O Jerusalem!

O Jerusalem!

If I forget you, O Jerusalem, May my right hand forget its skill,

May my tongue cling top the roof of my mouth if I do not remember you,

if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy!

(Psalm 137: 5-6)

For Luxury Brands, Less Money to Spend on Ads NY Times

November 24, 2008 

For Luxury Brands, Less Money to Spend on Ads

By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

Gold was raining from above for luxury brands in the good old days of 2007.

Last December, the designer Marc Jacobs held his annual holiday party for 800 guests, including revelers from Vogue, W, and Harper’s Bazaar, in the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center. With the theme of Arabian Nights, Mr. Jacobs had arranged for tableaux vivants, contortionists, five open bars, bare-chested women bedecked in gold necklaces, bare-chested men balancing candelabras on their heads and, at one point, a shower of gold glitter poured over the guests.

Mr. Jacobs has held the party for each of the last 18 years, but on Nov. 4, a short e-mail message was sent out by his business partner, Robert Duffy: “Due to the financial climate, I had to make the decision to cancel the 2008 holiday party.”

After getting through most of this year unscathed, luxury brands are suffering. Rich consumers who were relatively insulated from the economic downturn continued spending, but that has changed in the last few months. While luxury spending began to fall slightly from June, in October alone, it dropped 20.1 percent, according toMasterCard SpendingPulse, which estimates consumer spending in the retail and service sectors.

That drop-off means more bad news for magazines and newspapers in the United States that had grown increasingly dependent on luxury advertising.

Ad pages at the top luxury magazines fell 22 percent year over year for the December issues, according to Media Industry Newsletter. Vogue, for example, dropped from 284 pages last December, to 221 pages this December, while Food & Wine went from 160 pages to 126, according to the newsletter.

That has meant cutbacks at publishers. In October, Condé Nast announced it would reduce Men’s Vogue from 10 issues a year to two, reduce the number of issues of Condé Nast Portfolio and cut magazine budgets by 5 percent. Niche Media, which publishes Gotham and Hamptons, laid off some employees and closed a shelter magazine. American Express Publishing, which owns Departures, Travel & Leisure and Food & Wine, is laying off 4 percent of its staff.

“It’s definitely an environment that most have never seen,” said Ed Ventimiglia, the publisher of Departures. “Everyone is very concerned and somewhat confused as to what they should do.”

High-end advertising was one of the few strong advertising categories earlier in the year. Luxury ad spending in categories measured by Nielsen Monitor-Plus actually rose 6.7 percent through August of this year over last year, even as almost all other areas slashed their spending.

Publishers did not miss that trend. In September, Dow Jones & Company introduced WSJ., a glossy magazine, to attract luxury advertisers, and The Washington Post introduced FW, a fashion magazine. The New York Times Company has said its style magazines are big revenue sources for the company, and magazine publishers like Hearst, Condé Nast and Niche Media have also bet that high-end consumption and advertisements would continue.

For now, publishers are trying to persuade brands to maintain their ad commitments. More than half of affluent consumers have cut their spending on luxury products compared with a year ago, according to a study by Unity Marketing, a market-research firm. Those consumers’ confidence in the economy is the lowest it has been in five years.

“The stereotype in our sector is the high-end luxury brands are Teflon to a recession, which, of course, is nonsense,” said Alexander Duckworth, the founder of Point One Percent, a New York City company that advises luxury brands on marketing. “Much more so than in a traditional recession, this has really hit quite hard at the top, and quite quickly at the top.”

“We’re just seeing the very beginning of this,” Mr. Duckworth said.

Ronald Jackson, the chief executive of Tradema of America, which markets and distributes Girard-Perregaux watches in the United States, said he was reducing his advertising budget in the United States by about 20 percent for the first quarter.

“We have retailers that are saying, ‘You know what? We have this on order, but we need you to not ship it until things get better,’ ” Mr. Jackson said. “We have to react in some way.”

Graff Diamonds, the London-based retailer, is also cutting its budget. “We’re definitely not taking on any new advertising, and we’re cutting back on all our current advertising,” a Graff spokeswoman said. She declined to specify a figure, but said the cuts were higher in the United States than in Britain.

