Hate to say it, but I hope Prince never gets his masters back. They are in better hands anywhere but his. I think they are too valuable to be in his care. It has hot mess written all over it if he gets full control over them.

V10LETBLUES said:

Hate to say it, but I hope Prince never gets his masters back. They are in better hands anywhere but his. I think they are too valuable to be in his care. It has hot mess written all over it if he gets full control over them.

They can't be in any hands but his or WB's, and I can hardly see how they can b in better hand at WB's, who ain't allowed to do anything with them save keeping the records in print, than in P's.

This being said I for one don't really care at all about these remasters being done: I listen to these old albums what? 2 or 3 times a year each at most, it's not like they're new to me and I'm listening to them 24/7 like I used to when I first became a Prince fan. So for the use I have of them the versions I have are good enough. Now of course remasters would mean getting some outtakes and unreleased versions, and possibly some video remasters of the old live video shows and music videos, and this I'm more interested in.

V10LETBLUES said:

Hate to say it, but I hope Prince never gets his masters back. They are in better hands anywhere but his. I think they are too valuable to be in his care. It has hot mess written all over it if he gets full control over them.

The masters lose value rotting on the shelves each year. Other than his 3 best selling albums, none of the others sold that much, and most classic albums by other artists don't move a lot of product with remasters. Less than 10% of the original album sales for most. That could be 5,000 at worst or 50,000 at best for Dirty Mind....and I'd be shocked if it could even move more than 20,000....

The crazed fans here would buy them, but as each year passes, more die-hards get old and die, or get old and just no longer care.

So unless these albums get released with TONS of bonus tracks, DVDs, and all at a fair value price, you can expect NOTHING to ever happen with remasters. It's a dying issue.

Sure, downloads make Prince some money, but people under 30 may like and respect Prince, but there are not Millions of young people spending any real money on Prince's music.

by the time the remasters happen...the old fans will be near death and the newer fans wont care as much..... he could call them... the reMASTERed from the original slaves...

stillwaiting said:

V10LETBLUES said:

Hate to say it, but I hope Prince never gets his masters back. They are in better hands anywhere but his. I think they are too valuable to be in his care. It has hot mess written all over it if he gets full control over them.

The masters lose value rotting on the shelves each year. Other than his 3 best selling albums, none of the others sold that much, and most classic albums by other artists don't move a lot of product with remasters. Less than 10% of the original album sales for most. That could be 5,000 at worst or 50,000 at best for Dirty Mind....and I'd be shocked if it could even move more than 20,000....

The crazed fans here would buy them, but as each year passes, more die-hards get old and die, or get old and just no longer care.

So unless these albums get released with TONS of bonus tracks, DVDs, and all at a fair value price, you can expect NOTHING to ever happen with remasters. It's a dying issue.

Sure, downloads make Prince some money, but people under 30 may like and respect Prince, but there are not Millions of young people spending any real money on Prince's music.

Prince is one of these artists who're big enough to have their WHOLE catalogue still in print for decades and if he was with a major that would include his post WB albums, so if they must be in print it means they're still slightly profitable (and they'll be more profitable when digital will rule physical out and there are no manufacturing cost anymore), so why shouldn't they be remastered if they're gonna be out anyway?

The big worry is that Prince is nuts. In his possession what would happen to his catalog? Will he bastardize it? Will he actually re-release it or have another more drastic religious revelation mangle it all up or destroy it?

And if he does re-release the work, we know how shoddy his business and artistic priorities are today, will he make a mockery of it?

I love Prince, but I stand by my opinion that the work is in better hands in anybody but Prince. I love my dog too, and I wouldn't hand over valuable documents to her either.

[Edited 3/27/14 12:45pm]

V10LETBLUES said:

The big worry is that Prince is nuts. In his possession what would happen to his catalog? Will he bastardize it? Will he actually re-release it or have another more drastic religious revelation mangle it all up or destroy it?

And if he does re-release the work, we know how shoddy his business and artistic priorities are today, will he make a mockery of it?

I love Prince, but I stand by my opinion that the work is in better hands in anybody but Prince. I love my dog too, and I wouldn't hand over valuable documents to her either.

[Edited 3/27/14 12:45pm]

He may not rerelease them and keep them OOP for a long while but he's not THAT nuts that he'd destroy them, c'mon...

Didn't Janet Jackson just get all her master recordings? A deal with in her contract.

bigd74 said:

SoulAlive said:

Even if Prince gets these master recordings,it doesn't necessarily mean that he's gonna do anything with them I don't think he likes the idea of deluxe remastered editions of his old albums.He hates to look back.

