Friday, March 20, 2009

Prince Offers New Three Disk Album for $11.98, Exclusively at Target


Prince's new albums, "LOtUSFLOW3R" and "MPLSoUND," as well as a third bonus album dubbed "Elixir," will be bundled together and sold exlusively at Target for the low, low, price of $11.98.

The albums, which drop March 29th, will also be available online through a new, subscription website. For $77, subscribers will be able to access the entire site, as well as download the disks and view "a robust selection of exclusive videos, behind the scenes action, news and concert info." The site will be ready for subscribers on March 24th.

I think this is a smart move- mostly.  With iTunes selling albums for around $10 a pop, it's hard to justify going to Virgin for the hard copy- even though I prefer it. (My car still takes CDs.) It's a great way for Prince to stay competitive in both markets- the digital world and the hard copy.

But $77 for a subscription? Prince has been successful in the past with subscription websites (he's one of the few artists that were) but that was pre-recession. I guess the stakes aren't too high- fans will buy his CDs in one form or another.

1 comment:

  1. I don't even know what to say about this...really $77 for access to "exclusive videos" which I bet are going to be up on youtube in a month.

    In other news, I wish more artists put out 3 CDs for the price of one instead of nickle and diming us at every turn.

    The RIAA likes to blame downloading for the downturn in their industry, but the movie and television industry is still going extremely strong and growing despite downloading. Why? It's because they don't intentionally go out of their way to extort their target audience.

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