Brioni, the Italian fashion line, will cut its advertising by 10 to 15 percent in United States publications, said Antonella De Simone, the co-chief executive.

Other high-end projects, and the advertising that would accompany them, are being delayed or canceled. General Motors is postponing the introduction of the Buick LaCrosse until January, Ford is holding off redesigning its Volvo S60 sedan and XC90 sports-utility vehicle, and Chrysler has stopped production on its Aspen hybrid sports-utility vehicle. Orient-Express Hotels canceled new buildings in Miami; Cartagena, Colombia; Zambia; and Puglia, Italy. Donald Trump is postponing a $300 million development in Philadelphia, and the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company has halted projects in Florida, Vancouver and California.

Facing a steeper decline, publishers are feeling very vulnerable.

“What the first salvo seems to be, going into 2009, is luxury advertisers — who will go unnamed — are trying to take advantage of the negative news in the market in order to secure a more favorable rate,” said Jim Taylor, the publisher of Town & Country, a Hearst magazine.

“It would be a reasonable argument if our costs weren’t going up dramatically, but we’re affected by the same things they’re affected by,” he said. “Paper’s way up, postal’s way up.”

Mr. Taylor said he was expecting smaller brands, in particular, to reduce the number of ads they would run in his magazine.

At Condé Nast Traveler, advertisers are being slow to commit, and financial services and real estate ads are plummeting, the publisher, Lisa Hughes, said.

Michael Rooney, the chief revenue officer of Dow Jones & Company, the News Corporation division that publishes the Wall Street Journal and WSJ., said luxury advertising in the newspaper was about flat. There were 51 advertisers in the premiere issue of WSJ., he said, and 52 so far in the second issue, which comes out in December.

Luxury advertising in The New York Times has been “very stable” this year, said Denise Warren, senior vice president and chief advertising officer at The New York Times Media Group. She said the holiday issue of the fashion publication T Magazine was up by one page of advertising compared with last year. Still, she said, “there is absolutely nervousness in the marketplace.”

And Mr. Ventimiglia of Departures said the January issue was down in ad pages.

“A page here and a page there add up,” Mr. Ventimiglia said, “even though many lost pages are a result of delayed budgets, and we’re taking a hit.”

Though luxury brands are reducing advertising, many continue — quietly — to spend on client dinners and launch parties, which they view as directly affecting sales. But the events may not erase economic concerns.

In October, the Swiss watch brand Vacheron Constantin hosted a party to promote a new line of watches, some costing as much as $60,000. Inside the event, it seemed like precrisis times: waiters passed trays of lobster wrapped in zucchini and beef en croûte, and filled glasses with Moët & Chandon champagne.

“As of today I think it would be wrong to stop everything because of the crisis,” said Julien Tornare, the president of Vacheron Constantin North America, in an interview. “Of course we will adjust if we have to in the future, but right now we don’t want to react.”

Two men in suits, sipping drinks, walked past one of the watches, mounted on a pedestal like a museum piece.

“You see the watch?” one asked.

“Nice little watch,” the other replied.

“Yeah, it is,” the first one said.

But they kept walking.

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Correction: November 26, 2008 
Because of an editing error, an article on Monday about advertising cutbacks by luxury brands misidentified the site of an Orient-Express Hotels project that has been canceled. It is Cartagena, Colombia, not Cartagena, Spain.

Copyright 2008 The New York Times Company

Good for Jay-Z...a heck of a lot of cash upfront for Live Nation

Good for Jay-Z...a heck of a lot of cash upfront for Live Nation

April 3, 2008

In Rapper's Deal, a New Model for Music Business

By JEFF LEEDS

LOS ANGELES - In a move that reflects the anarchy sweeping the music
business, the superstar rapper Jay-Z, who released his latest album to lukewarm sales
five months ago, is on the verge of closing a deal with a concert promoter
that rivals the biggest music contracts ever awarded.

Jay-Z plans to depart his longtime record label, Def Jam, for a roughly $150
million package with the concert giant Live Nation that includes financing
for his own entertainment venture, in addition to recordings and tours for
the next decade. The pact, expected to be finalized this week, is the most
expansive deal yet from Live Nation, which has angled to compete directly
with the industry's established music labels in a scrum over the rights to
distribute recordings, sell concert tickets, market merchandise and control
other aspects of artists' careers.

