Prince: King who embraced new tech as often as he broke conventions
PICTURE: AFP Like most of the children of the 1980s, I grew up on the inspirational music and outrageous fashion of Prince Rogers Nelson, who died last week aged 57.Prince was as famous for his gender-bending attire as his prolific creativity, producing hits off virtually every album — especially the Purple Rain single that was the title track of his film of the same name. It won him the 1985 Oscar for best original song score.His songs were the soundtrack of my youth.Prince touched several generations with his abundance of musical genius. He produced an album a year and left 48 collections of epoch-defining songs behind.But he was also so much more. The little master from Minneapolis was also a technology visionary who began experimenting with digital music distribution in a way that few other artists did.This was long before the era of streaming music allowed other musicians like Jay Z and Van Morrison to start their own services, Tidal and Pure.Only David Bowie, another gifted an...
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