Last week Prince declared the Internet dead according BBC 6 Music. The 52 year old Purple Rock star refuses to share his music on iTunes and will apparently have nothing to do with the internet. In my opinion, however, he has actively demonstrated that he is ignorant about the internet let alone the fact that so many of us make a living on it. This is why I think Prince is more dead than the internet.
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Is He Right?
With the fact that Musicians make very small profits on iTunes and bearing in mind the fact that anyone could just search for a track on Youtube, it makes sense that artists would be looking for alternative ways of selling their music online. The biggest record labels have tried to figure out a way to combat file sharing and illegal downloading since the regulatory approach of fines doesn’t seem to be working. So if Prince had gotten himself into a fit of rage and said “Online music is dead” or “iTunes is dead” we would have had some understanding of where he was coming from. But to say that the Internet is dead is an absurd and weird conclusion which only a granddad of his age would even think would be possible.
Regardless of this, is the internet going to die? The answer is possibly. If ISPs start blocking certain websites because they decided they would only allow an elite of websites to be visited and to visit others you need to pay more, then yes the internet would die. All proposals like this, however, have been blocked and refuted through and through. So the chances of the internet dying is highly unlikely unless the devil’s older brother Rupert Murdoch gets a say on it.
What Prince Doesn’t See
Looking into what Prince has said shows that he really doesn’t know anything about the internet in general. I don’t think he really knows what a coder or web designer is and doesn’t appreciate the hundreds of thousands of freelancers and entrepreneurs who are making their living online. I really doubt that he sees the field of online business because of the fact that he is a rock icon who need not know about us normal people.
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A more likely explanation is that he does see us freelancers but hates the internet because of a personal grudge. Prince tried to free himself of record companies by launching himself online and unfortunately this seems to have not kicked off well. He had court battles and copyright issues with a few pictures which appeared of him online and tried to sue eBay and YouTube over other copyright issues. Most of us have tried to launch ourselves in our small business areas and whenever our business was impeded by a a set back, we all tried harder. Prince has proven to be a quitter and if he were a freelancer his freelancing career would be as dead as his music career.
Is He Crazy Then?
It would seem that Prince is an absolute nut from what he actually said about the internet:
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.
Apparently the internet fills your head with numbers, says the artist who’s album is 20Ten and his last album was LOtUSFLOW3R, yes spelt with a ’3′ where there should be an ‘E’. But of course, that doesn’t fill your head with numbers, rather a webpage full of text and images fills your head with numbers. Now, it is starting to sound like Prince has lost it.
Unless of course Prince is Neo and therefore as “The One” only sees loads of green numbers around him…perhaps he isn’t so crazy after all. Maybe he is trying to save us from the Matrix by telling us not to rely on computers because there is about to be a war between mankind and computers. Yes, Prince can’t have lost it, he is just one step ahead of us!
The irony is that he is releasing his album free in the Daily Mail, which fans have guess what…put online illegally. If he actually wanted to stop illegal downloads, how about making the legal version available online? Instead he closed his website. I wonder how many stars said they would not distribute CDs when Tapes became outdated?
Final Point
Prince needs to find himself an old age group and purchase “Internet for Dummies” or even one specifically for the elderly population. The internet is not half as dead as Prince’s career and the internet will outlive Prince, giving it the last laugh. Now subscribe to our RSS for more awesome content.
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