Why did Prince change his name to a symbol?

[applegrove]

Why did Prince change his name to a symbol?

by Todd VanDerWerff

http://www.vox.com/2016/4/21/11481686/prince-name-change-symbol-why

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The name change may have been an irritation tactic

Now, it's worth noting that Prince never came out and said he was trying to anger Warner Bros. music division with the name change. But he hinted as much many times, and the fact that he returned to using the name Prince in 2000 — after he'd been released from his contract — suggests that this was the reason for the name change all along.

Consider: Because of the name change, Warner got a ton of uninvited, mostly negative publicity about an artist who was supposed to be one of their top-tier performers.

Warner had to deal with Prince's suggestions that music made by him after the name change wasn't actually by Prince. (That likely wouldn't have held up in court, but if Prince's main objective was to irritate Warner Bros., that would be a good way to do it.)

After the change, Warner Bros. had to mail out floppy disks to news organizations featuring a font that allowed for reproduction of the new Prince symbol, because the symbol itself cannot be replicated in the fonts most publications use. (Indeed, I can't replicate it within the fonts Vox uses, which is why I'm just calling it "the symbol" throughout this article.)



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