About two years ago, there was a website set up to promote a set of Prince sample CDs. From memory, there were about 7 CDs in the set (including one of drums, one of vocal samples) and the set cost about US$700. But the price included the licence to use all the samples - ie, it was a royalty-free collection.

It looked like it was an official Paisley Park/NPG project but I don't think it ever came out.

Does anyone know what happened to this? Did any of the sets ever get out?

Sean
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www.sean.co.uk

sean2003 said:

It was on Prince's site. There was even a sound advertisement (mp3 or ram) that accompanied the web page.

It never happened. They apparently expected advance sales of 10,000 or 100,000 copies before they were prepared to deliver.

I don't even know if the mechanism was put in place for people to place an order.


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[This message was edited Mon Aug 4 9:51:54 PDT 2003 by langebleu]

MAN I remember that disc, wondering what the sales would be like for it. $700 is a high price to pay to have a trademark sample - I mean, its not like his stuff is already sampled heavily like James Brown or Led Zeppelin's "Levee Breaks"...

but hey - if somebody HAD the disc and let me grab some stuff, hell yeeeah I'd'a gone up on that thang.

otan said:

The price seemed quite reasonable considering what you got for it - you could effectively use Prince breakbeats and vocal quips in a top ten single and not pay him any more than the US$700. At the amateur musician end of the market it seems less worthwhile but I imagine that the samples were very distinctive. It's certainly the only way most of us would get Prince to perform on our songs.

I did wonder whether he canned it because he didn't want to end up overexposed like James Brown and end up as a sampling cliche.

It might also have proved very hard to enforce the licensing on.

Sean
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www.sean.co.uk

This is an odd one. I hoped Prince would release these but as far as I knew, he didnt. But Ive found & downloaded the lot lol. Trouble is that cos they aint officially released Im not sure if I should use them lol.

cloud9mission said:

You have the 7CD set of samples? There was a selection of samples put together by ex-NPG members which circulated - maybe that's what you have?

langebleu said:

ah not 7 just one