05.10.07 5:00 AM CDT
• Music
• Tim Mohr
When in 2004 Prince decided to give away a copy of Musicology with every concert ticket bought, it seemed like a stunt. Now he’s repeating the gesture as part of his upcoming 21-day residency in London. This time, however, it feels like the future. Concerts are the key source of revenue for most bands. But to varying degrees, that was almost always the case: Unless you were a platinum-selling act, LPs were just a way to get the message out about your show and seed an audience in various towns around the country or globe. Perhaps that is changing. With various other forms of publicity now displacing the album—MySpace pages, free MP3s, blogs—perhaps recordings will now become reminders of shows rather than harbingers of them. A souvenir for the members of a club or community rather than the membership token.
In the case of Prince’s giveaway, the pop chart certification agency in the UK has said since the concert ticket sales are not actually album purchases, these tens of thousands of albums will not count for their purposes. But what does His Purple Majesty care? His live act has never been more popular here or abroad, so he hardly needs the promotional tool that a charting album is supposed to provide. Or as Prince himself puts it, “I don't have to be in the speculative business of the record industry.”
RSS 2.0
http://www.playboy.com/mt-tb.cgi/2283