Tiffypoo2004 said:

So u tellin me some 1 put a tune u had never heard b4 in front of u and u would turn it down.....DON`T THINK SO !!!!!


I`M LOVIN THE BOOTLEGS...SHARE THEM...Sorry P.

So let me get this straight, Neversin, and I'm not having a go, but your view of the world of Prince bootlegs is this:

There's all these ex-employees/associates/ex-bandmembers/girl/boyfriends/studio people who had obtained bits of original rare material, they gave it to mysterious good 'collectors/traders' for no monetary exchange out of the goodness of their heart. These 'collectors' would love to give it to the general Prince fan populace for free, but they fear it will fall into the hands of 'evil bootleggers' who would try to make money from what should be free for all, so instead they keep it locked up like some holy relic waiting for the day when the bootleggers are no more, or trade it for free with similar 'collector/traders' but only in so far as it doesn't fall into the hands of your average Prince fan who will likely accidently let it slip into the hands of evil bootleggers.

And on the other side, you have evil bootleggers who buy the material from 'collectors/traders' who have fallen from the pure way, or from a friend of a collector who didn't know it wasn't meant for certain types, then they sell it on to the Prince fans, but they sabotage their own efforts by, say cropping it badly or making it staticky, so that there will be interest in future releases of better quality versions.

It seems to me, in both cases they are dealing with 'stolen' items, but one side keep it for themselves or close friends, while the other actually deliver a product to the fans they are happy to purchase. Which one is actually doing a service to the fans at large?! Is it better to get something you really want in poor quality or not at all?!

I've actually only ever bought 1 bootleg cd, and that was of a concert. All the stuff I've obtained was either from the internet or friendly generous Prince fans. But I appreciate it has probably gone through various nefarious channels to reach me. Personally, if I did have something rare, I'd want to share it with as many people as it would bring joy to, and if that meant some bootleggers got hold of it, good luck to them, they can reach a larger amount of fans than I ever could. They may be gaining money out of something they shouldn't, but I wouldn't have lost any money out of it,and besides, that's the very nature of theft, making money out of something you don't own. All unreleased bootlegs are stolen property whether you paid for it or not - it's just a case of whether that conflicts with your personal morality or you can turn a blind eye to it.
[Edited 6/21/05 12:22pm]

people put their own identity and importance on their rare prince bootlegs. It can be funny! But also, many are shrewdly awaiting the highest bidder.

laurarichardson said:

soulyacolia said:

I've just ventured into the world of bootlegs--I bought my first one this weekend. (So many more to find...) As for now, I'm not so interested in CD-Rs or MP3s, I would rather have "a finished product" as Soulyacolia said. But if someone offered me CD-Rs I probably wouldn't refuse them.

With the amount of times I've bought and re-bought his albums, I feel less evil for participating in sharing the unreleased stuff.

I can't say I feel completely off the hook, though. If he really truly doesn't want it released, then it shouldn't have been. I'm sure thankful for what I have, though. I cannot believe he didn't want some of this stuff released. It's much better than anything on his albums. Maybe he had some master plan to release a lot of it later on in life. Or death.

Here is my 2 cents on bootlegging and file sharing.

I find it a good way to get that unreleased "special remixed", "out of print stff that you might not get in a record store. While I do agree that an artist must get paid for his/her work, I do believe that the music itself should be free. 9 times out of 10, I will end up buying the legal version anyway. If the record companies were thinking about their artist, instead of themselves, they would take the time to negoiate better contracts for their artist. These contracts would be designed to pay the artist, handsomely for their work. There would also be a clause to handle a situation where their work was bootlegged.
[Edited 6/21/05 13:14pm]

Bootlegs have kept me a fan of Prince. If it wasn't for early boots like Charade and Chocolate box (awful as they sounded) I might have jumped ship that far back.

he should be thankful (and release some himself through NPGMC). I've easily spent more on him than any other artist, and there are certainly acts who i like more.

metalorange said:

If you really are this simple to come to such a conclusion then good luck understanding anything of this simple thing called Trading...
TAPERS TRADE (audience recordings taped by themselves) has always been like this and will always stay like this... I don't see what's so weird about a taper not wanting some bullshit bootlegger stranger getting their material in their hands and making money off of it unless it was sold by said taper to them...
Other people know or work with certain people who have worked with Prince/bandmembers/engineers or whatever who have certain recordings which they
A: sell to bootleggers or fans
B: being fans themselves TRADE
C: in the very rare occasion just give out for free
or D: just keep for themselves for whatever reason...


