Prince behaviour regarding fansites seems to remain the same, in spite of past happenings.
And today, right one day before the supposed opening of his new website, Housequake.com, one of the main forums devoted to Prince music, closed down. It was done after the owner of the site received complains about the utilization of a header containing motifs that resemble the Prince symbol.
What a smart move from Prince.
What a perfect time, promotion-wise.
What a grateful musician, always supporting the people who spends time and money to promote his music and career, only for their love of Prince music.
In summary:
What a fucking shame.
What an amazingly mindless move by Prince; the real shame, as you alluded to in your blog, is that Prince does this right before the opening of his new website. So, he is essentially closing down one very effective avenue of communication with his fans at a time that is critical to any chance of moderate success for his upcoming ventures. Yeah, that makes perfect sense to me!
ReplyDeleteWhy do I get the sense that he did this in another effort to control his portrayal on the 'net right before he makes his triumphant return to this medium? Do we know if he has attempted to strongarm any other fan sites?
His act is getting quite tired, my friend!
It's sad. I really liked the place. This behaviour of Prince makes it hard to enjoy the new (and in my opinion great) new music by him... The new songs really seemed to show a different, more focused, down-to-earth Prince. But this (and the crappy artwork for lotusflow3r) ruin that impression.
ReplyDeleteI've been a p fan for 20 years and while I understand the p needs to promote his own sites first, HQ, to me was an invaluable source of information, especially for the real music lovers....neing able to exchange information etc. I was miss HQ, lotusflow3r is cool but again it has no source of real interaction with the fans, no discussion boards, no chat functions....Aaron - thanks to you for all your hard work over the years, I hope we can see HQ revived in the future.
ReplyDeletePeace from London
Man...I feel so lost without my fellow HQ members. Hopefully prince.org would show some love, but it will never be the same. I was just wondering...does anyone know what the "38:II" mean on the front page of housequake.com? I saw that my fellow HQ member, NPGsoldier, put that on the blog? Does anyone think that it is a Bible reference or something? I hope it is a message saying when HQ is going to be back again. Much love to Aaron!! <3 Thanks for all of the hardwork that you put into trying to make HQ stay on the web. Luv you guys, my fellow Quakers!! <3
ReplyDeleteMuch love...
RIP HQ
Hey quakers!! love u all
ReplyDeleteMuch love...
Okay...I know that we are supposed to be mourning the loss of HQ, but Prince is acting like a complete bimbo!! It is said that he is only releasing his new album at one business organization, which is Target stores!! Come on! He is acting like a spoiled brat! I think that his fans need not to pay him too much attention because he has taken many of his fans for granted. He stripped all of his music videos from websites like youtube and imeem; he is constantly fighting prince.org and princefams.com (RIP HQ); he is only releasing his new cd at one store. How much more can he be mean to his fans? I just think that we need to show him that he should not take his fans for granted. I know that that would be a hard thing to do, but he has taken an advantage of us for a VERY LONG TIME!!! What does every1 else think??
ReplyDeletePrince lost it... He was a genius, he is a jerk!
ReplyDelete