Prince was Indie
At the time of his death, he reportedly owned the master recordings of all his output. With no major label to serve for most of the second half of his career and no constraints on distribution, he was free to try new modes of connection. Jon Caramanica on NYT source He broke up with Warner Bros because they imposed him the pace of one album a year.
Update to iTunes alternatives
I said I am looking for alternatives to iTunes and I promised I’d test Loop for Vox. Well I tested it but it’s not for me. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a well done service but it missed two key features for me: iPhone app doesn’t upload music to the cloud, only Mac app does I don’t see the files. I realize the latter reflects my paranoia about disappearing files.
Alternatives to iTunes
When it comes to music I am religious. I have my library, it’s in iTunes and I always know where are my files. I keep many backups, offline and online. I am so paranoid because I spent 15 years building my library. I started when I got my first Mac. It took me a loooot of time to rip my CDs and to correctly name the mp3 files that I had on my PC.