Prince’s Big-Box Deal: Minneapolis Represent

noah | March 2, 2009 4:30 am

Prince has signed an exclusive deal with Target to release a three-CD set at the end of this month; the package will contain two new albums by The Purple One called LotusFlow3r and MPLSound, as well as a disc by his protege Bria Valente. The Minneapolis-based chain (!) will sell the package for $11.98. But that’s not all—his career-spanning multimedia site lotusflow3r, which launched in beta earlier this year, is apparently getting ready to go live. When I visit it, all I get is some burbling music and a black screen, but lucky for all of us, someone at AOL’s Spinner got to check out the goodies within. And by “goodies,” I mean “an extensive live archive of Prince concerts.” I bet at least a few of you out there are drooling!

But the real treasure for Prince devotees is in the archive. According to Clay, Prince has filmed almost every one of his concerts since the ‘Purple Rain’ days, and to prove it, he had Spinner click on a video link inside Prince’s virtual head, where we discovered a performance of ‘Break It Down’ from last year’s Coachella show.

LotusFlow3r, which will launch sometime this month, will be a paid subscription site (Clay is speculating that the initial cost for a year will be $77), and to give fans their money’s worth, Prince will continue to roll out content on a regular basis, including live video clips and possible full-length concerts, as well as unreleased music. According to Clay, Prince has copious amounts of never-issued material, which Clay and his team are in the process now of cataloging.

But do subscribers get discounted admission to his parties? Because that is a value-add.

Prince to release new CD set through Target [AP] [Spinner]

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