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Prince “Can’t Stand Digital Music.. You Can’t Feel Anything”, Piracy Is “Carjacking”

image from www.google.com (UPDATED) The former Purple One, Prince "can't stand" digital music.

"You're getting sound in bits. It affects a different place in your brain," he told the Guardian. "When you play it back, you can't feel anything. We're analogue people, not digital." He's also continuing his campaign against music piracy:

"I'm supposed to go to the White House to talk about copyright protection. It's like the gold rush out there. Or a carjacking. There's no boundaries." Because of the problems with piracy, he said he has no plans to record another album.

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9 Comments

  1. Probably 100% of musicians feel this way. Artists hate the compression and how it’s presented.

  2. “Because of the problems with [piracy], he said he has no plans to record another album.”
    Because of the problems with Prince putting out shitty albums, I have no plans to buy another of his albums.
    Win/Win situation.

  3. From the article: “His unease about the web is not just a matter of legality for him, however, but one of aesthetics. “I personally can’t stand digital music,” he said.” “Aesthetics”. Hmmmmm. All CDs and now vinyl are pressed from a digital data source. So, does that mean he can’t stand all of his own music since the inception of CDs? For modern recordings, the controversy between analog recording and digital recording is becoming moot. No matter what format the user uses, the recording probably was digital at several stages in its life. I like vinyl. But does Prince like only analogue sourced vinyl? But then again the article also states: “”It’s fun being in Islamic countries, to know there’s only one religion. There’s order. You wear a burqa. There’s no choice. People are happy with that.” When asked about the fate of those unhappy with having no choice, he replied: “There are people who are unhappy with everything. There’s a dark side to everything.” I used to like Prince.

  4. Prince knows what he is talking about, period. He is talented AND he is quite adept with the business side of the music BIZ. THAT is why many music industry people do NOT like Prince, because he is keen to their ways of ripping off people – he has been there and done that.
    As far as analog vs. digital? I listened to Prince’s LP 1999, then I listened to it on CD. Trust me. There IS a difference. It’s more ALIVE on LP. It’s like “hey, they are recording in this room or the one beside it, my ears feel that way and tell my brain that message.” When I hear the CD it is all mashed together, some high frequency is missing and some low frequencies are missing. Not as WARM, not as REAL, not as ALIVE, I can truly tell the difference.
    As for Prince, love him, hate him, whatever – he is a talented SOB. NO DOUBT ABOUT IT! Just listen and watch the Super Bowl show where he just killed the show with a performance that was simply GREAT! But, he IS protective of his music because that is HIS way to work, HIS paycheck, HIS business and he has worked hard to protect it. Can you blame him?

  5. Pretty bold statement. 100%? I’d be surprised if it even is 90. Most young musicians have never experienced anything else.
    And then there’s the hundreds of thousands electronic musicians…

  6. “the entire world wont function the way I want it to so I’m going home” – prince.
    Sorry, i dont care how much of a “genius” he is…lots of “geniuses” do and say dumb things now and then.

  7. He talks nonsense. Music that has come out of a speaker is 100% analogue. The fact it was previous;y stored digitally is utterly irrelevant. There is no audible or even measurable difference in the perceived quality of a decent recording through decent speakers from either a digital or analogue source. If he wants to get scientific, human hearing is ultimately digital anyway, with discrete nerve impulses carrying an electronic coding of sound to the brain. Fact is, old musicians talk a lot of crap about modern technology because it wasn’t what they grew up with and know. He might not be able to squeeze decent audio quality out of a digital system but a lot of us can. Pretty much ALL music is digitally recorded and digitally delivered these days -can you honestly say all modern music sounds bad? No – you can’t. So, logically, if some of it sounds good, the bad ones can’t be bad merely because they’re digital.

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