As CD sales plunge, an array of players - including record labels, promoters
and advertisers - are racing to secure deals that cut them in on a larger
share of an artist's overall revenue. Live Nation has already struck less
comprehensive pacts with
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/madonna/index.
html?inline=nyt-per> Madonna and
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/u2/inde
x.html?inline=nyt-org> U2.

In Jay-Z, Live Nation has lined up with a longtime star who, after toiling
as a self-described hustler on the streets of Brooklyn, earned acclaim as a
rapper and cachet as a mogul.

Live Nation's core business has revolved around major rock and country
tours, and with Jay-Z it is making an unexpected foray into hip-hop. The
company is also placing an enormous wager on a performer who, like many
others, has experienced declining record sales. (Last year's "American
Gangster" sold one million copies in the United States; "The Black Album,"
from 2003, sold well over three million.)

But the arrangement would also position Live Nation to participate in a
range of new deals with Jay-Z, one of music's most entrepreneurial stars,
whose past ventures have included the Rocawear clothing line, which he sold
last year for $204 million, and the chain of 40/40 nightclubs.

Jay-Z, 38, whose real name is Shawn Carter, owes one more studio album to
Def Jam, where he was president for three years before stepping down in
December after he and the label's corporate parent, Universal Music Group,
could not agree on a more lucrative contract.

His first undertaking with Live Nation is his current 28-date tour with
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/mary_j_blige/i
ndex.html?inline=nyt-per> Mary J. Blige, his biggest live outing in more
than three years. After that, Live Nation envisions integrating the
marketing of all Jay-Z's entertainment endeavors, including recordings,
tours and endorsements.

"I've turned into the
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/r/rolling
_stones/index.html?inline=nyt-org> Rolling Stones of hip-hop," Jay-Z said in
a recent telephone interview.

The deal answers a question that had been circling through the rap world for
months: Where would Jay-Z take his next corporate role? As part of the
arrangement, Live Nation would finance the start-up of a venture that would
be an umbrella for his outside projects, which are expected to include his
own label, music publishing, and talent consulting and managing. Live Nation
is expected to contribute $5 million a year in overhead for five years, with
another $25 million available to finance Jay-Z's acquisitions or
investments, according to people in the music industry briefed on the
agreement. The venture, to be called Roc Nation, will split profits with
Live Nation.

The overall package for Jay-Z also includes an upfront payment of $25
million, a general advance of $25 million that includes fees for his current
tour, and advance payment of $10 million an album for a minimum of three
albums during the deal's 10-year term, these people said. A series of other
payments adding up to about $20 million is included in exchange for certain
publishing, licensing and other rights. Jay-Z said Live Nation's
consolidated approach was in sync with the emerging potential "to reach the
consumer in so many different ways right now." He added: "Everyone's trying
to figure it out. I want to be on the front lines in that fight."

The popularity of music downloads has revolutionized how music is consumed,
and widespread piracy has contributed to an industry meltdown in which
traditional album sales - composed mostly of the two-decades-old CD format -
have slumped by more than a third since 2000. (The best seller in 2007, Josh
Groban's "Noël," sold 3.7 million copies, compared with 9.9 million for the
top album in 2000, according to Nielsen SoundScan.)

That has further pressured record-label executives to rewrite the economics
of their business and step beyond the sale of albums in an attempt to wring
revenue out of everything from ring tones to artist fan clubs.

Jay-Z said that his future as an artist could involve elevating the role of
live performances, long a mixed bag even for popular rap acts.

"In a way I want to operate like an indie band," he said. "Play the music on
tour instead of relying on radio. Hopefully we'll get some hits out of there
and radio will pick it up, but we won't make it with that in mind."

Though sales for Jay-Z's tour with Ms. Blige have been strong since it began
on March 22, with almost all the early dates resulting in sold-out arenas,
it is unclear when Live Nation could carry out other aspects of the deal.
(Jay-Z said that he hoped to deliver his final album for Def Jam later this
year.)

Critics of Live Nation, which lost nearly $12 million last year, predict
that it would be difficult to turn a profit on the arrangement, given the
continuing decline in record sales and the mixed track record of artist-run
ventures. Shares in the company have suffered since October when Live Nation
negotiated a reported $120 million deal with Madonna.

