Rebeljuice said:

Polo1026 said:

There certainly is a cycle that labels put artists through that can make one feel like a slave because the artist isn't actually profiting from the work like they should.

[Edited 9/24/17 15:10pm]

[Edited 9/24/17 15:10pm]

[Edited 9/24/17 15:13pm]

Whilst that may be true by and large, Prince wasn't exactly being made to go hungry. He had a multi million dollar playground called Paisley Park, other property interests, nice cars, cash and a bunch of people that worked for him. WB had helped to make Prince a multi millionaire so that tactic of keeping 'em hungry to sing to their tune wasn't quite panning out that way with Prince.


Personally I think it was a tactic that spiralled out of control. Prince realised he had just signed a ridiculous contract that neither party could fulfil, spotted a weakness in it and thought he could change his name to get out of it (or record music outside of it under a different name). But instead of calling himself Fred or Joe he thought it might be quite clever to use that symbol he created to gain media attention. After a while he realised he was being made the brunt of a few jokes by a small but vocal minority so he introduced some mystical bullshit into the equation. Then, when he realised that changing his name did not in anyway mean he could record outside of the WB contract he got pissed, wrote slave on his face and found himself so far down the rabbit hole, it wasn't until 2000 that he finally found his way out again.

Still, Im grateful he did it all. Mind you, if he hadnt have done that then he would only have done something just as ridiculous and Prince-like further down the line.

He knew that changing his name would not get him out of the contract any lawyer would have told him that. He knew if acted a fool and trashed the company that WB was going to give him his walking papers. He was not sued and did not lose his shirt. It damaged his carreer for a bit but he was also on his way to 40 when all this was occuring his days on the charts were numbered any way no matter what he said or did.

muleFunk said:

I understood it very well.

Warners sabatoged the contract.

He signed the contract that was based on the numbers of units sold and then he was put into the R&B division which cut 50 to 60 percent of his potential base.

.

Utter nonsense. Why the fuck would Warners want to prevent an artist from selling records? The fact of the matter is that the numbers were unrealistic unless Prince was willing to do the work (i.e. heavy promo and long tours), and he did so exactly once: with D&P. And he did so with D&P to show Warners he could do the work and that he deserved a big-ass contract. And then of course Prince stopped doing the work (and released music that wasn't desperately commercial) and oh look the sales figures dropped and Prince went looking for a stick to hit the dog and suddenly became all interested in "artist rights" while at the same time locking the likes of Margie Cox into her contract with PPR and refusing to release any of her music.

.

No stupid conspiracy needed.

muleFunk said:

Prince took a major stance about his work and how the industry treated artists.

.

Go ask Margie Cox what he did to her during that time.

jaawwnn said:

He had a tendency to jump right back in bed with them when it suited him. And then of course it would all fall apart again. Every time. He never learned.

.

He signed with Clive fucking Davis and then bitched about Davis ordering him to do things! If anythingshowed how hollow his "freedom" bullshit was, signing with Davis is the prime example. Because if there is one record exec who was hands-on... But Prince wanted those sweet sweet Santana comeback sales numbers and happily sold his soul and showed that all he cared for was big fuckign numbers.

laurarichardson said:

WB also cut off the cash flow to PP records which according to Eric Leeds never had enough funding and was a set up to fail.

.

PPR burned millions of WBR's money on shite like Carmen Electra.

.

Quite a few people who were around back then have said Orince was right about s few things but I do not expect people on this board to acknowledge it. Look at WB today and look at the industry today. The evidence is there.

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Oh please. Just look at all the work that Prince put into NPG Records, which consisted of... Ah yes, NOTHING AT ALL. But that was also Warners fault, I guess.

laurarichardson said:

GustavoRibas said:

.

- I understood the Slave thing, but the Symbol name being a ´spiritual´ thing never convinced me much. I always thought it was a way of releasing things out of the name Prince and battle WB

Of course it was and he knew if he cut up enough he would get his walking papers. My understanding he walked away from WB owing them a few albums to close out the deal and nothing out of his pocket.

.

Prince got very lucky that there was an exec who decided to let him go instead of blocking his output for years. https://musicfans.stackex...a/2171/129 . Warners could have easily sued him till kingdom come. Yet more evidence of them being the good guys while Prince behaved like a child. And then he continued to bicth about them for decades, then resigned and then started bitching again despite gaining control over his back catalogue.

laurarichardson said:

In addtion, I do not remember a lot of great music coming from REM ( who did not sell anywhere near the amout of music for WB after they got those masters back. )

.

