Prince Goes Direct To Fans
Prince will once again be selling direct to his fans with a new subscription site lotusflow3r. The current placeholder site is scheduled to go live March 24th according to Newsweek. For $77 fans will 
get downloads of the new three albums that will be available in as CD's from Target on March 29th, as well as, a robust selection of exclusive videos, behind the scenes action, news and concert info.
The new site and Target release are just the latest experiments for an artist who is no stranger to new music business models. Prince hosted one of the first successful fan subscription sites, which he abruptly shut down 3 years ago despite its success when he apparently felt it had run its course. In recent years, he has jumped from one label to another for the distribution of every new album, while always controlling all aspects of each campaign. One notable Prince self-release combined a free CD with each concert ticket and another gave away a copy with each Sunday UK newspaper.
I’m really curious where he got the $77 price point from. If we consider JUST the music for a moment, that would break down to $25 per album. Unless each album has 30 or so songs, I don’t see the value.
I think the $77 price point comes from $14 dollar per album plus a $35 “fan club fee”, if you will. Which is a pretty standard price these days. I say “fan club fee” because the website itself just sounds like a fan club to me. As much as I respect Prince though, I don’t think you could convince me to spend $77 dollars on this package.
Tonye- you broke this down in an interesting way as to what the actual “offer” might be.
But remember, the power of an offer isn’t in the plain old math, but in the framing of it to the customer/fan.
There are TONS of examples out on the web where a “subscription” service is led by an initial purchase (download, ebook, audio, etc).
For the value of what a fan might be getting for the Prince membership (videos, info, updates, maybe priority ticket sales access in future) the $35 isn’t that great of a deal and they might rethink the offer. (depends on how they communicate and frame it)
I think artists (and those marketing on their behalf) should be thinking about better ways to monetize direct relationships with fans other than charging money up front for the kind of relationship/content lots of other bands/content providers are willing to give for free if you’re a “subscriber.”
But for those raving fans… and for those artists with such a loyal following… it’s probably an easy and profitable way to go about it and will work.
Additionally, perhaps it has to do with the number “7”. The number seven signifies many things to many people, so, my theory is that Prince chose those numbers accordingly. Listening to his lyics throughout the years, I have seen the possibilities and metaphors/ambiguity behind and within the words. For myself, the number 7 is one of my favorites (for many reasons). Anyhow, off i go …….