Welcome to the Escape Blog

Marketing, indeed business, is getting harder - or easier - depending on how you look at it.

So, when people moan about Prince giving away his latest album free, are they right or are they clinging onto the traditional way an industry works?

Prince also plans to give away copies of his album to fans attending one of his 21 concerts at London’s O2 arena next month. That means it will reach many more listeners than the artist’s last album, 3121, which only sold 80,000 copies in the UK on release in 2006.

The fact that a lot of people I have been speaking to have been talking about nothing else all weekend, plus the amount of press this ’stunt’ is getting suggests to me that Prince is just addressing his own position as an artist with, admittedly, the luxury that he can probably afford to do it. That said, he has apparently been paid £250,000 by The Mail On Sunday.

What about Nine Inch Nails, another band who have been around a bit. They let you download the individual audio files to their albums, mix them yourself and upload them back onto their website to share.

Markets and industries are changing, rapidly. So, the way we service those markets and the way we communicate with those markets needs to change as well.

Finally, one last example that backs up the fact that as businesses we need to wake up and adapt to this to rapid change.

Think back ten years and how you used to buy things in shops, then read this news story about Sainsbury’s and that as of next week, they won’t be accepting cheques anymore.

Realistically, any industry could have the rug pulled from on it… at anytime.