alandail said:

It's not as precise as you think it should be.

For example, if a third party had written a song and gifted it entirely to Prince, then it would be perfectly possible for the authorship and copyright registration to be in the name of Prince as the recipient of that gift.

The database isn't 100% accurate for a variety of reasons.. Songs registered in the name of Prince appear under a range of entries which have possibly resulted from different people cataloguing registrations under slight variations of his name.

Effectively, the database attempts to record what is received in the registration request.

If what is received is inaccurate, and remains unchallenged, then the registration will be inaccurate. Similarly, even if the inflormation is 100% accurate when submitted, it is always prone to human error when it is entered on to the database.

At the British Library there have been entries registered in Prince's name which pre-date his birth!!
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[Edited 3/7/05 10:51am]

It was reported back in the early 90's that Prince had gotten
a cool 7 million dollars for that song from Pepsi.

Thinking about this song again and reading the thing you guys
write, I am beginning to have doubts on wether he wrote it or
not since it would have been such a perfect song to go on one
of his own albums. It's better than most of the stuff on D&P.

Plus he was churning out tunes like no tomorrow at that time,
either for his own use (released and remaining unreleased) as
well as tunes for many others including those martika cuts.

alandail said:

He probably would only have had to reveal the original sources if he ever published it. I mean, lots of songs use samples but I doubt those would be included in the initial registration of a song, only when it goes into the public domain.

Thinking about it, in the age of the mp3, there is gonna be less and less info provided about additional sources and samples - something that by law they had to provide in the liner notes. I don't think there's a law that they have to provide that info in a downloadable mp3.

He wrote Crystal Ball for Crystal Pepsi. The drink failed, so that is the real reason for the change to Sign of the Times. Pepsi was also gonna use "Pepsi, the taste of a new POWER generation" but it never worked out.