Record labels went anger at Prince : on 15 of July, Prince decided to offer his latest album to readers of Bristish newspaper ‘The mail on Sunday‘. Whilst this is already old news, it is worthy of being looked at from another angle.

“Prince believes that the most important thing is to broadcast his music to as many people as possible” said the newspaper’s director. He was delighted about this particular profitable partnership with the newspaper, which publishes more than 2 million copies.

What is Prince’s main objective? Perhaps to play a dirty trick on Sony/BMG. It is certainly good publicity. Beyond that, however, could it be that he wants to ensure his album receives as much air time as possible?

With music as popular as ever, (high prices for concert tickets), Prince is aware that he will be able to make up for what he has lost in terms of sales through mediums other than the Cd itself. By offering his latest album ‘Planet earth’ to a large section of the public, he has ensured that his album gets a great deal of exposure in the music world and will provide a good source of income in the future.

Prince has done on a worldwide scale what Jamendo does for all registered artists on its website : he has tapped into a huge distribution network to release his music and ensure that it reaches a much larger audience. The link between public and artists becomes increasingly unlikely because of the overabundance of music. It is for this reason that music should be distributed as widely as possible.

In conclusion even if Prince’s music is not under the Creative Commons license, the method of broadcast used is quite similar to that of Jamendo. Perhaps the artist is starting to change his marketing strategy and ethic to the third way, which is the Jamendo way.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 26th, 2007 at 12:56 pm and is filed under English. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.