From: Kragen Sitaker (kragen@pobox.com)
Date: Fri Aug 11 2000 - 17:43:57 PDT
I had heard of Prince (recently known as O(+> but apparently recently
renamed Prince)'s support for Napster, but I hadn't heard this:
The artist once again known as Prince was onto something
when he sold his five-CD set "Crystal Ball" exclusively on
the Web without the help of record companies, distributors,
or record stores. On his website, he advertised the album
and told his fans he would release not one song until he had
100,000 pre-orders for the entire record. He sold 250,000
copies and kept 95 percent of the revenue which industry
experts estimate at $5 million.
This was from http://www.liberzine.com/jerrybrito/000804bizmodels.htm.
If this is true --- and it appears to be corroborated by other places,
although I'm having a hard time finding Prince's website
(http://www.1800newfunk.com/? http://www.love4oneanother.com/? where
do eye put my cc#?) --- this means Prince is performing the Street
Performer Protocol.
He is, however, still threatening legal action against people making
unlicensed copies of the album, and according to
http://www.prince.org/lawsuits/, filed several nasty lawsuits against
fan websites last year.
--
<kragen@pobox.com> Kragen Sitaker <http://www.pobox.com/~kragen/>
Perilous to all of us are the devices of an art deeper than we ourselves
possess.
-- Gandalf the Grey [J.R.R. Tolkien, "Lord of the Rings"]
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