Why Prince hated record companies: “If they changed, they wouldn’t really exist”
In addition to his musical genius, Prince was a self-assured and bold personality when expressing his views. He was not only well-known for his aversion to other artists covering his songs but also held a strong stance against the internet. He also openly criticised the music industry, highlighting its exploitative nature towards both artists and fans. Furthermore, Prince saw record companies as superfluous entities, primarily serving as mechanisms to augment financial profits for the artists they managed.
Prince’s deep aversion toward the internet and the digital era was best summed up when he likened it to The Matrix. “The battlefield’s in the mind. And the prize is the soul. So just be careful. Be very careful,” he said in 1999 at the Yahoo Online Music Awards. When music shifted over to primarily digital outlets and streaming platforms, Prince wasn’t a fan of the change, and it meant that the number of cover tracks increased due to the popularity of other platforms like YouTube and the rise of user-generated content.
Prince was just a teenager when he signed his initial record contract with Warner Bros, and it’s fair to say that he wasn’t particularly business-savvy at the time. He didn’t achieve immediate success, but Warner stood by him, and in the end, their loyalty paid off when his stardom skyrocketed with the release of ‘Purple Rain’. However, his relationship with the label eventually turned sour, something that he would discuss over 20 years later.
“Record contracts are just like — I’m gonna say the word – slavery. I would tell any young artist … don’t sign,” he reportedly said when he invited a group of journalists to Paisley Park Studios in Minneapolis. During a 1996 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Prince said that his experience with the label and industry overall was so bad that he regretted not pursuing a different career.
In 2004, Prince explained why he felt record labels endorsed a form of slavery: “The way I looked at it, I owned the work because I paid for it,” Prince said. “I created it, so I felt like it should belong to me. That said, the record companies felt otherwise. They would always hold this contract up and say ‘Well, you signed it’. And I’d just want to talk about this thing and see if we can make it more fair. Of course they wouldn’t change, because if they changed, they wouldn’t really exist anymore.”
Prince added: “It shouldn’t be a situation where they own the album or the work. If they’re going to be indeed a delivery service then that’s fine, but even FedEx doesn’t say that they own the thing that they ship, you know? Because, ultimately, it keeps us apart, and it keeps the people in power in charge.“
As a trailblazer, Prince broke new ground in music and established the valuable lesson that artists could take charge of their business affairs. His fight was a reminder that artists no longer needed to delegate such decisions to corporate executives, and if they wanted to take a specific path, this was well within their rights and capability.
