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ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT MARCH 20, 2009 Prince Aims to Prove He's Still King
For his new album set, the artist has a deal with Target and a gig on Leno
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123751155101090905.html
By JOHN JURGENSEN
Prince, a musician so protective of his independence that he operates
without a manager or a record label, has recruited some mainstream
commercial allies -- Target and "The Tonight Show" -- to help him mount a
three-album release on March 29.
At the same time, he's flying solo online with a new Web site that will
deliver content directly to fans.
NBC
Prince will perform on "The Tonight Show" for three nights starting
Wednesday.
The split strategy reflects the 50-year-old star's stepped-up -- and
sometimes contradictory -- efforts to burnish his legacy, in a climate where
even music legends are struggling to draw attention to album releases.
Prince's triptych offering consists of "LOtUSFLOW3R," a collection of
psychedelic rock songs, "MPLSoUND," featuring an electronic sound, and
"Elixir," an album by singer Bria Valente, the latest in a string of Prince
protégés. The CD bundle, priced at $11.98, will only be available in Target
stores, putting Prince in the growing ranks of major artists who have done
exclusive deals with big-box retailers, including Guns N' Roses (Best Buy)
and Bruce Springsteen and the Eagles (Wal-Mart). In exchange for
exclusivity, retailers promote the artist heavily in stores and usually
agree not to return unsold copies.
Prince has a hometown connection with Target, which is based in Minneapolis,
Prince's home base until a recent move to Los Angeles. Target's team
negotiated directly with the singer, a spokeswoman says.
To get the word out, Prince will perform on Jay Leno's show for three
consecutive nights starting Wednesday. Don't expect to hear "Let's Go Crazy"
-- a representative for the singer says he'll perform only new material, and
doesn't plan to sit for an interview with Mr. Leno. (A "Tonight Show"
spokeswoman says the final song list has not been discussed.)
Such TV gambits, increasingly common, yield a burst of publicity and days of
promotion on the TV host's network. But the payoff for the act can be tough
to measure. U2, promoting its new album "No Line on the Horizon," recently
did a five-night run with David Letterman. The show's ratings didn't spike,
however, and the album sold 484,000 copies in its first week, a tepid
showing for one of the world's biggest bands. (A new Coldplay album sold
more than 700,000 copies in its first week last year.)
Mainstream partnerships still leave room for the rogue tendencies of an
artist who once changed his name to a symbol, says Kevin Powell, author of
several books on culture. "Since Prince was starting out at 19 years old,
it's always been about having one foot in, one foot out" of big business, he
says.
The recent result has been a batch of experimental release strategies. The
artist bundled his 2004 album "Musicology" with tickets to his run of nearly
100 shows -- boosting the album's official sales tally, which now stands at
two million copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan. In another controversial
move, last year he struck a deal with a British newspaper to give away some
three million copies of his "Planet Earth" album in copies of the paper,
causing his music distributor, Sony, to cancel the album's release in U.K.
stores. He has also taken more traditional publicity steps, like a
performance at the 2007 Super Bowl.
Despite the chatter such moves have sparked, and the unflagging popularity
of Prince's live shows, he hasn't had a single in the Top 40 since 1999.
"His business savvy has superseded his musical artistry in some ways, and I
think he has to get back to the balance," Mr. Powell says.
The primary channel for Prince's coming output will be his Web site, which
goes live Tuesday. Despite being one of the first major music stars to
foster Web fan communities, Prince has been largely absent online in recent
years. In 2006, he shut down his official site, the five-year-old NPG Music
Club, which offered fans access to new music releases and premium tickets
for subscription fees of up to $100.
The new site, Lotusflow3r.com, will charge an annual fee of $77 for access.
The site has a galactic theme: Users can click on three "virtual planets"
for music from the new albums, videos and clues to unlocking other content.
As artists hunt for alternatives to traditional album sales, such
subscription sites are proliferating. But holding on to paying subscribers
can be tough. Jim Guerinot, who manages Nine Inch Nails, a rock band known
for its online initiatives, says that most subscribers are there for the
same reason: access to tickets. "Nobody wants to pay for random content --
unless you can get me in the first 20 rows," he says.
The job of satisfying Prince's subscribers will likely fall to the site's
creators, Anthony Malzone and Scott Addison Clay. Mr. Clay says premium
tickets will be available there, including about 150 seats for the "Tonight
Show" and access to three Prince concerts in Los Angeles on March 28.
A vice president of digital marketing at the Cimarron Group, a Hollywood
firm that created sites for the films "Twilight" and "The Dark Knight," Mr.
Clay was vaulted into Prince's inner circle after being contacted by the
singer last September through a mutual colleague.
In addition to his Web design duties, Mr. Clay has been serving as Prince's
spokesman and sometime negotiator. He helped work out the agreement with
"The Tonight Show," whose representatives knew better than to ask Prince to
perform classic songs on air, Mr. Clay says. "That does not go over well
with him," he adds.
Write to John Jurgensen at [email protected]
Copyright 2008 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved
This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and
use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by
copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please
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