You might wanna count the Gold and Platinum certified albums here: https://en.wikipedia.org/...dio_albums .

databank said:

^ So in the end Universal Basic Income is all the more a necessity, because recorded music isn't going to be profitable again anytime soon, and not every musician can, or wants to, play live gigs in order to make dough.

.

IIRC Mick Jagger argued a couple of years ago that the couple of decades in which the music industry was a bonanza was an exception, an abberration, a fluke.

blizzybiz said:

databank said:

laurarichardson said: Regarding PP specifically, Alan also said that WB expected Prince to setup a real label and work his ass to promote it, while Prince just wanted to have records made and let WB deal with the rest. I am one of the fews who really loved that label, feels most of the records were good and enjoyed most of what was released on it, but I have to admit it lacked 2 things. One was focus: in the course of the same year you could get an experimental jazz-funk record by Madhouse, a synthpop record by Dale, a light pop-rock album by 3OC and a bland boys band record with Good Question. No one ever really understood what this all was about.

Shit, that is what I absolutely LOVED about the PP label!! Where else could you go to get a wide-range of different music, given the formulaic bullshit that started taking over at the time? Prince may not have run this like a fine-tuned biz, but I understand, and agree with, his intent; to relase a shit-load of different types of music that couldn't be categorized.

.

Except PPR lacked consistency. It wasn't all good music, and it wasn't all similar music. And that kills a small label. The likes of 4AD were such that you could almost blindly buy what they released because they stood for something. But PPR? At that point you're only serving hardcore collectors, and that's waaay too small an audience. And the worst part is that great stuff just went under the radar.

BartVanHemelen said:

muleFunk said:

I understood it very well.

Warners sabatoged the contract.

He signed the contract that was based on the numbers of units sold and then he was put into the R&B division which cut 50 to 60 percent of his potential base.

.

Utter nonsense. Why the fuck would Warners want to prevent an artist from selling records? The fact of the matter is that the numbers were unrealistic unless Prince was willing to do the work (i.e. heavy promo and long tours), and he did so exactly once: with D&P. And he did so with D&P to show Warners he could do the work and that he deserved a big-ass contract. And then of course Prince stopped doing the work (and released music that wasn't desperately commercial) and oh look the sales figures dropped and Prince went looking for a stick to hit the dog and suddenly became all interested in "artist rights" while at the same time locking the likes of Margie Cox into her contract with PPR and refusing to release any of her music.

.

No stupid conspiracy needed.

Why because they did not want to pay him the bonus money. You have George Clinton discussing WB giving Prince had hard time desptie all the work he was putting in. He suggested in his book they were sabotaging him.

I am not sure what the fuck you mean about not putting in the work. He made videos and a short movie for symbol album and never stopped touring doing the whole slave thing. He never walked off the job but it is hard to sell millions of cds when your record company sticks you in the RnB section and forgets about you.

I love your alternative facts when so much info avalible now contradicts everything you say.

Look what Sony did to George Micheal, Mariah, and MJ. Record companies want artist to shut up and play ball. If you do not do it you get black balled.

You should read what Tom Petty had to say about how Sony deliberatley paid him a lower royatly rate then they were contractually obligated to do.

Wake Up the lables are the bosses of artist not there friends. It is a business.

BartVanHemelen said:

laurarichardson said:

In addtion, I do not remember a lot of great music coming from REM ( who did not sell anywhere near the amout of music for WB after they got those masters back. )

.

You might wanna count the Gold and Platinum certified albums here: https://en.wikipedia.org/...dio_albums .

How long after this deal did that remain as a functioning group? Are they around doing anything in music today.

BartVanHemelen said:

laurarichardson said:

Of course it was and he knew if he cut up enough he would get his walking papers. My understanding he walked away from WB owing them a few albums to close out the deal and nothing out of his pocket.

.

Prince got very lucky that there was an exec who decided to let him go instead of blocking his output for years. https://musicfans.stackex...a/2171/129 . Warners could have easily sued him till kingdom come. Yet more evidence of them being the good guys while Prince behaved like a child. And then he continued to bicth about them for decades, then resigned and then started bitching again despite gaining control over his back catalogue.

Actually he said on the Oprah Winfrey show he did not hate them at all and I thought he could have exposed a lot of stuff about WB after he left and he did not.

