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Prince Says Internet Is Over

Posted by samzenpus on from the it-was-fun-while-it-lasted dept.

the_arrow writes "According to the artist currently known as Prince, 'The internet's completely over.' At least that what he says in an interview with the British newspaper Mirror. Quoting Prince: 'The internet's like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you.'"

25 of 450 comments (clear)

  1. Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by elrous0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    ...and suddenly he became outdated.

    Now get off Prince's lawn, ya young whippersnappers with yer noisy electronic doo-hickeys!!

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Prince was only hip with love stricken teenage girls and sexually confused young boys.

    2. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Prince doesn't understand.

      The internet is no more a "fad" than radio or television. It merely changed how we receive the radio and television. NOW instead of fixed schedules we can get things on-demand, whenever we wish.

      MTV and VH1 have not died. They simply moved. Now they are on the net and have a new name: youtube.com and googlevideos.com and itunes.com

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    3. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by timeOday · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I say, Prince could be right in a sense. Smarthphones, Facebook, and twitter have a faddish aspect; they are "hot" lately. After these blow over, it's possible most people will be done with them - and I don't just mean those particular websites, like the passing of the guard from myspace to facebook - but with the idea of checking in 100 times per day to make inane comments that nobody reads.

      Like with cars. (Yup, a car analogy). I was talking to my dad about the classic cars of the 60s that sell for big bucks and said I couldn't see what cars from the 80s or 90s would reach that status. He said, probably none. When he was a kid, all the guys lusted after cars and wrenched on them all the time. Now that they have money, these same guys bid up those same cars at auction. Nowadays, we still have cars, but they're just "there" doing what the do, and the buzz isn't there. I think that's what Prince means, not that the Internet will stop existing or even stop being used.

    4. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by glwtta · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Being confident about being heterosexual do not make you one.

      Uh, I think the OP meant confident in the other orientation. It's just silly that they always get called "confused" - some of them know exactly what they want.

      --
      sic transit gloria mundi
    5. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by omnichad · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Yeah...umm...and VHS hasn't died either...it just changed it's name to Blu-Ray. Oh, and dinosaurs aren't extinct - they've merely evolved...into alligators.
       
      By your standard, when is ANYTHING dead?

    6. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by DJ+Jones · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Really? There are a lot of cars from the 80's and 90's that sell for top dollar. You're just not thinking outside the box, kid. You're comparing rare muscle cars from the 60's to generic crap boxes from the 80's. Ignoring the obvious fact that classic value increases with age and you have a 20-year difference in your comparison, here are a few winners:
      • Toyota Supra
      • Mazda RX7
      • De Lorean
      • Lamborghini Diablo
      • Any Ferrari
    7. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by commodore64_love · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >>>MTV was a music video transport system, youtube is a video sharing system.

      I don't see the difference. In the 80s and 90s the record companies used MTV to share their music videos with the teenagers. Today the record companies used Yotube to share their music videos with the teenagers.

      Same players, same purpose. All that's changed it now the videos are on-demand, instead of following a preplanned schedule.

      Same goes for watching Sci-Fi Channels in the 90s versus watching scifi.com today - it's the same old crap but now you can watch Stargate whenever you feel like it.

      --
      "I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
    8. Re:Like how in the 80's Prince was hip... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I resent your inclusion of "strict teetotal vegan" as an example of craziness. I know a teetotal vegetarian who has a pretty good head on his shoulders. He's into punk and metal, so Prince isn't really his scene.

  2. The internet says "Prince is over" by jsepeta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the days of rockstars selling $20 cd's and people paying attention to monotonous radio stations that only play a short playlist of over-publicized artists is over. he'll never make the millions he used to, and to be successful (wealth-accumulating) in the post internet world one needs to get off their ass and tour, actually PERFORMING music like the minstrels of yore.

    --
    Remember kids, if you're not paying for the service, YOU ARE THE PRODUCT THAT IS BEING SOLD.
    1. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by jythie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Or even worse.... one ends up being paid based of actual sales rather then convincing some executive how much you are worth ahead of time. That seemed to be his big beef.

    2. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by Nadaka · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Anyone who becomes an artist for wealth is a fool. The purpose of being an artist is to create art because it is what you love. If you can manage to not starve while you do it, more power to you.

    3. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by S.O.B. · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The purpose of being an artist is to get laid.

      --
      Some of what I say is fact, some is conjecture, the rest I'm just blowing out my ass...you guess.
    4. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by jeffmeden · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Funny, Prince basically says the same thing; he is very paranoid about Top-40 stations and exploitative record companies... Except that 8 years ago when he was saying this, people just added it to the list of reasons why he was crazy. Oh, and do you not realize that Prince still tours regularly, after more than 20 years? He doesn't seem to be toting the record company line of "the internet is stealing our music and killing our puppies", rather he has an admittedly dated opinion that there is simply now too much "noise" on-line for real art to flourish there.

