Prince Primes Pirates For Huge Download Fest With 20Ten

[nsane.forums]

This week will see the release of Prince’s new album. The ten-song offering which kicks off with a track called ‘Compassion’ will not be available in bricks and mortar record stores.

In an interview with the UK’s Daily Mirror tabloid – which will be giving the album away for free in a covermount promotion this week – Prince explains why the likes of iTunes and other digital music stores won’t be getting the track either.

“The internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it,” he explained.

“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 At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated.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,” he added.

While the album is also set to be given away with other newspapers, such as Het Nieuwsblad and De Gentenaar in Belgium and Rolling Stone magazine in Germany, contrary to claims by Prince, 20Ten will also be available for free via thousands of Internet outlets.

Sometime soon, probably before the planned release date of July 10th, 20Ten will be all over BitTorrent, Gnutella, dozens of one-click hosters, Usenet and file-sharing blogs worldwide and not one of them will have paid Prince the kind of advance he expects but didn’t receive from iTunes and other digital stores. With nowhere else but from a newspaper in limited numbers to get the album, Prince fans will turn to the web in their millions.

At this point in the final paragraphs one would normally sum up the news. “Prince is crazy for slamming the Internet and digital devices” or maybe “Prince is a hero for giving his music away” but in this case it’s quite difficult.

“I really believe in finding new ways to distribute my music,” he told The Mirror and strangely, by completely shunning the Internet with the release of 20Ten, what Prince has done is given this “outdated” network a golden opportunity to distribute his music on a scale worthy of an artist of his stature.

So where can people download this album right now? Well, it seems, absolutely nowhere. Despite the fact that almost 100% of albums leak weeks before their planned release date, 20Ten remains stubbornly offline with just 4 days to go.

Article from: TorrentFreak.

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[Lite]

Is the Web outdated, or is it just Prince?

The Internet has suffered a premature death--or at least that's what aging rocker Prince believes has happened.

"The Internet [is] completely over," Prince told U.K. publication The Mirror, which published an interview with the music icon on Monday, the eve of the debut in that country of his latest CD, 20TEN. Perhaps not coincidentally The Mirror plans to soon give away copies of the disc with every purchase of the paper.

"The Internet [is] like MTV," Prince said later in the Interview. "At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated."

It's easy to see what's happening here: first Prince is making provocative comments in a publication that will tuck a copy of his latest work in its pages. Can't hurt sales by stirring a little controversy, can it? Still, one might think Prince would know that he risked becoming a punch line ("The only thing unhip and outdated is...")

Certainly one of the greatest music artists during the course of the past three decades knows that CD sales plummet as digital sales climb. He must know that the Internet is the most revolutionary communication tool since the telephone and is making information more accessible to the masses. The Web has radically transformed entertainment, media, education, banking, politics, travel, retail...forget all that.

Prince says the Web is washed up.

The performer, known for such classic 1980's songs as "Purple Rain" and "Little Red Corvette," has said little about the Internet the past two years since going on a copyright crusade in late 2007. That's when the Minneapolis native lashed out at his own fan sites and demanded they remove all "photographs, images, lyrics, album covers, and anything linked to Prince's likeness." He also tried to prevent a Pennsylvania woman from posting a clip to YouTube of her baby dancing to a snippet of his song "Let's Go Crazy." He lost that round.

In what he called an attempt to "reclaim the Internet," Prince threatened to sue YouTube, eBay, and The Pirate Bay over copyright issues. Nothing came of it. Now, the only weapon Prince appears to have at his disposal is unfounded rumor, yet he continues to tilt at his Web mills.

"Anyway, all these computers and digital gadgets are no good," he told The Mirror. "They just fill your head with numbers and that can't be good for you."

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