Since I've been getting into the protege acts, I just need some clarification. Prince gets the songwriter/producer royalties for say, the Vanity 6 album, but whenever they would perform it live, they would get a performance royalty, right? And also, how come the Vanity 6 album is out of print? What causes an album to STILL be out of print in the digital age??

khill95 said:

Since I've been getting into the protege acts, I just need some clarification. Prince gets the songwriter/producer royalties for say, the Vanity 6 album, but whenever they would perform it live, they would get a performance royalty, right? And also, how come the Vanity 6 album is out of print? What causes an album to STILL be out of print in the digital age??

WB stupidness causes this to happen. It looksl like the Mavis and Madhouse CDs are out with some other company. Meaning WB may have sold the master tapes to these two projects.

khill95 said:

Since I've been getting into the protege acts, I just need some clarification. Prince gets the songwriter/producer royalties for say, the Vanity 6 album, but whenever they would perform it live, they would get a performance royalty, right?

If Vanity 6 performed a song live, the performance right royalty would be due to the composer as copyright holder for the song (or whoever the copyright holder has granted a licence to collect or receive that royalty).

The performer likely has rights related to their live performance of a composition e.g. the right not to have their performance recorded etc.. Protection of these rights is usually reflected through the terms and conditions of contracts that concert attendees enter into when they purchase a ticket to attend a show.

laurarichardson said:

langebleu said:

khill95 said:

khill95 said:

laurarichardson said:

WB stupidness causes this to happen. It looksl like the Mavis and Madhouse CDs are out with some other company. Meaning WB may have sold the master tapes to these two projects.

Stupid. I mean, it’s great to have them on YouTube, but I actually want to BUY them to own them.

It would have been nice if WB had not let these titles go out of print but they did and they obvisouly do not care about Prince's side projects.

laurarichardson said:

khill95 said:

laurarichardson said: Stupid. I mean, it’s great to have them on YouTube, but I actually want to BUY them to own them.

It would have been nice if WB had not let these titles go out of print but they did and they obvisouly do not care about Prince's side projects.

Everything that doesn't sell consistently eventually goes out of print. Labels have to prioritize, and physical distribution is expensive and has limited capacity.

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I don't know exactly why things didn't get put onto iTunes, but I suspect it's the same reason old TV shows often have trouble with music sync rights when they want to go onto DVD or streaming services--no one predicted these mediums, so they weren't written into contracts. As such, shows like The Wonder Years or WKRP had to reobtain those rights or change the music.

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In other words, WB possibly explicitly had the right to distribute via physical means, but didn't have rights to distribute via digital means for the simple reason that it didn't exist and they couldn't have predicted it. That's just my guess. Most labels will happily put anything online--it costs them next to nothing if they have the rights.

crimesofparis said:

laurarichardson said:

It would have been nice if WB had not let these titles go out of print but they did and they obvisouly do not care about Prince's side projects.

Everything that doesn't sell consistently eventually goes out of print. Labels have to prioritize, and physical distribution is expensive and has limited capacity.

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I don't know exactly why things didn't get put onto iTunes, but I suspect it's the same reason old TV shows often have trouble with music sync rights when they want to go onto DVD or streaming services--no one predicted these mediums, so they weren't written into contracts. As such, shows like The Wonder Years or WKRP had to reobtain those rights or change the music.

.

In other words, WB possibly explicitly had the right to distribute via physical means, but didn't have rights to distribute via digital means for the simple reason that it didn't exist and they couldn't have predicted it. That's just my guess. Most labels will happily put anything online--it costs them next to nothing if they have the rights.

The Mavis and Madhouse albums are on Tidal. I have a hard time believing that Mavis and Madhouse took up that much room at the warehouse when we kept those Monkees greatest hits.

I worked in a record store at the height of popualarity. I ordered CDs for people for all sorts of obsurce artist. If WB had wanted to they could have put out some sort of box set in a limited run back in the day and called it a day.

Same thing with the rumor that Prince wanted them to do a greatest hits of his love songs and they had no interest.

Remember Vanity 6 and The Time weren't signed to Warners. They were signed to Prince's Starr Company. So as far as money they were at Prince's mercy. I'm sure there were plenty of clauses in the contracts that stated them not getting any money. Denise said she didn't get a dime for the Vanity 6 album

laurarichardson said:

crimesofparis said:

Everything that doesn't sell consistently eventually goes out of print. Labels have to prioritize, and physical distribution is expensive and has limited capacity.

.

