underwent a final relaunch on 1 January 2004, providing a much more sleek interface and all of Prince’s music recorded under the auspices of NPG Records and as an independent artist up to that time became available for purchase through the website. NPG Music Club underwent a further revamp on and the downloads available were sold but at a discount and usually before their commercial release.
Eleven such Ahdio shows were issued during the first year of the club. Each month, NPG Music Club offered subscribers around three MP3s and one hour long ‘Ahdio show’ (Prince was making podcasts long before they became a thing). The club’s model was absolutely pioneering, when at a time most artists simply maintained Myspace profiles, Prince launched it on the premise to “eliminate the middleman” as the result of his on-going legal dispute Warner Brothers. The website was designed by Sam Jennings and built by Ash Warren and launched as, complete with its own bolt-on software based player, but by April that year this was dropped in favour of a browser-based solution and made into a subscription service at $7.77 per month (in 2004 reduced to $2.50) or to Premium members for a one-off lifetime fee of $100 (reduced to $25 from 2003). NPG Music Club (NPGMC) was Prince‘s official website and members’ download store/”fan club” between 14 February 2001 and 4 July 2006, taking over its previous incarnation.