But it's ok to fill your live set with loads of old songs

I'm with you on that note. I wonder if many of the folks commenting on this post have

downloaded Groovy Potential. The song has all of the markings of your classic big H-wood

studio production (almost to the point where it is over the top) plus native drum action and the

hand jive all rolled into one song! To pull it all together P throws in a little nonsence here

and there so we know he is keeping in touch. If fans are looking for some nostalgia there

you go.

databank said:

I get it now: the problem was that P had just signed a new 7 years contract so he was in no position to renegociate anything before 1999. He should have done it in 92, at which point it seems he wasn't even aware of the fact that he didn't own his masters

.

Which IMHO is a bunch of nonsens. All his bios clearly tell how he'd gotten music industry lessons in school.

.

Also, HIS ENTIRE ENTOURAGE advised him against signing the contract because even without the rights to his masters it was a ridiculous contract for him, considering it required him to sell 5+ million of each album, something that only happened TWICE in his career before then: PR and D&P (Batman isn't relevant in this context). And D&P only sold that much because a) P designed it to be hyper-commercial and b) toured his ass off to promote it.

.

P's entourage knew fully well P wasn't gonna do that again any time soon, and they also knew plenty of the other stuff was either baloney (VP of A&R position) or would end in tears (PPR becoming a joint venture with Warner Bros., which would force Prince to become more involved in the running of the label).

.

P simply wanted to be in a dick swinging contest with the other artists who got kazillion worth record deals at the time, and ignored all advice.

databank said:

From what I've read, it seems his attitude triggered theirs and Gold Nigga and shutting down PP was retaliation for his aggressive behavior towards them, both in private and in the media

.

PPR was wildly unprofitable. The only recordings on that label that had made money were Prince's own, the rest of them has cost WBR millions.

.

There was no point in WBR keeping PPR open since after becoming a joint venture Prince was supposed to be more involved in running the label. Wasn't gonna happen with P throwing tantrums. (Also, considering what remained unreleased by PPR going under, WBR didn't deprive the world of some great music.)

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

From what I've read, it seems his attitude triggered theirs and Gold Nigga and shutting down PP was retaliation for his aggressive behavior towards them, both in private and in the media

.

PPR was wildly unprofitable. The only recordings on that label that had made money were Prince's own, the rest of them has cost WBR millions.

.

There was no point in WBR keeping PPR open since after becoming a joint venture Prince was supposed to be more involved in running the label. Wasn't gonna happen with P throwing tantrums. (Also, considering what remained unreleased by PPR going under, WBR didn't deprive the world of some great music.)

Technically Prince albums (and Sheila's) were not PP albums, they were signed with WB not PP and WB just allowed P to put the label on the covers to give the label more visibility.

kewlschool said:

Didn't Janet Jackson just get all her master recordings? A deal with in her contract.

Janet's albums were released on several labels: A&M, Virgin then Island so IDK.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

From what I've read, it seems his attitude triggered theirs and Gold Nigga and shutting down PP was retaliation for his aggressive behavior towards them, both in private and in the media

.

PPR was wildly unprofitable. The only recordings on that label that had made money were Prince's own, the rest of them has cost WBR millions.

.

There was no point in WBR keeping PPR open since after becoming a joint venture Prince was supposed to be more involved in running the label. Wasn't gonna happen with P throwing tantrums. (Also, considering what remained unreleased by PPR going under, WBR didn't deprive the world of some great music.)

