled "SLAVE" down his right cheek and changed his name to a symbol doesn't have a bit of previous when it comes to record labels. Over the past 10 years Prince has wheeled and dealed his way through any number of one-off contracts, as well as pioneering the unusual business plan of giving his music away for nothing.
The impact of this was first witnessed when US ticket holders attending shows on his Musicology tour in 2004 received a free copy of the Musicology album. The result? Nearly $90m (£45m) in gate receipts, and the most profitable tour of the year. The strategy will be repeated for Prince's 21 dates at The O2 this August, where UK fans will be given Planet Earth as part of the £31.21 ticket price.
In effect, already living outside of the record industry system, Prince makes the bulk of his revenue from touring. Few radio stations would touch his new music, and so giving it away is the most effective means of marketing and distribution. It might not work for everyone, but, considering the volume of column inches it inspires, it certainly works for him. And the Mail on Sunday deal, while depriving the record shops and Sony BMG of money, will make more for him: Prince is estimated to be being paid between £250,000 and £300,000 by the newspaper, a far greater sum than he would receive as an advance from a record company.
The retailers might not like it but, as one poster to the music industry's Record of the Day messageboard quipped, it might be better to go with the flow than look back in anger. How about ordering a job-lot of copies of the Mail on Sunday and stacking them next to some Prince CDs that people might actually pay for?
On 30 Jun 2007, at 21:15, Mike Kubeck wrote:
guess you probably already saw this.
mike
http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2114557,00.html
Music industry attacks Sunday newspaper's free Prince CD
Katie Allen, media business correspondent
Friday June 29, 2007
The Guardian
The eagerly awaited new album by Prince is being launched as a free CD with a national Sunday newspaper in a move that has drawn widespread criticism from music retailers.
The Mail on Sunday revealed yesterday that the 10-track Planet Earth CD will be available with an "imminent" edition, making it the first place in the world to get the album. Planet Earth will go on sale on July 24.
"It's all about giving music for the masses and he believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible," said Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen Miron. "This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times."
The paper, which sells more than 2m copies a week, will be ramping up its print run in anticipation of a huge spike in circulation but would not reveal how much the deal with Prince would cost.
One music store executive described the plan as "madness" while others said it was a huge insult to an industry battling fierce competition from supermarkets and online stores. Prince's label has cut its ties with the album in the UK to try to appease music stores.
The Entertainment Retailers Association said the giveaway "beggars belief". "It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career," ERA co-chairman Paul Quirk told a music conference. "It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music.
"The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday."
High street music giant HMV was similarly scathing about the plans. Speaking before rumours of a giveaway were confirmed, HMV chief executive Simon Fox said: "I think it would be absolutely nuts. I can't believe the music industry would do it to itself. I simply can't believe it would happen; it would be absolute madness."
Prince, whose Purple Rain sold more than 11m copies, also plans to give away a free copy of his latest album with tickets for his forthcoming concerts in London. The singer had signed a global deal for the promotion and distribution of Planet Earth in partnership with Columbia Records, a division of music company Sony BMG. A spokesman for the group said last night that the UK arm of Sony BMG had withdrawn from Prince's global deal and would not distribute the album to UK stores.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
From: mmmm@minoru-yokoo.com
Subject: more prince stuff, fyi
Date: 9 July 2007 12:38:06 GMT+09:00
To: mike@super-deluxe.com
Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Lefsetz
Date: 30 June 2007 13:44:13 GMT+09:00
To: verbular@mac.com
Subject: The Prince Flap
This is HYSTERICAL! Is the pint-sized rocker truly going to get the last laugh?
Oh, you remember, when he changed his name, and painted "Slave" on his cheek. The big bad record company wasn't allowing him to do what he wanted, which was to release more MUSIC!
For those who've forgotten, that was Warner Brothers, run by Mo Ostin and Lenny Waronker, the most respected, the most credible label in the business.
But Mo was an accountant. This didn't make BUSINESS sense! Releases had to be staggered, marketed and promoted, the public just couldn't devour that much music.
But what about artistry, what about FANS!
So, Prince ultimately got his freedom and went on his own personal hejira. A walkabout. A journey in the desert.
He used the newfangled Internet to form a club.
Well, that didn't work.
