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RIP Prince, A Legendary Musician With A Complicated Internet History (networkworld.com)
alphadogg writes: Reflecting on the popular musician's uneasy relationship with the Internet and social media upon the 57-year-old surprising death. In 2010, Prince "famously shuttered his LotusFlow3r.com website," proclaiming that "The Internet is completely over... All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you." In 2014, The Guardian ran a story titled "Prince quits the Internet," after the singer deleted his social media accounts. He filed a lawsuit against his fans, which was later dropped, for sharing bootlegged copies of his music online. He even banned fans from taking smartphone photos at his concerts in 2013. Prince did seem to open up to the Internet to some degree in the past couple years. Prince's HTNRUN album was posted on Jay Z's Tidal music site last year. In Silicon Valley, Prince is being remembered as a social innovator and a passionate advocate for Black youth," inspiring YesWeCode, Van Jones' initiative to teach 100,000 low-income kids to write code, and hackathons across the country to expose kids in underserved communities to computer science. Bob Brown from Networkworld writes, "News of Prince's death Thursday briefly crashed the TMZ news site. From there, fans flocked to the Internet and social media to mourn this music star who did his darnedest to stay off the grid." RIP Prince.
Dear idiot,
It is very difficult to find songs on Youtube to listen to to remember Prince's works by, at the moment, because Prince himself made it difficult. He was not just any musician who had problems with how the internet affected his music, but perhaps the primary one. This site is a site for news for nerds, and Princes death is relevant to those of us who use the internet for music.
Check on Kevin Smith talking about his experience of working with Prince. Weird guy, but definitely left his mark.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?...
If you post as Anonymous Coward, don't expect a reply.
Thanks for the link to that video. Never really got into Prince that much, and certainly did not recognize his talent with a guitar. Until now. That performance gave me chills.
I'd say they both recognized the Internet for what it is.
Yeah, I'd like to see Bieber or Spears riff improvisations on several instruments during one live show, and produce her own albums.
I don't like much of what he put out on record -- there's some lovely ballads -- but in terms of musical talent your're rather wrong.
The record company put restrictions on when and where he could use his stage name of "Prince".
He sidestepped that with the "formerly known as" label.
Close, but what he did is change his name to force the studio into using that instead of his popular name. The point was, they disagreed over the contract, but the studio had the fine print on their side, so he spent about 7 years working against his own marketing, losing money to keep them from earning it off of him, while still complying with the terms so he could eventually pass out the other side and move on.
Some stores weren't able to print the symbol for a few years; they didn't have the font. His music was not even available in many places for a significant time period, or was kept in the back of the store and only available on request.
Some of his early music was very influential, but what he did in fighting for his artistic self-determination is more impressive to me. Although, signing the contract you wanted is also important. The importance for artists is: no, the record company would never sign a "Jefferson Airplane contract" ever again in history. But the artist should also refuse to sign a "Prince contract" that gives them too much control.