Prince declares internet “over”

Well shit.  I guess I’d better pack my bags and leave.  The artist formerly known as the artist formerly known as Prince has declared an end to the internet.  His declaration:  “The Internet’s completely over. I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it and then they get angry when they can’t get it.”

Who complains when they don’t get Prince songs?  I don’t.  Shit, I complain when I do get Prince songs.  I’m like “Dammit, who the hell is playing that?  Purple Rain is so 20th century!”

And wait, why should they pay in advance?  iTunes isn’t an end customer–it’s a distribution system.  They put your stuff in their store, and then people come and buy it.  THEN you get paid.  That’s how it works, Prince.  Why are you upset with this?  You sell music, you get paid.

Oh wait, I know why.  It’s because you’re used to getting paid even if your shit sucks.  Well, that’s not how it works here on the interwebs, Prince.  Here, you only get paid if people really like what you’re doing.  I know, it’s a new idea, and it scares you.  Don’t worry, it scares a lot of people in your industry.  Hell, it’s probably going to kill your industry as you know it eventually, along with several others.

But this isn’t a bad thing, Prince.  This is a good thing, you just don’t know it yet.  Taking music and news and fiction out of the hands of a few big conglomerates and putting it into the hands of anybody who wants to take a shot at doing it “better” can’t possibly be bad.  And don’t worry man, people are going to figure out how to make money from it.  People always do.  That’s how capitalism works.  It may not be as much money as before, and it may not come in those satisfyingly big checks all at once, but it’ll come.  Hell, Apple’s already doing it, and you’re dissing them for it.

But yeah, you go ahead and declare the internet “over”, as if that has any basis in reality.  Comparing it to MTV is ridiculous, too.  MTV was one music network on one medium.  The internet is everybody, on all mediums at once.  That’s never going to be “over” until something even better comes along–and no, going back to selling CDs at Tower Records isn’t better.  That’s worse.  Way flipping worse.