Not that they didn't have their share of responsibility in it: they did little to promote most of these albums and still, some of them had potential. They promoted Romance 1600 and it paid off, they promoted Pandemonium and it paid off, they promoted Taja and obviously it paid off since she was allowed to release another album on Reprise, they promoted Jill Jones in Europe only and european sales were decent, and they promoted Carmen in UK and maybe also US only but OK, on that one there was nothing that was gonna make people buy that pieace of crap. There was also some promo for Hey Man... Smell My Finger but I wonder whether it came from WB or Clinton's organization because at this point WB didn't care anymore. And I think Time The Motion and Time The Motion Live did well in Japan but thanks to TDK not WB. But all the other albums were like borndead: ZERO promotion anywhere. Still some acts had enough background to deserve some effort (Dale, Three O'Clock, George and Mavis all had a small but devoted fanbase) and some albums could have found an audience based on their particular target audiences. Good Question could have been appealing to the teens who bought New Edition, Bros or New Kids On The Block albums. Both Madhouse albums and Ingrid Chavez' album could have been critically acclaimed underground successes with hipsters at least in Europe. Mazarati could have had at least the same level of average success that Jesse, Morris, The Deele or Ready For The World enjoyed with a similar Mpls Sound. Shela E.'s third album certainly had the same sales potential as the first 2 even if she was not so available to promote it. Tony LeMans could have seduced at least the audience of Scritti Politti, which was low in US but popular in UK and some other european countries and I think even in the US, with high promo, its singles could have sold reasonably, they were catchy. We're not necessarly talking George Michael kind of sales, but at least enough to make the albums profitable. Now of course they were some lost causes (The Family, Eric Leeds and TC Ellis come to mind) but they were not the majority. Now yeah Alan Leeds said that WB wouldn't believe in the label because Prince himself acted like he didn't believe in it. But after all since it was their money they could have done an effort. The problem if u ask me is that PP albums were financed as if they were majors' projects (reportedly 350 thousand dollars or so were spent for TC Ellis' first album! And the joke is that WB asked Prince to sign TC while Prince himself had been rejecting TC for years, and finally WB did nothing to promote the record and then complained that the product was impossible to sell! Gimme a break!). But PP could also have been envisioned as an indie kind of thing, with corresponding expenses and corresponding sales expectations. I'm not saying that Prince shouldn't have taken it more seriously: he should have, but in the end I see a really nice catalogue (I enjoy each and every album ever released on PP, and many are still popular with Prince fans to this day) that was thrown to the dustbin without second thoughts by both parties involved.

I'm pleased he may start getting them back. But let's face it, he won't do anything with the masters as he gets them anyway.

Besides, though the first two albums are ok, Dirty Mind is where he really got interesting. Wake me when 'Lisa' is on the deluxe edition.

databank said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

PPR was wildly unprofitable. The only recordings on that label that had made money were Prince's own, the rest of them has cost WBR millions.

.

There was no point in WBR keeping PPR open since after becoming a joint venture Prince was supposed to be more involved in running the label. Wasn't gonna happen with P throwing tantrums. (Also, considering what remained unreleased by PPR going under, WBR didn't deprive the world of some great music.)

Not that they didn't have their share of responsibility in it: they did little to promote most of these albums and still, some of them had potential. They promoted Romance 1600 and it paid off, they promoted Pandemonium and it paid off, they promoted Taja and obviously it paid off since she was allowed to release another album on Reprise, they promoted Jill Jones in Europe only and european sales were decent, and they promoted Carmen in UK and maybe also US only but OK, on that one there was nothing that was gonna make people buy that pieace of crap. There was also some promo for Hey Man... Smell My Finger but I wonder whether it came from WB or Clinton's organization because at this point WB didn't care anymore. And I think Time The Motion and Time The Motion Live did well in Japan but thanks to TDK not WB. But all the other albums were like borndead: ZERO promotion anywhere. Still some acts had enough background to deserve some effort (Dale, Three O'Clock, George and Mavis all had a small but devoted fanbase) and some albums could have found an audience based on their particular target audiences. Good Question could have been appealing to the teens who bought New Edition, Bros or New Kids On The Block albums. Both Madhouse albums and Ingrid Chavez' album could have been critically acclaimed underground successes with hipsters at least in Europe. Mazarati could have had at least the same level of average success that Jesse, Morris, The Deele or Ready For The World enjoyed with a similar Mpls Sound. Shela E.'s third album certainly had the same sales potential as the first 2 even if she was not so available to promote it. Tony LeMans could have seduced at least the audience of Scritti Politti, which was low in US but popular in UK and some other european countries and I think even in the US, with high promo, its singles could have sold reasonably, they were catchy. We're not necessarly talking George Michael kind of sales, but at least enough to make the albums profitable. Now of course they were some lost causes (The Family, Eric Leeds and TC Ellis come to mind) but they were not the majority. Now yeah Alan Leeds said that WB wouldn't believe in the label because Prince himself acted like he didn't believe in it. But after all since it was their money they could have done an effort. The problem if u ask me is that PP albums were financed as if they were majors' projects (reportedly 350 thousand dollars or so were spent for TC Ellis' first album! And the joke is that WB asked Prince to sign TC while Prince himself had been rejecting TC for years, and finally WB did nothing to promote the record and then complained that the product was impossible to sell! Gimme a break!). But PP could also have been envisioned as an indie kind of thing, with corresponding expenses and corresponding sales expectations. I'm not saying that Prince shouldn't have taken it more seriously: he should have, but in the end I see a really nice catalogue (I enjoy each and every album ever released on PP, and many are still popular with Prince fans to this day) that was thrown to the dustbin without second thoughts by both parties involved.