Prince was a joke, a has-been. Someone off the grid, that you no longer paid much attention to.
And then Prince executed a masterstroke. He decided to display his still prodigious skills on national TV, and then go on tour and GIVE his new album away!
Hell, the concert tickets were so expensive anyway (albeit cheaper than those of most long in the tooth rockers), what difference did it make if he threw a few pennies away if it got his new music in the HANDS OF THE FANS!
Yes, just a few pennies. Hell, the value of a plastic disc declined to almost zero, just like its cost, when AOL flooded the market with them.
Getting the music in the hands of fans. That's what technology allows, cheaply. This is what has been driving the record labels INSANE! They've got a model. Not any different from the one Mo employed back at Warner Brothers in the nineties. You craft an album, run up the publicity and sell it for in excess of fifteen bucks. But is this serving the ARTIST, never mind the FAN!
A true artist desires one thing more than any other. To get his music EXPOSED!
Oh, the labels will say it's all about the money. Well, maybe it is to the execs, who are sans talent and sans mission, that's probably why they said that Napster would kill music. Maybe their PROFITS were threatened, but music would live on just fine. Because the people who make it, THEY'VE GOT TO MAKE IT!
Lindsay Lohan, Hilary Duff and Paris Hilton wouldn't make music if it were free, but Radiohead would, and so would Coldplay.
So, if you're a heritage act, and radio will have nothing to do with you, how do you get your message out there, how do you get people to hear your new music?
In one fell swoop, Prince has trumped McCartney. The "Daily Mail" is going to deposit TWO MILLION CDS in the hands of old fans and potential new ones, AS A PREMIUM, essentially COMPLETELY FREE TO THE CONSUMER, the disc comes with the newspaper. What's even BETTER, Prince is getting PAID FOR THEM, by the "Mail"!
Win-win, wouldn't you say?
Not if you're a music retailer. Or a record label.
The retailers, they're dropping like flies. The Fopp chain suddenly bit the dust in the U.K., and you've heard of Tower Records, haven't you?
Think about this. Prince is going to reach MORE people, and ultimately make MORE MONEY, leaving traditional CD retailers OUT OF THE LOOP!
And what does he need the label for? He's rich enough to record the music on his own, and who needs all the services they charge for, getting discs in the store, paying the retailers to stock them, trying to get tracks on the radio unsuccessfully, when he can accomplish ALL THIS BY HIS LONESOME AND KEEP ALL THE MONEY!
It took more than ten years, but the game finally caught up with Prince. He's suddenly at the FOREFRONT!
Wal-Mart? The Eagles should have made a deal with a media company TO GIVE THE ALBUM AWAY! A fucking bidding war, what's a new Eagles disc worth as a promotional tool?
And suddenly, everybody's got your music and you've gotten paid.
Radio didn't play "Hole In The World" that much, it's not like you can count on radio this time around, but maybe all the hoopla of giving the album away will CAUSE radio and TV to embrace new Eagles tracks.
I don't want to beat Irving and his band up too badly. They were at the forefront LAST YEAR, when this deal was MADE! If Henley wasn't such a perfectionist, the album would have been on sale MONTHS ago and they all would have looked like geniuses.
But who's gonna be the first classic act that's gonna give away their record in the U.S?
A new Police record?
The Stones would have been better off giving their album away, shit they barely sold any copies of "A Bigger Bang" and the band's records never sold that well anyway!
Now if you want to get on the radio, if you want to build an act, this paradigm doesn't look too good. You need the traditional label, with its infrastructure and ties to radio and other media outlets.
But do you really need THEM? Or, in the future, will you be able to OUTSOURCE these functions?
Better yet, let's say you don't make music that CAN GET ON THE RADIO! Which is seemingly everybody but rappers or pop airheads these days. Where does this LEAVE YOU?
Well, music shouldn't be free, people should pay for it. But until the labels wake up and authorize new modes of acquisition, allowing more people to own more music at a cheaper price, should free be a part of YOUR STRATEGY?
It already is. Even at the most basic level, the ability for the audience to hear four tracks on MySpace.
