Ah, Prince. This weekend he called record contracts “slavery” and advised musicians not to sign them. Twenty two years ago, Prince claimed he was a slave to Warner Music and left the label. he changed his name to a glyph symbol and identified as The Artist Formerly Known as Prince. He then re-recorded all of his music so he could own it, but no one wanted those recordings. They wanted the originals. After drifting from Arista to EMI and other places, and releasing his own music, Prince went back to Warner Music last year and released two albums. He has a new one scheduled for Sept 7th. On Warner Music.
I don’t know. Prince took all music off of Spotify, then a released a new single straight to Spotify called “Stare.”
Then he gave that new Warner Music album to Jay Z’s Tidal exclusively, a service that no one is really using.
He also allowed this video to post to YouTube of his backup band 3rd Eye Girl, in a string session. Notice something? All the musicians are white. Just sayin’…
Prince brought 10 black journalists into Paisley Park this weekend, made them wait until 12:45am, spoke to them briefly, and played no music.
The great music publicist Susan Blond and I went through this years ago with Prince. I don’t do it anymore. I don’t wait around til the middle of the night when Prince shows up and is in his own world. He’s released a smattering of good songs since 1995. But it all pretty amusing. At least he’s still into whatever it is he’s doing.