Michael Cohl, Live Nation's chairman, said he was not worried. Though he
declined to discuss terms of the Jay-Z arrangement, he said it did not
require an increase in record sales to be profitable. "He could be doing
more tours and doing great," Mr. Cohl said. "There could be endorsements and
sponsorships." He added, "The whole is what's important."

He cited Jay-Z's forays into a host of other businesses as a model for Live
Nation. "What he's done has kind of mirrored what we want to do and where we
think we're going."

Some executives at major record labels have privately portrayed Live
Nation's artist deals as overly expensive retirement packages for stars past
their prime.

Others disagree. "I'd much rather be in the business of marketing a
superstar who cost me a lot of money than taking the 1-in-10, demonstrably
failing crapshoot" of signing unknown talents, said Jeffrey Light, a Los
Angeles entertainment attorney, referring to the traditional record company
model.

But the dimensions of the competition could change if Live Nation begins
vying for the same emerging artists that the labels hope to sign. Live
Nation is negotiating with a Georgia rock act, the Zac Brown Band, after
apparently wooing it away from an offer by Atlantic Records, according to
music executives briefed on the talks.

Jay-Z, for his part, suggested that the string of stars to exit the
major-label system would also signal to younger acts how to plot their
careers. He said that rising artists will be thinking: " 'Something must be
happening. Madonna did it, she's not slow. Jay-Z, he's not slow either.' "

<http://www.nytimes.com/ref/membercenter/help/copyright.html> Copyright
2008 <http://www.nytco.com/> The New York Times Company

You mean music isn't free???

---

December 20, 2007

From the Desk of David Pogue

The Generational Divide in Copyright Morality

By DAVID POGUE

I've been doing a good deal of speaking recently. And in one of my talks, I tell an anecdote about a lesson I learned from my own readers.

It was early in 2005, and a little hackware program called PyMusique was making the rounds of the Internet. PyMusique was written for one reason only: to strip the copy protection off of songs from the iTunes music store.

The program's existence had triggered an online controversy about the pros, cons and implications of copy protection. But to me, there wasn't much gray area. "To me, it's obvious that PyMusique is designed to facilitate illegal song-swapping online," I wrote. And therefore, it's wrong to use it.

Readers fired back with an amazingly intelligent array of counterexamples: situations where duplicating a CD or DVD may be illegal, but isn't necessarily *wrong.* They led me down a garden path of exceptions, proving that what seemed so black-and-white to me is a spectrum of grays.

I was so impressed that I incorporated their examples into a little demonstration in this particular talk. I tell the audience: "I'm going to describe some scenarios to you. Raise your hand if you think what I'm describing is wrong."

Then I lead them down the same garden path:

"I borrow a CD from the library. Who thinks that's wrong?" (No hands go up.)

"I own a certain CD, but it got scratched. So I borrow the same CD from the library and rip it to my computer." (A couple of hands.)

"I have 2,000 vinyl records. So I borrow some of the same albums on CD from the library and rip those."

"I buy a DVD. But I'm worried about its longevity; I have a three-year-old. So I make a safety copy."

With each question, more hands go up; more people think what I'm describing is wrong.

Then I try another tack:

"I record a movie off of HBO using my DVD burner. Who thinks that's wrong?" (No hands go up. Of course not; time-shifting is not only morally O.K., it's actually legal.)

"I *meant* to record an HBO movie, but my recorder malfunctioned. But my buddy recorded it. Can I copy his DVD?" (A few hands.)

"I meant to record an HBO movie, but my recorder malfunctioned and I don't have a buddy who recorded it. So I rent the movie from Blockbuster and copy that." (More hands.)

And so on.

The exercise is intended, of course, to illustrate how many shades of wrongness there are, and how many different opinions. Almost always, there's a lot of murmuring, raised eyebrows and chuckling.

Recently, however, I spoke at a college. It was the first time I'd ever addressed an audience of 100 percent young people. And the demonstration bombed.

In an auditorium of 500, no matter how far my questions went down that garden path, maybe two hands went up. I just could not find a spot on the spectrum that would trigger these kids' morality alarm. They listened to each example, looking at me like I was nuts.