They were not going to sue him because he never walked away from his contract. He continued to provide music as contraually obligated and they knew he had a vault of music that he could keep giving them so they negotiated to close out the deal.

I want you to list the names of other artist who pulled this off. Because Sony sued George Michael and ruined his carreer when he walked off the job.

----

Listen to the interview with PJ Jones who worked for Cavallo and company. He will explain in the video how WB actually had a hand in picking Prince's management when WB thought Prince might sign with Chris Blackwell.

WB were businessmen not good guys looking out for the artist but men running a business and trying to make money. The system was not set up for the artist to be bigger then the lable.

http://podcastjuice.net/category/shows/the-prince-podcast/page/2/

Interview with promoter Perry "PJ" Jones. In 1979 Mo Ostin, Warner Brother’s chairman of the board, told PJ, "Perry, I have a problem up in Minneapolis. I want you to go and see what you can do. I have a kid getting ready to sign with Chris Blackwell (the manager for Bob Marley)."

That kid was Prince Roger Nelson.

PJ talks about working with musical icons Maurice White and Prince. CLASS IS IN SESSION!

jaawwnn said:

One of the issues is that part of the whole Prince public image was that he was a brilliant businessman, it was pure Trump-style branding and had no basis in reality. He hopped in bed with major labels when it suited him and derided them when it didn't. Whatever your opinion on how WB treated Prince (I'd say they treated him very well personally but I'll read arguments to the contrary) they are at the end of a day, as Laurarichardson points put, businessmen concerned about their bottom line. Prince could have been a much better businessman and made loads more money at the expense of his art but he knew where his heart really lay. Time and time again he burnt bridges and gave up on financially viable ventures because he had moved onto the next thing. These weren't good business decisions (even though he always claimed they were) but so what, he had art and integrity to think about. I'm glad he chose the honourable route over the profitable one. I'm glad he flooded the market with tracks rather than, say, touring Sign o the Times to death with 10 singles and a huge worldwide tour. [Edited 9/29/17 6:34am]

Co-Sign. I think his business decisions were good decisions for him.

laurarichardson said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Utter nonsense. Why the fuck would Warners want to prevent an artist from selling records? The fact of the matter is that the numbers were unrealistic unless Prince was willing to do the work (i.e. heavy promo and long tours), and he did so exactly once: with D&P. And he did so with D&P to show Warners he could do the work and that he deserved a big-ass contract. And then of course Prince stopped doing the work (and released music that wasn't desperately commercial) and oh look the sales figures dropped and Prince went looking for a stick to hit the dog and suddenly became all interested in "artist rights" while at the same time locking the likes of Margie Cox into her contract with PPR and refusing to release any of her music.

.

No stupid conspiracy needed.

Why because they did not want to pay him the bonus money. You have George Clinton discussing WB giving Prince had hard time desptie all the work he was putting in. He suggested in his book they were sabotaging him.

I am not sure what the fuck you mean about not putting in the work. He made videos and a short movie for symbol album and never stopped touring doing the whole slave thing. He never walked off the job but it is hard to sell millions of cds when your record company sticks you in the RnB section and forgets about you.

I love your alternative facts when so much info avalible now contradicts everything you say.

Look what Sony did to George Micheal, Mariah, and MJ. Record companies want artist to shut up and play ball. If you do not do it you get black balled.

You should read what Tom Petty had to say about how Sony deliberatley paid him a lower royatly rate then they were contractually obligated to do.

Wake Up the lables are the bosses of artist not there friends. It is a business.

Get black balled? No. Like you say (and I believe what Bart was saying too), it is a business. They have no interest in sabotaging record sales. You make it sound like record company execs hold grudges and get personal about their artists. Truth is they don't. They look at flowcharts and spreadsheets and then formulate plans to sell more product. Profit for shareholders - the only thing that matters. They don't sit in their board meetings talking about how to derail an artists sales by demoting them to the "easy listening" section because they don't like the artist's attitude. Most artists have dumbass, look-at-me, fuck-the-world attitudes. Labels deal with that shit as par for the course. If they "blackballed" every whiney-assed artist they didnt like they would be out of business.

WB board meeting, May 23rd 1994

Chairmain: "Right, any other business?"

Exec 1: "Yes, we are still having problems with Prince. He is now telling the world he is our slave".

Exec 2: "Slave? How much did we pay him last year?"