Every band has a MySpace site. You have to. The public EXPECTS IT! They just put your name and "MySpace" into the Google field and presume you'll come up. You're THRILLED IF PEOPLE WANT TO LISTEN! That's the HARDEST PART, getting people to LISTEN! That's what the labels have fucked up, the ability for people to HEAR the music. The old bait and switch, one good track that has to be purchased as part of an album of dreck, that paradigm is history, that's done, the Net killed that.
And now the Net seems to have killed record stores.
And despite the long arm of the government, trying to kill small Web stations, the Internet is killing terrestrial radio.
And that free music, traded P2P and hard-drive swapped, it ends up on iPods, many people never even TOUCH the radio dial.
Right now, at the halfway mark in 2007, the revolution has finally begun.
EMI making a deal with SnoCap? Selling by track is economic death, never mind at $1.30. But notice they're unprotected MP3s, UNTHINKABLE AS RECENTLY AS 2006! You see, EMI is DESPERATE!
Retail is fucked.
Are the labels fucked too?
It seems so. Their cash cows are going to do it themselves, like Prince and the Eagles, or extract heinous terms. And, if you've got no guaranteed sellers, HOW DO YOU MAKE YOUR NUMBERS?
By not even being in the new music game, by ceding that business to newcomers, functioning at a much lower economic level, and by selling the assets you already POSSESS!
Yup, trying to sell EVERY LAST ZEPPELIN track to people. Lower the price, and give people more.
Otherwise, the way we're going, people are going to EXPECT, like with Prince, that the music be FREE!
Time to monetize P2P. Time to throw the long ball. Because the acts, and labels are always dependent on the acts, are getting RESTLESS!
In other words, the lunatics are taking over the asylum.
WHAT A GREAT FUCKING MOVIE!
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Begin forwarded message:
From: Bob Lefsetz
Date: 3 July 2007 05:46:40 GMT+09:00
To: verbular@mac.com
Subject: Re-Prince Giveaway
Finally, you've gotten it right! AEG Live UK, brought the concept of packaging an already recorded "live" CD in London's #1 daily as a promotion for his record-setting 21 nights at the new O2 Arena to Paul Gongaware & John Meglen, co-Presidents of Concerts West, our touring division, who in turn took it to Prince along with 20 other marketing ideas. He pooh-poohed most of the others and zeroed in on the Daily Mail offer. My colleagues and I then negotiated a simple agreement, also at his direction, granting only extremely limited rights of distribution.
Even though he was, and still is, contemplating making a distribution deal with Sony/BMG for his new "collection" ("album" is so 2006!) of music, the dream of being able to put his songs in the hands of 2,800,000 people was overwhelmingly enticing to him. What started out as a marketing idea to help sell over 300,000 tickets in a single market (which is also happening), Prince turned into another master stroke.
As an artist, Prince is a musical genius, and, yes, as a futurist, the music industry business model is slowly approaching his vision. AEG Live can only thank him, again, for making us look good as he did in 2004 when we included his new CD in the price of a ticket at 88 sold-out arenas in North America.
I just wanted you to know the genesis of this. You did get it right and Prince deserves all the credit. Ironically, I am sure he could care less about the credit!
Randy Phillips
President & CEO
AEG Live
______________________________________________
Hi Bob
Read your mail and Prince may well have the last laugh, Rosie Gaines one time Prince and the new generation member who had a big UK hit in the uk in 1997 with Closer than Close, In the last three year the three national biggest newspapers (The daily star, The sun and News of the world in the uk have included this track on there cover mount cd's giving them away free, They pay a good non exclusive license fee, the deals all all done within two or three phone calls and a fax and between the three of them they have given away 12 million copies of this track and they also pay the mcps on that amount, albeit they get a slightly reduced rate..good business, good revenues, great exposure and absolutely no hassles.
Scottie
Rosie Gaines manager
______________________________________________
Bob..
Prince recorded "Musicology" here at Metalworks to tape at a time when nobody had recorded analog here in over 2 years !!
..for once - a record sounded real - and it translated..wow..QUALITY - what a novel concept.. ( the ticket/CD premium strategy was a field-lapper )
Gil Moore
______________________________________________
love the letter...
look after Simple Minds....did 2 cover mounts cd's with the Sunday Express in April......
re recording restrictions are up......so no money to the label.......got paid a shit load of money....all good....next week in Music Week a big backlash from retail..how cover mounts are devaluing music....FUCK YOU!!!!
Ged Malone
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