Prince pronounces the internet ‘completely over’

Could it be, as Prince once sang, a sign o' the times? The pint-sized but prolific US musician has proclaimed in his first British newspaper interview in a decade that he thinks the era of the internet is already "completely over".

In an interview with the Daily Mirror, Prince says his new album 20Ten will not be available for download because of his stance on new media and his ongoing battle with what he calls 'internet abuses'.

"The internet's completely over," he says. "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."

Instead Prince will only release 20Ten, his 27th album, in Britain and only as a free CD giveaway with this Saturday's editions of the Daily Mirror and Daily Record newspapers. Although Warner Brothers may distribute the album in the US, no downloads will be made available anywhere in the world.

Prince made a similar stand with his 25th album, Planet Earth, when he gave it away with the Mail on Sunday. The move saw almost three million British fans pick up a copy of the CD for the price of a newspaper.

One of the reasons the 52-year-old music icon says he shuns the internet is that it is "like MTV" - the music video channel which, ironically, helped propel him to international stardom in the early 1980s. He added: "At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated."

Prince's hatred of the internet can be traced to 2007 when he announced his intention to file lawsuits against eBay, YouTube and the notorious Swedish download site Pirate Bay for the misuse of his music. Since then he has also refused to work with legal music download sites like iTunes and 7Digital and has shut down his official website.

But Prince's intense dislike of all things new media extends well beyond the web. "These computers and digital gadgets are no good," he told Mirror interviewer Peter Willis. "They just fill your head with numbers, and that can't be good for you." ·