Sunday, July 15, 2007

Prince upset his label... again

Looks like Prince has upset a lot of people today. For anyone not aware, Prince's new album, "Planet Earth" will be on the front cover of the Mail on Sunday today. Sony BMG have gone nuts about it apparently, and Paul Quirk, co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association said "It is an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career".

Call me a cynic if you must, but I think what Quirk said actually translates to "we're going to lose profit margins now because we can't sell it with a mark-up". One thing is for sure, MoS sales are going to go up today. Even lots of lefties might buy it with their noses held.

2 comments:

Nich Starling said...

There is a real problem in that what prince did underlvalues music (is an album worth £1.40 ?) and id we are to get new artistes coming thorugh, you need record companies who are going to make big profits from established stars in order to invest in new up and coming artistes.

Anonymous said...

Good God. It's a business. So long as he hasn't broken contractual obligations, he can do what he wants.

I also have no idea why successful musicians have an obligation to plough money back into the business to produce more new acts. If music suddenly makes no money at all, guess what, people will still make music. It might not have the production values it has today, but decide how much you like paying for that; if it's enough to make the business profitable, they'll start producing that sort of music again.