Finally, with mock exasperation, I said, "O.K., let's try one that's a little less complicated: You want a movie or an album. You don't want to pay for it. So you download it."

There it was: the bald-faced, worst-case example, without any nuance or mitigating factors whatsoever.

"Who thinks that might be wrong?"

Two hands out of 500.

Now, maybe there was some peer pressure involved; nobody wants to look like a goody-goody.

Maybe all this is obvious to you, and maybe you could have predicted it. But to see this vivid demonstration of the generational divide, in person, blew me away.

I don't pretend to know what the solution to the file-sharing issue is. (Although I'm increasingly convinced that copy protection isn't it.)

I do know, though, that the TV, movie and record companies' problems have only just begun. Right now, the customers who can't even *see* why file sharing might be wrong are still young. But 10, 20, 30 years from now, that crowd will be *everybody*. What will happen then?

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

The Police live - Roxanne

The Police in Concert in Geneva, Sept. 16, 2007

Rock's Patriarchs Hit the Road - Turning rebellion into money - Economist.com

Economist.com:
Rock reunions

Turning rebellion into money

Sep 15th 2007
From Economist.com

Why old rockers are back on stage

DINOSAURS might be revived in one of two ways. Fiction suggests applying the techniques of genetic engineering to DNA extracted from bloodsucking prehistoric insects trapped in amber. To resurrect the dinosaurs of rock, however, all you need is a fat cheque and a block booking at a vast stadium. The biggest bands in the history of rock‘n’roll now reform with the metronomic dependability of their own rhythm sections. The latest rock legend (and one of the greatest) to announce a return to the stage is Led Zeppelin. The band said this week it would stage a one-off gig later this year, nearly three decades after its last one.

Ageing rockers are almost indecently keen to shout to the world through towering speakers that they have still “got it”. Many claim that the mid-sixties to around 1980 were unsurpassed golden years in the history of rock music. And so audiences are given opportunities to judge for themselves—again and again. The 55-year-old Sting has laid down his lute to reform The Police, currently on a worldwide tour. Genesis, never scared to over-extend a tune, recently got back together for a belated encore. In recent years, and despite the inevitable losses to the rock‘n’roll lifestyle, the Eagles, Queen, Pink Floyd, Cream and a host of other music-makers have hit the road again.

Despite the riches accumulated by these titans of rock in their heydays most commentators suggest that cash is the motivating force. “Musical differences” generally precipitated the acrimonious splits that took the bands off the road in the first place. But time and money—and there is plenty of profit to be made—are great healers.

Some 1.5m tickets have been sold for The Police’s tour, and revenues should hit $168m. In general, concert-ticket revenue is becoming more important, as sales of music wane because of internet piracy. Concert revenue from tours in North America alone reached $3.6 billion in 2006, 16% more than the year before, according to figures from Pollstar, a trade publication. The Rolling Stones, a band which has not had a hit in years, will still earn perhaps $500m from its current “Bigger Bang” tour (which began back in 2005).

Topping up the pension pot is one factor explaining the return to the stage of rock’s leviathans. But many revivalists are in no need of cash if they fancy a new castle or a young wife. If money were the only motivation surely ABBA would have agreed to reform, at least if offers that are said to have topped an astonishing $1 billion are to believed. Instead, perhaps the rebels of yesteryear see reforming for a high-grossing stadium tour as merely the latest phase in their careers.

Like the greying bankers and tycoons who now make up a significant proportion of their audience, the pursuit of money for its own sake may long have ceased to excite. Perhaps the measure of success in the rock pantheon includes not only penning some memorable tunes three decades ago but playing them to huge new audiences.

A new careerist approach to the rock business may well have opened the door for the older generation. Record sales are in decline not only because of piracy. Some would argue that there is a dearth of quality among music-makers today. Schools and colleges have sprung up to teach the art of the rock musician, TV programmes exist to create bands. Rock musicianship has become a legitimate trade that parents might endorse. Previously it was (like journalism) what a gifted amateur might choose to do for want of anything better. Success was generally an unexpected bonus.