I don't know exactly why things didn't get put onto iTunes, but I suspect it's the same reason old TV shows often have trouble with music sync rights when they want to go onto DVD or streaming services--no one predicted these mediums, so they weren't written into contracts. As such, shows like The Wonder Years or WKRP had to reobtain those rights or change the music.

.

In other words, WB possibly explicitly had the right to distribute via physical means, but didn't have rights to distribute via digital means for the simple reason that it didn't exist and they couldn't have predicted it. That's just my guess. Most labels will happily put anything online--it costs them next to nothing if they have the rights.

The Mavis and Madhouse albums are on Tidal. I have a hard time believing that Mavis and Madhouse took up that much room at the warehouse when we kept those Monkees greatest hits.

I worked in a record store at the height of popualarity. I ordered CDs for people for all sorts of obsurce artist. If WB had wanted to they could have put out some sort of box set in a limited run back in the day and called it a day.

Same thing with the rumor that Prince wanted them to do a greatest hits of his love songs and they had no interest.

The Madhouse albums would probably shift 5,000 each at best worldwide - probably not even that.

I've been involved in projects for reissue labels. There is very little profit margin even in back catalogue release these days.

My understanding also is that any Prince protege act that's available digitally is essentially not authorised by WB.

jjam said:

databank said:

The rights to the Madhouse and Mavis Staples albums reverted back to Prince in 1994,WB has no business reprinting them or putting them on streaming platforms. And since NPG records didn't do it either, those upload are likely to be illegal bootlegging that's slipped thru the cracks.

Can I ask how you know details of that contract? Was it discussed in an interview somewhere?

crimesofparis said:

databank said:

SanDiegoFunkDaddy said:

Remember Vanity 6 and The Time weren't signed to Warners. They were signed to Prince's Starr Company. So as far as money they were at Prince's mercy. I'm sure there were plenty of clauses in the contracts that stated them not getting any money. Denise said she didn't get a dime for the Vanity 6 album

Interesting, so Prince did to others what Warner Brothers did to him....

206Michelle said:

SanDiegoFunkDaddy said:

Remember Vanity 6 and The Time weren't signed to Warners. They were signed to Prince's Starr Company. So as far as money they were at Prince's mercy. I'm sure there were plenty of clauses in the contracts that stated them not getting any money. Denise said she didn't get a dime for the Vanity 6 album

Interesting, so Prince did to others what Warner Brothers did to him....

No. At least not in that case.

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Vanity/Apollonia 6 and The Time were employed by Prince on a weekly salary, similarly to Prince's own bandmembers, who had no business with WB whatsoever. Their recording contracts as bands were with Warner Bros, but while I am not aware of the legal details (unsure if anyone is), it seems the bands were signed to WB as an extention of Prince's own contract (apparently thanks to a clause that Prince asked in his contract from the beginning), as opposed to signing a deal as individuals who formed a band. This is what allowed Prince to fire people from a band, for example, while a direct contract with WB would have protected the musicians from any such thing. Apparently, this didn't apply to Sheila, who was a single individual and who released her fourth album directly with WB, without the Paisley Park imprint, in 1991. WB remained sole owner of all the Starr Company albums' masters, both after the rights to most of the Paisley Park catalogue reverted to Prtince in 1994, and after Prince regained his own masters in 2014. And there wasn't any such thing as a legal entity called "Starr Company", by the way.Therefore, this has virtually nothing to do with anything WB would have "done" to Prince, whose contract with WB was a recording contract, entirely different from the way he employed his musicians at the time. The analogy makes no sense at all.

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I also believe those albums' masters should have been given back to Prince in 2014, as well as Sheila's first 2 and The Family: those records were Prince records in all but in name, and almost entirely offsprings of Prince's creative process. If I was to compose, arrange, record, produce, decide on the tracklist and cover art of a record and just have someone replace my vocals with theirs, I wouldn't consider the work "theirs" at all. It would be like saying John Blackwell should own the masters for The Rainbow Children just because he plays all the drums.

.

However, Prince did to others what WB did to him when he retained the masters of most Paisley Park albums after 1994, including those many recordings he had little or nothing to do with, such as Good Question, Tony LeMans, Dale, Eric Leeds' second album, etc. However, I am not aware of any of the artists in question reclaiming their masters from Prince, but had Prince lived it would have been interesting to see what would have happened on the long run, including once those records would have reached the 35 years age. I'm sure Clinton or his estate, at least, will reclaim The Cinderella Theory and Hey Man in 2024 and 2027 respectively, and given Prince's vocal stance on recovering one's masters, I'm actually surprised that Clinton didn't attempt it long ago (Prince would have been in a bad position refusing him his masters, particularly given Clinton's prestigious status as an elder musician and major influence on Prince).

