When it comes to music, Prince calls the tune

New York

MILLIONS of fans will remember Prince as a master of funk, a sex symbol and the creator of indelible hits such as 1999 and When Doves Cry. But within the music business, Prince - who died on Thursday at 57 - was also a trailblazing and sometimes controversial champion for his rights as an artist. In the 1990s, he was in open conflict with the music industry, protesting the major-label system by writing the word "slave" on his cheek and changing his name to an unpronounceable glyph.

Later, as the music world moved online, Prince made sometimes mystifying pronouncements about the Internet, and policed his music rights so carefully that most of his songs were unavailable not only on jukebox streaming services such as Spotify but also on Pandora and YouTube.