Exec 1: "Approximately 17 million dollars"

Exec 2: "What? For the Come album?"

Exec 1: "Indeed. In fact we took a hit in our bottom line to accommodate him"

Chairman: "Ok, well lets give him some more money to stop this nonsense"

Exec 1 "We already did. Plus we poured millions into his own label"

Exec 2: "Perhaps we could give him a seat on the board to shut him up?"

Chairman: "No, that won't work, we already made him a president"

Exec 1: "Maybe we tell him we will pay him out after each album, even if he doesnt meet the contractually required sales number?"

Exec 2: "We tried that. He wants his masters back though"

Chairman: "Let it be officially minuted that this company does NOT give artists their masters back."

Exec 1: "Well, lets allow him to release a single on his own without us. Lets also allow him to keep the master tapes of that single"

Exec 2: "We already did that. Remember the number 1 hit he had last month?"

Exec 1: "Ah yes. Ok, any other suggestions?"

Exec 2: "How many record sales has he made in the last 5 years?"

Exec 1: "Approximately 20 million. Our cut from that, after taxes and costs was around 132 million."

Chairman: "And if Prince only met half the sales numbers that his contract stipulates he should sell, how much would we net over the next 5 years?"

Exec 1: "Approximately 184 million dollars. And that includes paying Prince despite him not reaching his target".

CEO: "Fuck it, lets black ball him and put his CDs in the Easy Listening section"

Meeting closed, 10.37am.

Asenath0607 said:

Feel like a total dotard (learned a new vocabulary word this week) for thinking that back when Prince wrote slave on his face he was out of is mind and simply seeking a new means of grabbing attention. Maybe if I had been on the Prince fan sites at the time, I would not have been so quick to believe the media narrative. He was astute and ahead of the game; others are seeing the light. I found this post to be very enlightening.

(Sorry, unsure how to link this)

https://travishoward.com/...roubadours

As a relatively young fan at the time, I felt the same as you did and kind of lost interest in Prince for a while. Internet use came much later for the majority of people in Europe and a lot of information about how the music industry functioned was not as readily available to us as it is now. I still appreciated Prince as an artist but found him hard to understand simply because he had chosen to remain so cryptic.

I just had no idea about what was really going on in the background (and perhaps no one will ever know the full story) and now I understand I realise that he was on a mission to educate people. His first attempts were probably during his angry phase of realisation of those issues and so he still had an 'attitude' as a reaction to it and in the second part (circa 1999) he seemed to have become more at peace with it all. It was in an interview around that time that he mentioned that he had written a letter to Warner Brothers executives saying that he loved them that they were now in good terms. Perhaps the loss of his son had allowed him to take a new perspective on life, and he managed to express himself on the topic with great eloquence and also started doing more public interviews (the one with Larry King is a good example of this time period).

As he progressed with his own spiritual research and study, he went on to incorporate that into a lot of the points he made frrom then on which could still be too esoteric for a lot of people. However, a fact remained that he had been an insider of the music industry so he had that knowledge himself, and the choice we make to believe him or not is ours only.

[Edited 9/30/17 2:21am]

Rebeljuice said:

Get black balled? No. Like you say (and I believe what Bart was saying too), it is a business. They have no interest in sabotaging record sales. You make it sound like record company execs hold grudges and get personal about their artists. Truth is they don't. They look at flowcharts and spreadsheets and then formulate plans to sell more product. Profit for shareholders - the only thing that matters. They don't sit in their board meetings talking about how to derail an artists sales by demoting them to the "easy listening" section because they don't like the artist's attitude. Most artists have dumbass, look-at-me, fuck-the-world attitudes. Labels deal with that shit as par for the course. If they "blackballed" every whiney-assed artist they didnt like they would be out of business.

If you look at the current state of music it looks like they did.

There no young Madonna's Michael's or Prince's out there are they?

Personally I can see WB's side to this conflict and I personally thought that Prince's career would have been more well digested by the public if he would have put albums out every 2-4 years but I understood Prince's point of view from the beginning. It's like telling Martin Luther King to just stay quiet about Vietnam. He could have lived a long time after 1968 if he would have stayed quiet.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

^ So in the end Universal Basic Income is all the more a necessity, because recorded music isn't going to be profitable again anytime soon, and not every musician can, or wants to, play live gigs in order to make dough.

.

IIRC Mick Jagger argued a couple of years ago that the couple of decades in which the music industry was a bonanza was an exception, an abberration, a fluke.