      Disclaimer: I am not a huge Prince fan, but I don't think the guy's work gets a fair shake thanks to the crazy that comes out of his mouth when he's not singing.

    5. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by zoward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Even performing live may not be profitable for artists. I just learned that Lilith Fair canceled 1/3rd of its summer schedule due to lack of ticket sales. AND apparently it's not the only concert calling t quits. This summer has been lousy.

      This isn't surprising. Between Ticketmaster, promoters, sponsors, concert hall "renovation fees", parking fees, etc ad nauseum, and the fact that we're in a recession, most bands large enough to tour have been priced right out of the largest target market for concerts - teens and young adults. If the Lilith Fair, which usually has many popular acts, can't fill a third of their venues, I can't imagine solo acts are doing well on tour either.

      --
      "Can't you see that everyone is buying station wagons?"
    6. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by mrjatsun · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let me fix that for you...

      "Anyone who writes code for wealth is a fool. The purpose of writing code is to create something that's valuable to people, because it is what you love. If you can manage to not starve while you do it, more power to you."

      Everyone should do what they love, and try not to starve. Hmm, or maybe we should return to reality... :-)

    7. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by Pinky's+Brain · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's just statistics ... getting into coding you have a reasonable expectation that you can make a living from it, getting into art (or sports) that expectation is entirely unreasonable ... you better be prepared for the fact that the time you sink into it has just been for the love of the art, otherwise you are going to be disappointed.

    8. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by Nadaka · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Let me rephrase that:

      There are hundreds of millions of people who want to be artists. Of those, only a few hundred thousand have any talent at all. Of those, only a few hundreds are ever going to become wealthy and most of the rest will not be able to pay the rent from the proceeds of their art.

      Its like buying a lottery ticket, except the cost of that ticket is not $5, but instead it is the sum of decades of work and hardship.

      Writing code generally pays the bills and then some. Few of us are going to get extremely rich, but a fair share will make it well into upper middle class.

      Now, there are the kids out there that dream of writing/playing video games all day and being the next John Carmack. The parallel with artists is pretty close, except that you can use the same basic skillset to make a decent and more predictable living writing business applications.

    9. Re:The internet says "Prince is over" by Remus+Shepherd · · Score: 3, Insightful

      The purpose of every human endeavor is, ultimately, to get laid.

      Artists just get to lay the freakier chicks.

      --
      Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
  3. Elle, Oh, Elle by whisper_jeff · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There was a time when Prince was an amazing musician, making some spectacular music. Purple Rain remains one of the better albums ever created. But. Prince has jumped the shark. He is so utterly out of touch with reality that the mind simply boggles. And he hasn't made any great music in a very long time. Well, that may not be true - he may have made a ton of spectacular music but it's all stored away in his vault, protected from pirates and music execs and, well, fans.

    The man truly is insane.

  4. If you feed the troll, you get to keep it by Rogerborg · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Nice job publicising that he's got a new album out. How else would we have heard?

    Then again, if it's only available on CD, I guess nobody here is going to buy it, so that'll be a target market FAIL for lil' Princey there.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  5. Re:yeah, I'm fixating on the less relevant part... by hey! · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's a huge gap between having a head full of numbers, being good at math, and being good at understanding the world (which requires math).

    There's tension and interplay between understanding statistics (for example) and the experiential knowledge and even imaginative faculties needed to apply statistics to a problem like (for instance) running a business. Mathematics is like a map of the real world; it tells you about places you haven't been yet, but being there tell you things that aren't on a map.

    --
    Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
  6. The internet IS over by twoallbeefpatties · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The internet is over in the same way that MTV is over: they both exist in a gentrified form. And maybe if you stay up late, you'll actually catch them both staying true to their roots. :V

    --
    Libertarians somehow believe that private businesses should be stronger than governments but weaker than individuals.
  7. Internet:TV :: Website:MTV by Myopic · · Score: 2, Insightful

    He's right that MTV is lame and passe (and has been since I became old enough to watch it in the 1990s), but that's hardly a good simile for the Internet. If you want to say that something is passe the way MTV is passe, then you talk about a specific production object on the medium: a website, or a service.

    So, perhaps Napster is over. Or perhaps Slashdot is over. Or perhaps Bittorrent is over. But saying the Internet is over is like saying Television is over. That's still a retarded thing to say, though, so maybe Prince would agree with that.

  8. Re:Kevin Smith by aapold · · Score: 2, Insightful

    That isn't Lake Minnetonka.

    --
    "Waste not one watt!" - CZ