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 Prince talks with CNNfn's David Haffenreffer about the music business, spirituality and the evolution of his music over the past 25 years.
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NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
A longtime chameleon, he's changed his name to an unpronounceable glyph -- and back again -- performed without pants, written sexually explicit songs and found God.
But perhaps the most enduring thing about the musician named Prince is his willingness to buck music industry trends.
In a recent interview on CNNfn's 'The Biz,' the four-time Grammy Award-winning singer discussed his latest act of rebellion while promoting his new album "Musicology."
For his latest tour, the rocker from Minneapolis bundled a copy of his latest CD along with the price of a concert ticket, perhaps kicking off a music industry revolution.
"The (music industry) rules were made by people who don't really play music. I think that some of them need to be rewritten," the singer, songwriter and producer said.
Prince's manager-attorney Londell McMillan told the Hollywood Reporter that Prince will play and give out CDs to as many as 1.5 million fans during this summer's tour.
Music executives are watching the strategy closely to see if it will prove lucrative.
Record stores are feeling pressure from online music sales and ticket sales have slowed across the $2.5 billion concert industry, so marketing CDs with tickets is an innovative way to get music to fans and boost the struggling concert industry.
"This is a very good marketing strategy," said Gary Bongiovanni, editor-in-chief of Pollstar, a weekly magazine that tracks the concert industry.
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According to Bongiovanni, the average ticket price has increased 13 percent from a year ago. Prince's average ticket price is $61.59, while the industry-wide average price for a ticket is $58.71, and with a Prince ticket, you get a CD.
And as the summer rolls on, Prince is the only top-draw performer whose tickets are selling well. According to Pollstar, Prince has the No. 1 tour in terms of dollars and units, totaling $45.7 million and 737,097 tickets sold, and the average price of a Prince ticket is less than half the price of admission to see other big names like Madonna or Celine Dion.
No stranger to going against the industry grain, Prince spent half of the 1990s publicly fighting to free himself from his contract with Warner Bros. Records, the label that he signed with in 1992 in a deal reportedly worth $100 million. During that time, Warner Bros. Records was owned by Time Warner Inc., which still owns CNN/Money.
"If (young artists) are looking to have five albums plus a career, I would advise... staying free (from the music industry) and not signing any long-term restrictive contracts because in the end you end up owning nothing," Prince said on The Biz.
And his is not idle talk.
One of pop music's highest-profile stars, Prince spent three years after his Warner Bros. deal collapsed releasing music exclusively on his independent label, NPG Records, and through his NPG Music Club Web site, which was a hit with fans long before the music download revolution. Members of the monthly subscription-based service receive new Prince songs, videos and an hour-long radio show every month.
In April 2001, Prince teamed up with controversial file-swapping service Napster to debut a new song from a self-produced album.
Prince told 'The Biz' that his induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is proof that going his own way in art and business was the right thing to do.
"It was great for the other musicians who look up to me, and can see that somebody like me going against the grain, (that) you can be honored that far down the line," he said.
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