Even Romance and Pandemonium didn't shift enough copies to draw attention.

I think the main problem for the PP acts, and the reason no money was pumped in, was the quality of work wasn't good enough. Often they were too reliant on the Prince tracks, plus one or two others.

Dale - Outside of Simon Simon, So Strong and Riot In English, the rest of the tracks were poor.

The Three O'CLock, Love Explosion and Neon Telephone were obvious standouts. The irony being, both the track written by talented guests.

Tony LeMans - Higher than High was the standout, but the rest would struggle to make Scritti b-sides.

Good Question - One great tune as the lead single, but already dated in sound by the time it came out. The rest of the album was trash.

The problem with the PP acts, is without Prince, they were average at best. It's no surprise that the projects he spent most time on were the best works. Romance 1600, Jill Jones and Mavis Staples. Three fantastic albums.

databank said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

PPR was wildly unprofitable. The only recordings on that label that had made money were Prince's own, the rest of them has cost WBR millions.

.

There was no point in WBR keeping PPR open since after becoming a joint venture Prince was supposed to be more involved in running the label. Wasn't gonna happen with P throwing tantrums. (Also, considering what remained unreleased by PPR going under, WBR didn't deprive the world of some great music.)

Technically Prince albums (and Sheila's) were not PP albums, they were signed with WB not PP and WB just allowed P to put the label on the covers to give the label more visibility.

.

Which is basically the same point, except worse because the only profitable ones weren't even on the label.

databank said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

PPR was wildly unprofitable. The only recordings on that label that had made money were Prince's own, the rest of them has cost WBR millions.

.

There was no point in WBR keeping PPR open since after becoming a joint venture Prince was supposed to be more involved in running the label. Wasn't gonna happen with P throwing tantrums. (Also, considering what remained unreleased by PPR going under, WBR didn't deprive the world of some great music.)

Not that they didn't have their share of responsibility in it: they did little to promote most of these albums and still, some of them had potential.

.

Perhaps, but the reality is that few/none of these releases were gonna make real money, i.e. sell millions. Measure the ROI and even the best performers would be small potatoes, but they would have cost plenty of time and money -- time and money that WB would perhaps rather see invested in other, more promising artists.

.

Good Question could have been appealing to the teens who bought New Edition, Bros or New Kids On The Block albums.

.

Nah. There were a kazillion bands like that, and GQ didn't have good enough songs.

.

Both Madhouse albums and Ingrid Chavez' album could have been critically acclaimed underground successes with hipsters at least in Europe.

.

Sure, but what's the ROI on that? They already had a critically acclaimed artist, except he sold a couple of million records if he bothered to promote them. Leeds and Chavez aren't exactly prestige artists that would lure other great artists. That's what kept some low-selling albums on the books at record companies: because they'd lure other (profitablke) artists.

.

Now yeah Alan Leeds said that WB wouldn't believe in the label because Prince himself acted like he didn't believe in it.

.

Which is the point. P didn't do interviews, so he couldn't promote these artists. Hell, WB were having problems keeping P interested in promoting his own goddamn records, I'm not surprised they weren't gonna spend a lot of effort on releases Prince had lost interest in long ago.

SquirrelMeat said:

The problem with the PP acts, is without Prince, they were average at best. It's no surprise that the projects he spent most time on were the best works. Romance 1600, Jill Jones and Mavis Staples. Three fantastic albums.

.

Indeed.

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And let's not forget, once Prince got a label on his own, the results were even worse.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

.

Sure, but what's the ROI on that? They already had a critically acclaimed artist, except he sold a couple of million records if he bothered to promote them. Leeds and Chavez aren't exactly prestige artists that would lure other great artists. That's what kept some low-selling albums on the books at record companies: because they'd lure other (profitablke) artists.

.

Now yeah Alan Leeds said that WB wouldn't believe in the label because Prince himself acted like he didn't believe in it.

.

Which is the point. P didn't do interviews, so he couldn't promote these artists. Hell, WB were having problems keeping P interested in promoting his own goddamn records, I'm not surprised they weren't gonna spend a lot of effort on releases Prince had lost interest in long ago.

