Hmm… right.

Prince has confirmed he will be performing three evenings on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno later this month, featuring songs from his two new albums Lotusflow3r and MPLSoUND.  While another opportunity (and another, and another) to view the Purple Man perform live on national television will be fondly met by most viewers, this evening talk show, blitzkrieg method of album promotion has me perplexed.  U2 did it on Letterman, and moved 484,000 copies of No Line on the Horizon in its opening week.  In the current industry environment, an admirable count for sure, but this is U2 we’re talking about.  They sold as many copies of All That You Can’t Leave Behind in 2000, and almost twice as many of How To Dismantle an Atomic Bomb in 2004.  Arguing that the Letterman run significantly increased album sales for U2 is walking a fine line on the horizon indeed.

So my question is: why Prince?  Why can’t you simply be the pioneering, forward-thinking rocker we all love, sell your albums independently to us online, and drop the publicity stunts?  Letterman didn’t help U2, and Best Buy couldn’t save Guns n’ Roses. (sigh)  But I’m merely a blogging fan, what do I know about the biz?

Source Article – NME

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posted March 11th, 2009 at 2:07 pm Music News Prince