Prince and the Art of Monetizing Free Stuff

Alyson Stanfield, the Art Biz Coach, had an interesting post on her blog today about Prince. She points to an online article from the New York times titled, The Once and Future Prince. The article points out how he changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph and set up his own music club to circumvent the restrictions of his label. This before Napster and iPods, when broadband was strictly a business application. It was an interesting and brave choice. But then those are hallmarks of his career, which now in its third decade shows no signs of slowing down or relying on replaying oldies to pad his retirement. The article details how Prince has been giving his music away and using the exposure to make money, (in his case millions) in other areas.

I often refer to Prince when speaking about POD (Print On Demand) technology because as with so many other things in his career, as the NY Times article indicates, he was well ahead of the curve in seeing how new developments become the norm. Inarguably, POD technology is revolutionizing nearly all of the arts. These days, musicians, artists and writers can all self-publish and with the available help of e-commerce and Internet marketing, they can create a previously unavailable profit stream. Only a few years back, I would have had to shop my book to publishers and hope one would want to take a  chance on the very narrow interest title, How to Profit from the Art Print Market.