.

In some cases, Prince actually did worse to some artists than WB ever did to him: Jill Jones had a record deal with Paisley Park that extended until 1993, and when she declined to keep working with Prince after 1989, Prince refused to let her go, by doing so forbidding her to get another record deal or release any further music with any other label. I don't remember the details but Bart recently said that something similar happened with Margie Cox, but IDK exactly what. Margie probably addressed it in the interview she gave to that cool blog that was made by an orger with all those great interviews (can't recall the blog's name now, but I'm sure others will). WB could have done that to Prince in 1996, but chose to let him go and get it over with instead. Of course, Prince had the media's ears and his bashing WB was much more dissuasive for WB than anything Jill or Margie could have said against Prince.

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I think we should have a FAQ about all that stuff, because I find myself reexplaining it over and over again. Nobody's fault, but maybe it should be in the Org FAQ.

[Edited 10/11/17 21:26pm]

databank said:

206Michelle said:

Interesting, so Prince did to others what Warner Brothers did to him....

No. At least not in that case.

.

Vanity/Apollonia 6 and The Time were employed by Prince on a weekly salary, similarly to Prince's own bandmembers, who had no business with WB whatsoever. Their recording contracts as bands were with Warner Bros, but while I am not aware of the legal details (unsure if anyone is), it seems the bands were signed to WB as an extention of Prince's own contract (apparently thanks to a clause that Prince asked in his contract from the beginning), as opposed to signing a deal as individuals who formed a band. This is what allowed Prince to fire people from a band, for example, while a direct contract with WB would have protected the musicians from any such thing. Apparently, this didn't apply to Sheila, who was a single individual and who released her fourth album directly with WB, without the Paisley Park imprint, in 1991. WB remained sole owner of all the Starr Company albums' masters, both after the rights to most of the Paisley Park catalogue reverted to Prtince in 1994, and after Prince regained his own masters in 2014. And there wasn't any such thing as a legal entity called "Starr Company", by the way.Therefore, this has virtually nothing to do with anything WB would have "done" to Prince, whose contract with WB was a recording contract, entirely different from the way he employed his musicians at the time. The analogy makes no sense at all.

.

I also believe those albums' masters should have been given back to Prince in 2014, as well as Sheila's first 2 and The Family: those records were Prince records in all but in name, and almost entirely offsprings of Prince's creative process. If I was to compose, arrange, record, produce, decide on the tracklist and cover art of a record and just have someone replace my vocals with theirs, I wouldn't consider the work "theirs" at all. It would be like saying John Blackwell should own the masters for The Rainbow Children just because he plays all the drums.

.

However, Prince did to others what WB did to him when he retained the masters of most Paisley Park albums after 1994, including those many recordings he had little or nothing to do with, such as Good Question, Tony LeMans, Dale, Eric Leeds' second album, etc. However, I am not aware of any of the artists in question reclaiming their masters from Prince, but had Prince lived it would have been interesting to see what would have happened on the long run, including once those records would have reached the 35 years age. I'm sure Clinton or his estate, at least, will reclaim The Cinderella Theory and Hey Man in 2024 and 2027 respectively, and given Prince's vocal stance on recovering one's masters, I'm actually surprised that Clinton didn't attempt it long ago (Prince would have been in a bad position refusing him his masters, particularly given Clinton's prestigious status as an elder musician and major influence on Prince).

.

In some cases, Prince actually did worse to some artists than WB ever did to him: Jill Jones had a record deal with Paisley Park that extended until 1993, and when she declined to keep working with Prince after 1989, Prince refused to let her go, by doing so forbidding her to get another record deal or release any further music with any other label. I don't remember the details but Bart recently said that something similar happened with Margie Cox, but IDK exactly what. Margie probably addressed it in the interview she gave to that cool blog that was made by an orger with all those great interviews (can't recall the blog's name now, but I'm sure others will). WB could have done that to Prince in 1996, but chose to let him go and get it over with instead. Of course, Prince had the media's ears and his bashing WB was much more dissuasive for WB than anything Jill or Margie could have said against Prince.

.

I think we should have a FAQ about all that stuff, because I find myself reexplaining it over and over again. Nobody's fault, but maybe it should be in the Org FAQ.

[Edited 10/11/17 21:26pm]

Databank,

Thanks for the information. And yes, I agree with you about the FAQ section.

Well The Family album's digital release is going through Tunecore - there is NO way that this has been legally done. I'm surprised that Paul Peterson hasn't tried to look into this. As mentioned earlier, it's essentially bootlegging.