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Prince says ‘adios’ to social media

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Never let it be said that Prince isn’t willing to change his positions.

Virtually overnight Monday, the enigmatic music star decided to purge his Facebook and Twitter accounts, with no explanation.

Never mind that his Facebook account, which had nearly 2 million views, didn’t exist until two months ago. Because Prince and Facebook were clearly not a good fit, as evidenced by his Sept. 30 Facebook Q&A with fans. nearly 4,000 of the submitted questions. Prince answered just one of them.

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For good measure, in addition to shutting down his Facebook and Twitter pages, Prince has removed all but a few of his videos from YouTube, a website he had long prohibited from using any of his videos. The music that had been on his SoundCloud account has also vanished.

Prince has long stated his aversion to social media. He seemed to change his mind last year when he launched his new band, 3rdEyeGirl, and -- with it -- 3rdEyeGirl Twitter and Facebook pages, both is which doubled as Prince’s Twitter and Facebook pages. Both, which were up and running yesterday, have also now disappeared.

His Instagram account, at least for now, is still up.

Oops! In the time it took to write the previous sentence, his Instagram account has apparently been taken down.

What does it all mean?

As is often the case with Prince, who knows?

A writer at his hometown newspaper, the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, has speculated that Prince’s sudden disappearance from social media may have been prompted by Monday’s announcement by a Missouri grand jury that it will not bring any charges against the Ferguson police officer who on Aug. 9 shot and killed unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

But Prince, as usual, has said nothing about his actions or the reasons for them. Anyone expecting him to do so soon, unless it’s to promote a new project, shouldn’t hold their breath.

For the record, though, it’s worth noting that -- in 2009 -- Prince publicly declared that the Internet was dead.

“The Internet’s completely over,” he said at the time. “I don’t see why I should give my new music to iTunes or anyone else. They won’t pay me an advance for it, and then they get angry when they can’t get it.

“The Internet’s like MTV. At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated. ... All these computers and digital gadgets are no good. They just fill your head with numbers and that can’t be good for you.”

In a 2011 interview with the Guardian in England, Prince also expressed his views on digital music with equal disdain.

“I personally can’t stand digital music,” he said at the time. “You’re getting sound in bits. It affects a different place in your brain. When you play it back, you can’t feel anything. We’re analog people, not digital.”

We totally agree with Prince on this count. The audio compression of digital music does unspeakable harm to music.

Next week (well, probably not): Prince reassesses his position on Etch-A-Sketch and carrier pigeons.

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