Yes, I remember this.

BartVanHemelen said:

muleFunk said:

Prince took a major stance about his work and how the industry treated artists.

.

Go ask Margie Cox what he did to her during that time.

And Jill Jones as well. There was obviously a contradiction there. There was also a conbtradiction in Prince retaining the masters of other artists' Paisley Park albums. However I do not know of any of those artists asking him for the masters, so unless it happened and was undisclosed, it's hard to assume what he would have done in such a situation: he may have given them back without a fight.

Slave who signed himself into a creative servitude over and over to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Stand-down Harriet Tubman and Frederick Douglas, Prince can't release five albums this year so he's obviously the real victim.

blizzybiz said:

databank said:

laurarichardson said: Regarding PP specifically, Alan also said that WB expected Prince to setup a real label and work his ass to promote it, while Prince just wanted to have records made and let WB deal with the rest. I am one of the fews who really loved that label, feels most of the records were good and enjoyed most of what was released on it, but I have to admit it lacked 2 things. One was focus: in the course of the same year you could get an experimental jazz-funk record by Madhouse, a synthpop record by Dale, a light pop-rock album by 3OC and a bland boys band record with Good Question. No one ever really understood what this all was about. There was clearly the vehicule for Prince's side project but the rest was a mixed bag of everything and its contrary. A big label operates like that but a small vanity label should have a clear identity targeted at a well defined target audience. The second thing lacking was solid artists that needed proper development. You know, as in strong songwriters with a clear view of what they wanted to BE as a musician, the kind of people who really had a potential and ambition to have a long and prolific career. Regardless of the cool albums they made, few had such a potential, or the will to carry on. When she established Maverick Madonna signed some powerful songwriters, musicians with a vision and a true commercial potential. People whose talent could rival hers. Paisley Park remained just that: the backyard of Prince's studio, where whomever ending-up hanging out could be lucky and have a records. I'll say it again: I LOVE most of those records, but that's just me. It would have taken more to reach the world...

Shit, that is what I absolutely LOVED about the PP label!! Where else could you go to get a wide-range of different music, given the formulaic bullshit that started taking over at the time? Prince may not have run this like a fine-tuned biz, but I understand, and agree with, his intent; to relase a shit-load of different types of music that couldn't be categorized.

There were always many indie labels to release music that was at the same time diversified AND focused.

.

To be honest I think the problem with many of the (non-Prince, non side-project) albums released on Paisley Park is often that they were too formulaic in terms of production values to be really hype, but not commercial enough to be hits. Like Bart said you could blindly buy any 4AD record if you were into what 4AD was doing but this is also true for more diversified labels like DFA or Studio K7! for example: you're not sure at all of what genre it's gonna be exactly, but you know you're gonna like it if you liked the rest because there's some sort of a cohesive editorial direction behind those labels, no matter what happens.

.

Now IDK what went wrong with PP's editorial choices, I mean except for a few obvious misses you would assume that if you dig Prince you'll dig those records, because to most people the records clearly had "the Prince sound", to the point that he was often suspected to have written and produced material he had nothing to do with. It sure worked for me because I loved those records. I worked for you and some other people I know, but it sure didn't work for the great majority of Prince fans if you read the Org. OK, the fact that a good 50% of them are Springsteen/McCartney/Dylan/Radiohead fans doesn't help, because PP was clearly not a rock or folk label, but even those R&B fans who worship the mpls sound and rave all the time about records by Jesse, Morris, W&L, Jam&Lewis and other former collaborators are always bitching about PP records (save Mazarati, I'll give you that). So it worked for us, but obviously something went wrong along the way, because even though few people knew about those records, those who did usually didn't like them.

.

IDK though, I'd love to read a catalogue of contemporary reviews for each of those albums. Prince albums reviews have survived but IDK where to find reviews for those PP records. Maybe we'd be surprised. Maybe reviews were quite good?

.

In the end the thing is that outside of the Prince fandom, no one remembers those fucking records. You don't find articles online full of nostalgia for the mythic Paisley Park label that was gone too soon. And even among fans there isn't much of such nostalgia. For some reason it didn't have any impact. It was just perceived as a vehicule for more Prince music, which it was for the most part, that needed to sign other acts in order to justify its existence as a label, which I guess is exactly what it was doing in the end.

.

