Parenting and The End of The World

It appears that Prince’s ego problems are getting a little out of hand. And the reports of his “majesty” going off the deep end have always seemed to follow him around over the years. But the latest news story that has got everyone in a tizzy is his insistence to take legal actions against fans that put up copyrighted photos of his likeness. Yes, I’m among those Prince Fans feeling more and more dejected as the years go on.

It seems that you can’t find one single interview about Prince anywhere that doesn’t have him gloating about something whether it be his musical prowess, how superior he is to modern day musicians, and spouting off his catch phrase, “Real music by real musicians.” even though all of his albums are riddled with computer based riffs and drum machines.

There’s been a lot of talk that the entire reason why the NPG Music Club (NPGMC) shut its doors was because Prince didn’t like the negative reviews and criticisms that kept popping up on the forums. Then of course we all remember the stink he caused in July when he played a show in Minneapolis and essentially treated the city like his own personal playground ignoring rules, regulations and noise ordinances.

When he strikes out at fan sites with legal threats for illegal distribution of music, that’s one thing. As a musician, I see that as a big problem even though there are literally hundreds of hours of bootleg recordings and unreleased songs out there that he refuses to release to the fans, so his fans have no choice but to obtain them however they can via torrent websites, fan websites and trading sites. But he better wake up and start embracing the technology or he’ll slowly find his fan base dwindling. Artists like Dave Matthews, John Mayer and even George Clinton and Parliament have embraced fan recordings of their performances and have used technology to establish themselves as cultural icons.

The problem comes with Prince’s latest rant of threatening legal courses of action against fans who post pictures of him. I’m sorry. This is straight out ridiculous. What possible benefit or financial boon would a fan have with a picture of him? None. Pictures are taken to promote an artist, an album release, a happening or some sort of occurrence related to the artist. The sole intention of a photo is designed to PROMOTE the artist. That is their only purpose and sole reason for their existence. That’s it. There is no monetary value that can be obtained by posting a photo on a fan site. If they were selling the picture, that’d be one thing. But if he thinks that even the posting the very image of him is affecting his monetary gain, that is just ridiculous. Whoever is doing his publicity needs to be taken out back and whipped.

As a side note, as a part of this latest asinine announcement, he did mention that he would be making some photos available for fans to use on his website, but that should have happened BEFORE this announcement was made so that fans had something to replace these supposed “copyrighted” photos with. Until that actually happens, fans are left out in the cold having to be concerned whether or not they’re going to be sued for promoting Prince by posting a promotional picture of him.

So my suggestion is to go ahead and write your thoughts out now, because the only thing left is when he starts restricting anyone from writing about him unless it’s approved by him first. As stupid as it sounds, that’s the only step left in restricting fans from promoting him. What a complete egomaniac. I have never seen an artist push so many fans away like this. This is truly unreal. It gives you a whole new perspective of what Warner Brothers probably had to put up with and I NEVER thought I would come to their defense. I have been a huge fan of Prince ever since Dirty Mind and embarrassingly enough have seen him in concert over 25 times, but I’m slowly beginning to wonder if I’ve made a very big mistake following an artist that has such complete disdain for me and others like me.

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