Prince-ly Guitar on Verizon

One I've been waiting for for a long time: an opportunity to post something on one of my all-time heroes (strictly music-wise!) , the man who plays at least 167 instruments, the only one who can walk on 19'' stilettos, the artist with the infallible fashion sense, namely the incredible Prince. We read that Verizon and Prince entered into a collaboration which they claim is an industry-first "direct-to-mobile relationship". Prince will release new single "Guitar" exclusively via Verizon. This leads a promotional campaign up to the new album "Planet Earth" which will be released in July.

Verizon will promote artist, song and - incidentally - its V Cast service via print, TV, radio and cinema. This strikes me as rather traditional really... However, Verizon and the artist have tied up a rather need package featuring nearly every sexy must-have service around these days: V Cast customers can hold their handset up to the TV set to identify and download the song - IF their phone as Song ID, that is. They can also simply go to Verizon's website and download it there. Upon release, the video will also be available on "licensed sites" YouTube, MySpace, Revver and Veoh.

As Prince isn't signed to a label, this will be the main piece of promotion for the album, and that is certainly a rather revolutionary affair, at least one never tried by people who weren't signed because they couldn't find a label (as had happened to the Arctic Monkeys a while ago who, having started off on MySpace, have since grown to become an established acts signed to Domino). This together with a hole bouquet of recent activity of the artist (everything ranging from new website, concerts in Minneapolis [7/7/7] and London [21 Nights, selling 140,000 tickets in 20 minutes] to a new perfume and cosmetics range [not sure if I'll try that one]) suggests a serious assault on the classic set-up of the music industry and the labels' stranglehold onto it. This had been weakened by the arrival of digital media but never broken.

If it pans out? I sincerely hope so - less for revolutionary zeal, more for one of the greatest artists of recent decades. But in any event is this one of the more exciting music promotions of recent times. Well done!

Although, I don't want to hide the bad: the world there is again defined as being North of Mexico and between the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean only... Or are we non-Americans not worthy of some Prince-ly mobile musical delights?