Now don't get me wrong. Like I said I love most of those records. I grew up with them and, 25 years later, I still find many of them to be strong records, at least much better albums than they're generally said to be. But I understand why it didn't work as a label. Something was missing and that was the capacity to create a hype and reach an audience beyond Prince fans.

.

And to be honest I think Carmen Electra was the fatal blow. To the Prince/WB relationship of course, but to the public perception of PP as well: I remember the guys at the records stores, bitching about what the label had become, citing True Confession sometimes, Carmen Electra always, as proof of the debacle. Hell, even we the fans were mad when we finally heard Carmen Electra.

.

Of course the albums were not the only reason: there was a huge issue with A&R and marketing (WB US had no interest save for Romance 1600, Taja Sevelle and Pandemonium; WB Europe had no interest save for Jill Jones, Prince had no interest whatsoever save for Carmen): if no one will sell the shit, no one will buy it.

.

I think Paisley Park would have been more fondly remembered if it had only released Prince side-projects: because save for Carmen and maybe Times Squared, most are being fondly remembered by fans and even the few non-fans who are aware of them.

.

Either that or it would have had to become a real label, with someone really doing their job at A&R. No one was really looking after those artists: when you read about the label you see each record was a different adventure: some were in-house PP projects that no one promoted once out, a few caught WB's interest and WB did all the job while no one at PP cared, one was Prince's management pet-project and no one at either PP nor WB knew what it was all about, several were dropped by PP once WB or the artist asked them to go in a different direction, one only had the artist's manager working on it, etc., etc. It was a MESS. And obviously it's not just marketing, before and after marketing the record you need people to really scout and develop talents, not just "oh cool ok let's sign this guy here's 100M bucks, here's a random producer because hell you need one we guess, thank you good luck and, oh, anyway, there's little hope that you'll release a second album on our label after that one, we're one-off projects kinda guys, and if you have a problem we don't know who you should call, so just don't call ok?". If you're gonna show so little interest in your own project, why should other people do?

To reply to Bart and everyone else about "Prince was a grown up with an army of lowyers when he signed the 1992 deal so WTF was he cryin' about?". I agree. But on the other hand what was WB thinking?

.

WB had worked with Prince for 15 years. They knew Prince wouldn't sell 5M every year. They knew he wouldn't release a super commercial record every year. They knew he wouldn't be happy with releasing an album every 3 years either. They knew he wouldn't ever do anything with Paisley Park, let alone a third label. They knew he was spending money faster than it could be made, and that he liked to spend other people's money. They knew he was prone to erratic decisions, changes of mind and that he would often put his artistic ideals above his commercial goals. They knew giving him an official position in WB's board wouldn't ever be anything more than symbolic. And they probably already suspected they would have to buy him off the making of his own greatest hits set for chrissakes!

.

So OK, I guess WB thought Prince would be reasonable because he indeed had been reasonable occasionally. And they were probably afraid they'd lose him to another major and wanted to avoid a bidding war. And they knew he was profitable in the end. But they also were grown up professional who signed an unreasonable deal with someone they knew quite well. Prince was huge, OK, but this contract was unrealistic and several people in the music business denounced it at the time: it didn't make sense, Prince sold well there's no questioning that, but his sales had nothing to do with the likes of Madonna, MJ or Janet, who would release a very commercial record every 2 to 4 years.

.

So I say both parties fucked up.

NorthC said:

What went wrong with Paisley Park is very simple: Prince cared about nothing else than getting his own ideas out. As Rick James said about Vanity "She gave him pussy and he gave her a record." Cynic though it may be, it was true and the same went for Carmen and Mayte. Not for everybody on the label of course, but it really was about Prince's ideas and nothing else. There was a consistency to the albums that came out on the label: they all sounded like Prince! And that worked when Prince was on top of the charts, but when he wasn't, neither were the other acts because they couldn't stand on their own feet. That's why Candy Dulfer and Lois Lane didn't want to have Prince produce their albums: they wanted to make it on their own terms and not be seen as Prince clones. Oh and I actually like the Carmen Electra album. So much for databank's prejudice about Bob Dylan fans. [Edited 9/30/17 9:45am]

Whenever you say "X+People tend to Verb+X", the first comment you always get is "I'm X and yet I don't X". This is irrelevant and should be avoided because it confuses matters if nothing else. Yes, there are always exceptions. And yes they are vocal because people are so scared of being pigeonholed that each and everytime they can be the exception, they will shout it out loud. But for each Dylan fan who digs Carmen Electra and will shout it loud, you will have 500 Dylan fans who hate Carmen Electra and will remain silent.