Regarding Ingrid at least, I see 2 examples of contemporary acts that sounded quite similarly to her album and were both critical and commercial successes in 90-91: Enigma and Massive Attack. With a little push Ingrid could have been a winner. I'm not so much saying that to make a point in that conversation -u have a lot of good points- but to exptress a personnal regret that what is in my opinion an absolute masterpiece has fallen into the limbos of unnoticed records. Not that I'm saying that it should or could have been #1 at the Top100, but it woulda deserved better recognition if u ask me. And Ingrid, who wouldn't release another album before 19 years, would have deserved a more remarkable career. Same with Taja by the way, while her first album showed a true potential in her songwriting talents and a lovely voice, it was an avarage and forgettable pop record altogether; and her second album was quite bad with WB convinced that the right direction for her was to be yet another insipid dance singer à la Sheena Eastion/Elisa Fiorillo/Martika/Tuffany/etc. which IMHO wasn't at all the right direction for her. She proved that with her third album, with Sony, a trip-hop oriented album that revealed a thought-provoking songwriter and lyricist who'd have had deserved more exposure (who in the world knew she was releasing a third album in 98 save us hardcore Prince fans?)... But my record collection is full of wasted talents who weren't allowed to record more than a couple of records and then were thrown in the dustbin because of a lack of exposure, ad that applies to almost every member of Prince's camp in the 80's, who almost were all given a chance by labels and erased from their catalogues soon after (André, Morris, Jesse, Mark, Wendy & Lisa, even Bobby and St. Paul... all deserved more than what they got if u ask me )

databank said:

The problem with the PP acts, is without Prince, they were average at best.

and let's face it,some of these people weren't real "artists" to begin with They were either Prince's buddies or women who he was sleeping with.His attitude was 'show me loyalty and I'll reward you with a record deal',lol.

deleted post

[Edited 4/5/14 8:13am]

Militant said:

I just saw this article about Smokey Robinson, and this stood out:

The veteran singer is reclaiming the rights to tracks penned before 1978 from bosses at Jobete Music Co. under the copyright termination law, which allows musicians to recover control of their tunes after 35 years.

We're coming up to 36 years since "For You" came out...... I wonder if Prince will get these back and perhaps finally do some remasters?

Well, so many times, you hear and read about artists being duped and deceived. I see why certain artists get their own label: to avoid this hassle......as for Smokey Robinson, and I do know that your focus was on Prince, I think if he did successfully reclaim his rights to his songs, it is too late to stop his ex-wife from getting profits off of them, because of California marital laws, but correct me if I'm wrong.

SoulAlive said:

The problem with the PP acts, is without Prince, they were average at best.

and let's face it,some of these people weren't real "artists" to begin with They were either Prince's buddies or women who he was sleeping with.His attitude was 'show me loyalty and I'll reward you with a record deal',lol.

I thought we'd all agreed to ban the expression "let's face it" from the org...

Anyway this applies only to Jerome, Brenda, Susan, Appolonia, Carmen and Mayte. All the others were all musicians in their own rights.

V10LETBLUES said:

Hate to say it, but I hope Prince never gets his masters back. They are in better hands anywhere but his. I think they are too valuable to be in his care. It has hot mess written all over it if he gets full control over them.

AGREED!!!!!!

databank said:

Prince is one of these artists who're big enough to have their WHOLE catalogue still in print for decades

.

Good luck in finding:

- his post-WB releases,

- or non-P Paisley Park releases,

- or non-album WB-era releases.

In 2014 all of that should be available for download in lossless (plenty of it even in HD) from a variety of services. Instead you can look at the unplayable WMA files from a decade ago, or the crummy MP3 files from NPGMC. Not to mention all of the outtakes, videos,...

.

Prince could have made millions sitting on his ass simply by moneytizing his back catalogue, instead he's still desperately searching for a company to pay him an advance to sell some record he's recorded months ago and lost interest in almost immediately and bitching about hits.

databank said:

Regarding Ingrid at least, I see 2 examples of contemporary acts that sounded quite similarly to her album and were both critical and commercial successes in 90-91: Enigma and Massive Attack.

.

You're nuts.

.

With a little push Ingrid could have been a winner.

.

In no universe ever. (And I like that album.)

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I'm not so much saying that to make a point in that conversation -u have a lot of good points- but to exptress a personnal regret that what is in my opinion an absolute masterpiece has fallen into the limbos of unnoticed records.

.

If Jill Jones's record (which was a masterpiece) flew under the radar, lesser folks never had a chance.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

.

If Jill Jones's record (which was a masterpiece) flew under the radar, lesser folks never had a chance.

If he wanted Jill Jones to succeed, all Prince had to do was tour with her as the opening act.