But the corporate attitude that now sustains the biggest bands acts as a deadening influence on newcomers. The young rock musician, mindful of his future prospects, must study and sweat like his contemporaries heading for jobs in finance or the law. Talented and creative eccentrics have given way to jobbing professionals, arguably to the industry’s detriment. And for an increasingly affluent audience the guarantee of a proper show, a stream of well-known hits and a whiff of nostalgia in a comfortable modern stadium is less of a risk than standing through ill thought-out filler tracks from that difficult second album in an unpleasantly sweaty club.

The Once and Future Prince Keeps Rocking His Way

---

July 22, 2007

Music

The Once and Future Prince

By JON PARELES

I’VE got lots of money!” Prince exults in “The One U Wanna C,” a come-on from his new album, “Planet Earth” (Columbia). There’s no reason to disbelieve him. With a sponsorship deal here and an exclusive show there, worldwide television appearances and music given away, Prince has remade himself as a 21st-century pop star. As recording companies bemoan a crumbling market, Prince is demonstrating that charisma and the willingness to go out and perform are still bankable. He doesn’t have to go multiplatinum — he’s multiplatform.

Although Prince declined to be interviewed about “Planet Earth,” he has been highly visible lately. His career is heading into its third decade, and he could have long since become a nostalgia act. Instead he figured out early how to do what he wants in a 21st-century music business, and clearly what he wants is to make more music. Despite his flamboyant wardrobe and his fixation on the color purple, his career choices have been savvy ones, especially for someone so compulsively prolific.

Like most pop stars, he goes on major tours to coincide with album releases, which for Prince are frequent. But he also gets out and performs whenever he chooses. Last year he took over a club in Las Vegas and renamed it 3121, after his 2006 album “3121,” which briefly hit No. 1 and spawned multiple conflicting theories about the significance of the number. He started playing there twice a week for 900 people at $125 a ticket. In February he had an audience in the millions as the halftime entertainment for the Super Bowl. He has gone on to play well-publicized shows at the Roosevelt Hotel in Hollywood for a few hundred people paying $3,121 per couple, and another elite show last weekend in East Hampton for about $3,000 per person.

Meanwhile Verizon put Prince in commercials that use “Guitar,” another song from “Planet Earth,” as bait for its V Cast Song ID service, making the song a free download to certain cellphones. On July 7 Prince introduced a perfume, 3121, by performing at Macy’s in Minneapolis.

In Britain he infuriated retailers by agreeing to have a newspaper, The Mail on Sunday, include the complete “Planet Earth” CD in copies on July 15. (The album is due for American release this Tuesday.) Presumably The Mail paid him something in the range of what he could have earned, much more slowly, through album sales. British fans have remunerated him in other ways. On Aug. 1 he starts a string of no fewer than 21 sold-out arena concerts, 20,000 seats each, at the O2 (formerly the Millennium Dome) in London at the relatively low ticket price of £31.21, about $64. The O2 ticket price also includes a copy of the album; Prince did the same thing with his tour for “Musicology” in 2004. Those “Musicology” albums were counted toward the pop charts, which then changed their rules; the “Planet Earth” albums will not be. But fans will have the record.

Prince’s priorities are obvious. The main one is getting his music to an audience, whether it’s purchased or not. “Prince’s only aim is to get music direct to those that want to hear it,” his spokesman said when announcing that The Mail would include the CD. (After the newspaper giveaway was announced, Columbia Records’ corporate parent, Sony Music, chose not to release “Planet Earth” for retail sale in Britain.) Other musicians may think that their best chance at a livelihood is locking away their music — impossible as that is in the digital era — and demanding that fans buy everything they want to hear. But Prince is confident that his listeners will support him, if not through CD sales then at shows or through other deals.

This is how most pop stars operate now: as brand-name corporations taking in revenue streams from publishing, touring, merchandising, advertising, ringtones, fashion, satellite radio gigs or whatever else their advisers can come up with. Rare indeed are holdouts like Bruce Springsteen who simply perform and record. The usual rationale is that hearing a U2 song in an iPod commercial or seeing Shakira’s face on a cellphone billboard will get listeners interested in the albums that these artists release every few years after much painstaking effort.

But Prince is different. His way of working has nothing to do with scarcity. In the studio — he has his own recording complex, Paisley Park near Minneapolis — he is a torrent of new songs, while older, unreleased ones fill the archive he calls the Vault. Prince apparently has to hold himself back to release only one album a year. He’s equally indefatigable in concert. On the road he regularly follows full-tilt shows — singing, playing, dancing, sweating — with jam sessions that stretch into the night. It doesn’t hurt that at 49 he can still act like a sex symbol and that his stage shows are unpredictable.

