Music for the Masses

Over the past few years the artist known as Prince, and then a symbol, and now Prince again was a huge supporter of the internet, and it's powerful distribution abilities.  He even created sites and charged loads of money for people to download music from his own "Napster" type sites. Except, they only contained music from the sign guy.  Now he claims the internet is dead.  What?  Dead! I call "yeah right" on this one.  I think that the fact that his sites didn't bring in the revenue that real world touring does, or the direct selling of digital material like a CD; he declares it dead.  I have seen many artists' call it quits and blame the industry platform for their misplaced talents or bad decisions.  Now I definitely am not knocking the music genius of the man.  He is very talented.  You just can't abuse a vehicle of distribution choice for years, soak it up, and then declare it dead when it no longer works for you.  I say if you are scared that your music will end up digitally copied and stolen, then only play live shows, and don't allow any recording devices.  I know you are thinking what about cell phones, but I personally have not ever heard a live recording on a cell phone that I could hardly understand, so I don't really think that would be a real problem.  I know you might still be able to record, but the sound quality would suck.  So now play live and forget about bootleg material because it's quality would suck terribly and would not be of any use to anyone.  But I really don't think the internet is going away just because a man, that cannot keep the same name for more than a few years, thinks it can no longer serve him.

In fact, I like I-tunes, and use it regularly.  I download and pay for the songs I like, and don't have to buy all the filler material on the CD that the music giants use so they can put a CD on the store shelves.

So I say Prince just chill out dude, the internet will still be here when we are both long gone.