A Digital Museum Devoted to the Evolving Websites of Prince

Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Jamie Squire/Getty Images / Jamie Squire/Getty Images
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There has been no shortage of tributes to Prince since his death in April, but the Prince Online Museum may be the only memorial to the legend’s fervent devotion to launching new websites. The digital archive collects every one of Prince’s web ventures, all the way back to 1994's Prince Interactive, a CD-ROM for the dial-up era.

The website, spotted by The Verge, catalogs nearly 20 official websites Prince launched to promote his work. Some—like his first official site, TheDawn.com—are now defunct, but the museum hosts screenshots of some of the pages and details the topics they covered. When possible, it includes links back to the original site, so that you (or as he would prefer it, “u”) can explore for yourself.

The internet is a fleeting place, where websites change and shutter so rapidly that even UNESCO is worried about how we’re going to preserve our digital history, but the Prince Online Museum is a rare portal to what a very specific segment of the web looked like decades ago. It’s a fitting tribute to an artist who changed his domain name even more often than he changed his legal one.

[h/t The Verge]

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