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So, Prince pissed off the record industry by packaging his new album, "Planet Earth," with the British tabloid, Mail on Sunday.
The rack price is $2.80. The paper's average distribution is about 2.3 million.
If record label executives see Prince as a rat, he's a rat that knows when to jump off a sinking ship.

Imagine that you could reproduce and sell gasoline, groceries and clothing by simply duplicating the original. Imagine you could copy someone's physical invention.

Art and science basically thoughts and ideas can be mechanically copied very easily.
Since at least 1789, the U.S. Constitution has given artistic and scientific "inventors" limited exclusive rights to copy or reproduce their work, make derivative works, distribute copies of the work (sell, give away, lease or license), and to perform the work, and, of course, to keep others from doing the same. Debate over interpretation of that protection is an issue for another story.
Record labels and distributors buy certain rights from the artist. They profit by selling copies.

Back in the day, consumers couldn't copy record albums without expensive reel-to-reel recording equipment. The cassette tape changed that. Smaller, portable and multifunctional, the cassette became more popular than vinyl.
Perhaps to protect their interest, record labels packaged cassettes without the little clips on the top of the tape casing, which was necessary to make copies. Consumers eventually figured out how to bypass the missing clips.
Voila! compact discs!
Burners and blank CDs weren't available to consumers at first and when they did hit the market, the cost was prohibitive for most. That's changed, too.
Before the suits could introduce a new gadget
Behold the power of the Internet!

Despite a power play by record companies to shut down Napster, record labels failed to regain control of the industry.
Almighty Institute of Music Retail, a research firm, reports that about 2,700 record stores have closed since 2003.
The number of digital downloads increased from 19.2 million in 2003 to 352.7 million in 2005, according to Nielson Soundscan. An estimated 100 million iPods have sold since 2001. CD sales dropped from 635.1 million to 598.9 million for the same period.
Record executives who did not change their business models are feeling the consequences in their wallets.
Now, Prince has his hand in their pockets. Again.

''It used to be that artists toured in order to drive album sales,'' said James McQuivey, an analyst at Forrester Research

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