*sigh* It brings me such pain to have to write an article about a music artist that I absolutely adore. Prince is one of the those music artists that I compare to expensive Harry Winston jewelry; you don’t place Harry Winston jewelry in the same spot as costume jewelry that only costs one dollar. That’s how major Prince is in the music industry. He’s quiet as hell and usually keeps to himself, not the type of person that likes to draw attention to himself at all. And that’s a good thing. But just because Prince is a phenomenal artist that NO ONE can duplicate, that doesn’t mean that he’s exempt from doing something that’s absolutely ridiculous.
Dear Music Artists, if you ever want to successfully lose fans that adore your music, follow Prince’s blueprint: SUE THEM. According to the news, Prince allegedly decided to file a twenty-two million dollar lawsuit against twenty-two Facebook users and bloggers for sharing links on the internet of his live concerts and music, which included the Facebook users who created a fan page. Noticed that I used the word, ALLEGEDLY…just in case Mr. Man decides that he wants to sue my happy ass for writing this article, claiming that I’m making an “accusation.” Whatever, Prince.
From what I gather from the story, the users are not making money from Prince’s music and footage of his live concerts. It seems like they are just sharing his music amongst other fans of Prince. But either way, Prince is not having it. Even when I tried to look up his music on YouTube to simply listen to his music as I typed this article, most of his videos were disabled. Either you couldn’t find the songs or the video had some type of crappy Zen music playing on it. One of my favorite songs by Prince is “Pop Life” and so when I went to YouTube to look it up and enjoy it, there was a video that showed popcorn kernels with some crazy music playing in the background. Well, I’ll be damned.
This is the type of thing that pisses me off about this whole so-called “copyright infringement” bullshit lawsuit; people such as myself who had a lot of Prince’s music CD’s but most of them got lost or scratched up, can’t even simply listen to this man’s music online FOR FREE without there being the possibility that I would have my ass handed to me in a court case. If he was suing users that were MAKING MONEY from his catalog of music and live shows, I could totally understand that to the fullest degree. That’s wrong in every sense of the word. I, for one, wouldn’t want some asshole making Xerox copies of my new books and selling them on the streets.
But Prince, let’s get real: What do you have to gain from suing some Facebook users who created a damn fan page of you? Really? So you’re mad because you have fans? You’re mad because people admire your music to the point where they have created a fan page? Oh, the horror. Just throw them in the lake of fire, why don’t you. Maybe you forgot that your fans are the reason why you are able to sell out concerts all over the world. Maybe you forgot that your fans are the reason why people enjoyed your music on YouTube. Maybe you forgot that without the fans, YOU WOULDN’T HAVE A FACEBOOK FAN PAGE! Don’t shoot yourself in the foot by trying to prove a point.
So according to reports, Prince not only wants each of the twenty-two defendants to pay one-million dollars each, he wants them permanently blocked from “infringing” on his copyrights (meaning that they can’t share a bucket of shit when it comes to him), he wants them to pay his lawyer fees, and pay back whatever money that they might’ve made off of his work, with interest. Here’s the thing: if there are bloggers or Facebook users that was selling his work for their own personal gain, this lawsuit would make perfect sense in every way and I would totally agree with what he’s doing. But I don’t think that he realizes that he’s also punishing the ones that have absolutely no intentions of selling his music for monetary gain.
So Mr. Prince, this is what I have to say to you: Don’t go after a few people and take down the entire village in the process. Just go in the studio and make more music for us all to jam to and love for years to come. Most music artists don’t bother suing people for listening or sharing their music on the internet for the simple fact that it takes up a lot of wasted time and it doesn’t really effect the music sales of that artist. So chill the hell out, Prince. You don’t wanna turn off the life-long fans that you’ve had for many years and you don’t wanna destroy the possibility of gaining new fans along the way. Nine times out of ten, the twenty-two individuals that you are suing don’t have one-million dollars in debt, let alone one-million dollars to fork over to you. And the fact that the all of your music on YouTube has been disabled and the FaceBook fan page accounts have been deleted, you’ve already won the case.
Sonica
