Of the Associated Artists that have released projects, which of them would you like to see on HD Tracks?

.

Peronally, I would like to see the Madhouse albums, The Time albums as well as The Family album.

daPrettyman said:

Of the Associated Artists that have released projects, which of them would you like to see on HD Tracks?

.

Peronally, I would like to see the Madhouse albums, The Time albums as well as The Family album.

Prince owns the rights to the 2 Madhouse albums so it ain't gonna happen. The Time's recordings are in WB's hands so it's an option. I don't know what the situation is with The Family, could be P or WB.

databank said:

daPrettyman said:

Of the Associated Artists that have released projects, which of them would you like to see on HD Tracks?

.

Peronally, I would like to see the Madhouse albums, The Time albums as well as The Family album.

Prince owns the rights to the 2 Madhouse albums so it ain't gonna happen. The Time's recordings are in WB's hands so it's an option. I don't know what the situation is with The Family, could be P or WB.

I don't know if he owns the rights or not. He has stated that he owns the rights to "For You," but it has been issued on HD Tracks and has the WB logo on it. So, who knows?

the Mazarati album

daPrettyman said:

databank said:

Prince owns the rights to the 2 Madhouse albums so it ain't gonna happen. The Time's recordings are in WB's hands so it's an option. I don't know what the situation is with The Family, could be P or WB.

I don't know if he owns the rights or not. He has stated that he owns the rights to "For You," but it has been issued on HD Tracks and has the WB logo on it. So, who knows?

He never said anything about it but we know from another source.

Someone that worked at Edel revealed some internal documents from 1994 a few years back, that show that Prince was planning to have Edel rerelease numerous Paisley Park albums on NPG Records, the same way they rereleased Mavis' The Voice and George's Hey Man... Smell My Finger in 1994 (2 records that supposedly belonged to WB, and for years every one thought that this had been done thanks to an arrangement with WB). That list included Ingrid Chavez' album, both Eric Leeds' albums, a few others I can't remember (Carmen Electra too, I believe) and... the Madhouse albums! Why exactly Prince changed his mind and decided to cancel all these rerelease isn't known, but basically it's obvious that in 94 he wanted NPG to be a real label à la Paisley Park and that by the end of 1995 he had totally given-up that idea. But I digress, so as I said he was about to rerelease 8 and 16.

Last year or so, Alan Leeds came on this forum and I asked him how it was possible that Prince could have planned to rerelease so many Paisley Park albums if WB owned the masters. Alan Leeds revealed that most of the album released on Paisley Park (save P's own records) had been subject to a specific contract that said that WB owned the rights to the masters as long as Paisley Park was active, and that they would revert to Prince if WB ever chose to shut the label down. WB killed Paisley Park in early 1994 and instantly the rights to all these records reverted to Prince, including the 2 Madhouse albums.

Eric Leeds didn't seem to be certain whether The Family's album belonged to that category or not, since it was an early Paisley Park release. And since it wasn't on the list of albums Edel planned to rerelease we don't know either, so that album's status is uncertain. Still, the fact that a few years back Prince copyrighted (or tried to copyright) the names Mazarati, Good Question and... The Family could mean that he indeed owns these albums and that he was trying to protect the rights to these masters from possible attempts by the recording artists involved to claim their share of the masters.

As for The Time their original contract goes back to before Paisley Park and whatever they signed with WB and Reprise in 89 also made sure that WB would retain the rights to that particular album. Proof is that their albums have have remained in print after 1994 and that they're now available on iTunes.

So to come back to ur original suggestion: HD Tracks is an option for the Time albums, may be an option for The Family (and, as suggested above, Mazarati, whose status is also unknown) and totally impossible for Madhouse (unless of course P secures a deal with HD Tracks separately from their deal with WB).

On a side note, the funny thing is that while Prince has been fighting and will probably keep fighting WB about his own album's masters, he owns the masters of albums by numerous other artists. He certainly can claim that The Family or Jill Jones are "his" music, but these Paisley Park records include numerous recordings he wasn't involved with, notably the 2 George Clinton albums, and one can wonder what would happen if, say, George Clinton reclaimed the right to these currently out of print recordings.

Thanx 4 the info. That was really cool to read.

.

I had an inkling that WB didn't own some of the PP albums. Especially since Carmen Electra's album was online for sale under a different title (it's not on iTunes right now).

daPrettyman said:

Thanx 4 the info. That was really cool to read.

.

I had an inkling that WB didn't own some of the PP albums. Especially since Carmen Electra's album was online for sale under a different title (it's not on iTunes right now).

The case of Carmen Electra on iT is different: it was a bootleg, pure & simple, and it was removed the minute iT figured it out.