.

On a more serious note, I have never heard that Prince ever offered (or was offered to) compose or produce whole records for Lois Lane or Candy Dulfer. If confirmed, I'd love to learn more details about this: what's your source?

.

Also, I think we need to distinguish the side projects, that were basically Prince records and therefore, of course, did sound like Prince records, and the non-Prince records. The latest category, as I said above, did sound a little too much like Prince. But on the other hand one could assume that it's what the label's audience wanted? I really have no definitive answer for that. But I think if we're to understand why the label didn't succeed, we may have to focus our attention more on those non-Prince records, because they were, essentially, the records that could have made PP a true label as opposed to mere outlet foor Prince music. I'm very open to hearing different ideas about this.

Here we're basically talking about:

- Mazarati

- Taja Sevelle

- Riot In English

- Vermillion

- Good Question

- Tony LeMans

- The Cinderella Theory

- Time The Motion

- Time The Motion Live

- True Confessions

- Hey Man... Smell My Finger

- Things Left Unsaid

and to some extent, of the "hybrid" albums, i.e.

- Sheila E.

- Pandemonium

- May 19, 1992

- The Voice

If we focus on this roster, we can wonder what went wrong, because the rest was more or less just Prince tripping alone in the studio, and save for Carmen Electra all those side projects records are very popular among Prince fans..

NorthC said:

My Dylan comment was a bit of a joke because you seem to have this strange idea that one can't fully appreciate Prince's music if one isn't an expert on soul and funk and avant garde jazz. Another: As for Candy and Lois, they gave several interviews in Dutch magazines where they said they preferred to do their own thing, so it wasn't really that they refused a contract, they just decided to go their own way. As for the question of PP... No one can ever say why some albums become hits and others don't, but I don't think Prince was all that interested on the albums on the label that weren't his own.

We're cool. No, IDK, more like African-American music and electronic music in general (I don't think avant-garde jazz helps a bit with Prince). I know it sounds like a strange idea and I certainly love some rock or folk records or acts myself, but I still believe it's harder for certain people to like, say Future Baby Mama, than for others. In a similar way I guess even though I love Bowie as a whole, his early folk/rock albums are not necessarily my favorite, while I'm very much into some of the material his own fans seem to disdain.

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Thanks for the precision about the Dutch girls. I wonder how much was true and how much was just making a point for being independant (Prince never did a whole record for a non-Paisley Park act, so IDK if he would have in the first place).

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I agree that Prince clearly didn't give a fuck about the other records on his label. Maybe he should have just kept releasing his side projects on WB as Jaimie Starr, instead of bothering with a label...

jaawwnn said:

One of the issues is that part of the whole Prince public image was that he was a brilliant businessman, it was pure Trump-style branding and had no basis in reality. He hopped in bed with major labels when it suited him and derided them when it didn't. Whatever your opinion on how WB treated Prince (I'd say they treated him very well personally but I'll read arguments to the contrary) they are at the end of a day, as Laurarichardson points put, businessmen concerned about their bottom line. Prince could have been a much better businessman and made loads more money at the expense of his art but he knew where his heart really lay. Time and time again he burnt bridges and gave up on financially viable ventures because he had moved onto the next thing. These weren't good business decisions (even though he always claimed they were) but so what, he had art and integrity to think about. I'm glad he chose the honourable route over the profitable one. I'm glad he flooded the market with tracks rather than, say, touring Sign o the Times to death with 10 singles and a huge worldwide tour. [Edited 9/29/17 6:34am]

Agree...

He kept things fluid in his business life, becasue he was driven by the creative flow not the money grab.He had to remain agile, since he was always changing things up

Taking the control that he did allowed him flexibility to effectively dance to his won tune...

and he managed to support so many people within his circle AND

'Give Away millions to causes at his own discretion.

Id love to be such a BAD business Man..

databank said:

To reply to Bart and everyone else about "Prince was a grown up with an army of lowyers when he signed the 1992 deal so WTF was he cryin' about?". I agree. But on the other hand what was WB thinking?