Through it all he still aims for hit singles. Although he has delved into all sorts of music, his favorite form is clearly the four-minute pop tune full of hooks. But his career choices don’t revolve around squeezing the maximum return out of a few precious songs. They’re about letting the music flow.

Prince gravitated early to the Internet. Even in the days of dial-up he sought to make his music available online, first as a way of ordering albums and then through digital distribution. (He was also ahead of his time with another form of communication: text messaging abbreviations, having long ago traded “you” for “U.”) Where the Internet truism is that information wants to be free, Prince’s corollary is that music wants to be heard.

How much he makes from his various efforts is a closely guarded secret. But he’s not dependent on royalties trickling in from retail album sales after being filtered through major-label accounting procedures. Instead someone — a sponsor, a newspaper, a promoter — pays him upfront, making disc sales less important. Which is not to say that he’s doing badly on that front: “3121” sold about 520,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and “Musicology,” with its concert giveaways, was certified multiplatinum.

Prince ended a two-decade contract with Warner Brothers Records in 1996 after a very public falling out with the label. During the mid-1990s he appeared with the word “Slave” painted on his face and said the label was holding back material he wanted to release. For a while he dropped the name Prince — which was under contract to Warner Brothers and Warner/Chappell Music — for an unpronounceable glyph; when the contracts ran out, he was Prince again. And since leaving Warner Brothers he has been independent. He owns his recordings himself, beginning with a three-CD set called “Emancipation” from 1996. He has released albums on his own NPG label and Web site or has licensed them, one by one, for distribution by major labels, presumably letting them compete for each title. Over the past decade he has had albums released through EMI, Arista, Universal and Sony.

The idea behind long-term recording contracts is that a label will invest in building a career. But Prince (in part because of Warner Brothers’ promotion) has been a full-fledged star since the ’80s. So now a label’s main job for him is to get the CDs into stores.

Prince also experimented with having fans subscribe directly to receive his music online, which turned out to be a better idea in theory than in execution. After five years he quietly shut down his NPG Music Club in 2006. Still, his Web site (which is now 3121.com) usually has a rare recording or two for streaming or downloading. Why not? There’s plenty more.

“Planet Earth” is a good but not great Prince album. Unlike “3121,” which built many of its tracks around zinging, programmed electronic sounds, “Planet Earth” sounds largely handmade, even retro. “In this digital age you could just page me,” Prince sings in “Somewhere Here on Earth,” a slow-motion falsetto ballad. “I know it’s the rage but it just don’t engage me like a face-to-face.”

Prince, as usual, is a one-man studio band — drums, keyboards, guitars, vocals — joined here and there by a horn section or a cooing female voice. This time he leans toward rock rather than funk. Serious songs begin and end the album. It starts with “Planet Earth,” an earnest environmental piano anthem with an orchestral buildup, and winds up with the devout “Lion of Judah” and with “Resolution,” an antiwar song. In between, Prince flirts a lot, playing hard-to-get as he rocks through “Guitar” (“I love you baby, but not like I love my guitar”) and promising sensual delights in the upbeat “One U Wanna C” and the slow-grinding “Mr. Goodnight.” There’s also a catchy, nutty song about a model, “Chelsea Rodgers,” who’s both hard-partying and erudite; Prince sings that she knows about how “Rome was chillin’ in Carthage in 33 B.C.E.”

Although Columbia probably thinks otherwise, how the album fares commercially is almost incidental. With or without the CD business, Prince gets to keep making music: in arenas, in clubs, in the studio. Fans buy concert tickets, companies rent his panache, pleasure is shared. It’s a party that can go on a long time.

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

Prince Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, July 16

Prince Live at the Montreux Jazz Festival, July 16, 2007 watch video Video Description prince live @ montreux jazz purple rain, sorry for the cut but enjoy the sound (complete) hard to find many security, any photo pass are canceled by Prince request, no photos, no video, no press Personal Message Prince at Montreux, Not much video, but the song in full, nevertheless... Hope you enjoy it, I know I did - I was there ;-)

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