Prince, or whatever he's calling himself these days, is releasing three albums in 2009.

I got beef with Prince, even more so than my arch-nemesis Jay-Z. Prince is totally old school when it comes to copyright, if you use the slightest bit of his music or image/likeness in a YouTube video, he orders a takedown. Some may say he has the right to do this, but I'm not so sure: is everything able to be protected under intellectual property rights? How about the first person who ever used the C major chord in a song? Or the first person to figure out that using G major, C major, and D major in a song could sound pretty melodic? If the answer is yes, then we'd be missing out on a lot of good music, as tons of songs have the same chords in them. So clearly, there is a line of sorts regarding what the creator can claim ownership of and what they cannot.

More importantly, though, one has to wonder if being a copyright crybaby is really to Prince's advantage. For instance, back in early 2008, I uploaded a video of me playing "Nothing Compares 2 U" a song written by Prince but popularized by Sinead O'Connor (whose version is about a bazillion times better than the piece of crap that Prince put out, which is tantamount to auditory assault). Prince waged war on me for this and ordered YouTube to take down my video -- see our previous coverage of this.

YouTube covers and fanmade promotion is some of the best marketing a person can get. The idea that my cover of Prince's song is going to cut into his revenue is absurd; if anything, the opposite is going to happen. It is likely that myself and YouTube will benefit from this as well, and perhaps Prince and artists like him feel like they are getting an unfair cut of the overall value being created. This may in fact be the case -- at least I would agree it is. But the entity getting more than they deserve is not the fan, but rather YouTube. And the solution is niche social networks, which will enable the original artist to create a community that gives attention to the fan and the original artist.

The Girl in the Dirty Shirt

Cover songs are the vehicle of choice for bedroom rock stars on YouTube. With this in mind, doing more cover songs is on my list of things to do in 2009, as a way of promoting my site and getting the Truth out. At first I was going to do a collection of covers of personal love songs (i.e. one person's love for another individual) and a set of covers of universal love songs (i.e. we are all one, we are brothers and sisters, etc). I did From Me to You with that in mind. I still might do that, although the fact that I suck at guitar and find it easier to write my own songs rather than play other people's songs could create some problems on that front. Alternatively I might just do Oasis covers, since I understand their style of songwriting, it's pretty simple. So here's one that could fit both plans: my cover of "The Girl in the Dirty Shirt" by Oasis. Has to be the most subtle love song of all time.

Completely off topic: John Browne has a killer article on the bond market in 2009. I agree entirely; see my article from back in November on the bond market.