You would have thought so… shackled by the rampant capitalist demands of the record labels, forced to work in sweatshop recording studios and starved until they produce their inaugural album. It’s easy to pity the poor artist, particular as it is with them rather than the content owner that the consumer has affiliation.
No wonder that bands such as Radiohead are pioneering better ways to build that relationship between artist and fan.
And let’s not forget Prince shall we, for after all he won an Internet award last year for “reshaping the relationship between artist and fan.”
Hang on a second. Is this the same Prince who is suing his own fans for using his image on their fansites? Is this the same Prince who ordered the removal of home videos from Youtube?
According to the Register, “the funkadelic pop star recently launched a very public crusade against unauthorized use of his name, image, and music catalog across the net, and the word from ABC News is that he personally told Universal to have the video taken down with a wave of the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).”
Again this is an issue of ownership, the belief that customers play no part in the success of the brand itself appears almost archaic, more suited to the industrial era where you could get away with shunting your products down the value chain onto the “end customer”.
The Register adds
In early February, Stephanie Lenz videotaped her eighteen-month-old son Holden as he motored around the family kitchen. “Let’s Go Crazy” played in the background, and at one point, the toddler decided it was time to cut a rug. According to the suit, “Let’s Go Crazy” had been a favorite of little Holden’s ever since he saw Prince perform during halftime of last year’s SuperBowl.
Great! I thought, a lifelong customer in the making. It wouldn’t be long before Holden would be paying for his own Prince tickets…. Of course, customer lifetime makes sense. Despite their poor customer service records, banks knew that all along when they target young people to sign up for accounts early. Not Prince it seems, to him, Holden was stealing.
The blanket attack on fan sites probably made short term economic sense, but particularly bad customer karma, especially if your fans start uniting against you. If that happens, you better start phoning up Comcast or British Gas and find out how they parachuted their execs out of the company before it hit the fan.
Red Hering reports that fan sites dedicated to Prince say they have been served legal notice to remove all images of the singer, his lyrics and “anything linked to Prince’s likeness,” and have vowed to fight what they said was censorship. According to RH, sites have vowed to unite under the banner “Prince Fans United” and take the matter to court if necessary.
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