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WB had worked with Prince for 15 years. They knew Prince wouldn't sell 5M every year. They knew he wouldn't release a super commercial record every year. They knew he wouldn't be happy with releasing an album every 3 years either. They knew he wouldn't ever do anything with Paisley Park, let alone a third label. They knew he was spending money faster than it could be made, and that he liked to spend other people's money. They knew he was prone to erratic decisions, changes of mind and that he would often put his artistic ideals above his commercial goals. They knew giving him an official position in WB's board wouldn't ever be anything more than symbolic. And they probably already suspected they would have to buy him off the making of his own greatest hits set for chrissakes!

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So OK, I guess WB thought Prince would be reasonable because he indeed had been reasonable occasionally. And they were probably afraid they'd lose him to another major and wanted to avoid a bidding war. And they knew he was profitable in the end. But they also were grown up professional who signed an unreasonable deal with someone they knew quite well. Prince was huge, OK, but this contract was unrealistic and several people in the music business denounced it at the time: it didn't make sense, Prince sold well there's no questioning that, but his sales had nothing to do with the likes of Madonna, MJ or Janet, who would release a very commercial record every 2 to 4 years.

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So I say both parties fucked up.

This is the whole point.

They knew that he probably wouldn't sell those albums and then they insured that he wouldn't when they moved him to the R&B division. 7 was one of the most played songs on the radio but it stopped at Number 7? It was the most played video on MTV for 3 weeks but didn't go Number 1. Prince started to recognize that he was being sabatoged on the charts which was part of the deal. Not to mention that WB loved to put that Parental Advisory sticker on his albums which stopped Walmart from buying the crates of albums.

Why is this important to the era? Soundscan started using crates bought as a unit of measurement instead of individual CDs bought. This inflated several artists numbers and skewed the real number one songs/albums because airplay was not counted and if the artist was not sold in box stores their number was skewed.

So to say both parties were not innocent would be correct.

Maybe there was a justified hope from WB that with the proper incentive, Prince would keep on producing radio-friendly hits.
Considering Chaka's "I Feel For You", "Manic Monday", "Kiss" (which is somewhat of an anomaly on Parade), "Batdance", Sinead's "Nothing Compares 2 U", "Love Thy Will Be Done", "Cream", maybe they thought it was possible to both give Prince his artistic freedom and get regular hits from him.

Does anyone happen to know the exact years Prince's contract with WB expired/was renewed?

Did the first renewal begin with Controversy (after 3 albums)? Which would be a bold move from WB after "Dirty Mind".
But what we consider "bold" nowadays was simply called "artist development" then,
at a time where there were still music lovers present on the majors boards,
who knew that last-longing artists and catalog were patiently built over time.

The nineties were the beginning of the end, and not just in music: after Reagan and Thatcher let the wolves loose in the eighties,
every aspect of our western lives became gradually infected by corporate greed.
There's no doubt Prince's war was justified, and I love this paranoia-induced era, where anger and frustration
produced a rejunevated spirit and much bravado. Prince simply forgot that he was dealing with human beings
with big egoes too, and that Warner executives wouldn't tolerate to be publicly treated as fools, or worse, slave drivers.
He would have saved himself lots of troubles and years of battle, had he learned from Madonna's reaction to the Vatican
condemnation of the "Like A Prayer" video and the italian leg of the "Blonde Ambition" tour,
which was done in a very professional way and thus made the majority of the public opinion bend towards her side.

[Edited 10/1/17 13:45pm]

muleFunk said:

They knew that he probably wouldn't sell those albums and then they insured that he wouldn't when they moved him to the R&B division. 7 was one of the most played songs on the radio but it stopped at Number 7? It was the most played video on MTV for 3 weeks but didn't go Number 1. Prince started to recognize that he was being sabatoged on the charts which was part of the deal.

It must be stated that Prince sabotaged the album from the very beginning with his choice of single releases. WB wanted "7" as the lead single and he said no. He fought for Sexy MF, a song that couldn't even be played on the radio except with a stupid edit and it peaked at 66. The follow up MNIP was bombastic and hardly one of the better things from the album and struggled to make Top 40, but at least it could be played. It was only months after the release of the album that he finally agreed to "7" and the fact it went top 10 at that point at all is a testament to how great the song was... and it's all conjecture but I'm not sure the single choices beyond that were commercially smart, either. ...but I'm betting Prince still managed to blame WB for the bad showing as he would do for every record label thereafter.

Prince crafted D&P and his work ethic around it to show WB and everyone else that he could still be a major player. I have no doubt they thought if they could inspire him with a few carrots (bonuses) that he might be persuaded to work future albums similarly... but Prince wasn't built to sustain that type of effort, imo.