Pretty much... I gather it you don't understand the useless concept of the middleman no one needs...
It's more about a "FUCK YOU" towards useless bootleggers who have no understanding of the music and just do it to rake in money from gullible fans as many times as possible (milking...) and in the process circulate useless crap in the guise of it being something special, example: how many times has "Moonbeam Levels" been released in differing quality/speed/length while the source recording for all of those releases was the same fucking tape?
If it weren't for bootleggers fans wouldn't have many useless differing versions of the same source recording, they'd just have that one perfect quality version and money to spare...


If these kind of explanations make it simpler for you...
It's called "barter" something you probably wouldn't understand since the concept of trading itself seems alien to you...
The point I'm trying to make is is that bootleggers can't be trusted with any material... And yes there are shitloads of collectors who've been at it for years who would give this stuff out for free instead of some lowlife, useless scammer getting their hands on it and fuck with it to the point that it's useless just to scam fans out of money...


This is still happening in the bootleg business and all those fans that keep pumping money in those labels keep them in business...


That's called collecting...


Not at all... You on the other hand obviously like to be scammed and enjoy supporting the scammers...


I'd rather keep that stuff and use it as barter to get more stuff that I can enjoy instead of giving it to some bootlegger to fuck with and scam people...
And since I'm not Prince or a thief selling is just not an option...

Neversin.

metalorange said:

Neversin said:

This observation comes from reading your words. You said:



But now you say that sometimes they do do it for the money:



Which is what I suspected all along. Initially you seemed to be portraying them as very altruistic, which is clearly not always the case.

Neversin said:


Well, we haven't really been talking about live recordings, we've been talking about ultra-rare studio boots. But as far as live taping goes, there will always be a demand for it, but the discussion point of this thread was how the internet has effected such things - in the case of live recordings, a person would record it, burn it onto CD, then go sell it on a market stall. But now, if just one person buys the CD, they can then upload it to a file-sharing server and everyone else can have it for free. The taper may not like this but he can't stop someone TRADING his material online. Don't you think that file sharing is a form of TRADING? People swapping tracks for free? So if the live taper is interested in taping for the sake of making money, then surely the internet is damaging his business?

Neversin said:

The 'whatever reason' is what we're trying to uncover - whether it is the easy file sharing/TRADING of the internet that prevents them from sharing ultra-rare tracks or another reason - that there just isn't much 'new' left to share anymore.

Neversin said:


Fact is, bootleggers exist in this non-perfect world. Your argument is, that because they exist, collectors/traders won't put out certain ultra rare tracks they may have onto the internet. So therefore these tracks are NEVER going to be heard by the majority of fans, only a select few associates. If they were put out, they may be messed around with by bootleggers, but at least we'd get to hear them! And anyway, as we are discussing, the internet bypasses bootleggers, so that at least there is a chance the perfect version could be obtained - or even a staticky one for free would be better than nothing I would still argue. So it still doesn't explain the reluctance of collectors to put such tracks out on the internet, as was the original question of this thread.

So I say, if any collectors have any ultra rare tracks they know are not circulating, put them up on a file sharer, and let thousands of Prince fans get them in an unspoilt form, for free, and in the process bypassing bootleggers!

Neversin said:

See my previous statements above.

Neversin said:

If you read my post, you would see that I pointed out I'd only ever bought one bootleg cd, so clearly I don't like to be scammed and can hardly be said to be supporting them financially.

Neversin said:


My conclusion to all this is:
1. You hate bootleggers
2. Free file sharing on the internet amounts to an attack on 'bootleggers for profit'
3. Therefore to get rid of bootleggers you should be encouraging perfect source recordings of ultra rare tracks to be put out on the internet for free
4. Instead you would rather keep hold of these tracks to use as barter. I think this is the real reason why some rare tracks are kept from over-exposure - a power trip of sorts! (Perhaps the expression 'to barter' is not really applicable in this situation. Traditionally, barter is when you exchange items instead of cash. You lose something but you gain something. Say you swap a cow for a horse. But in the digital era, in the case of digital music copies, you don't lose your original item as you keep a copy. It would be more like keeping the cow and getting a horse, and the other person would keep the horse and get a cow - even though initially between them they only have one cow and one horse... )
5. If you only exchange your tracks in reward for other tracks - isn't that the same as bootlegging? Making sure you get something out of the deal is just another way of using the tracks to profiteer.

metalorange said:

[snipped]

1. keyword being "Most" here...
2. the "No monetary" comment was regarding "uncirculating"/rare material the second post was a break down of how all material (circulating and "uncirculating") come about, it's a well known fact certain bandmembers and mixers sold material to certain bootleggers...


Sure, but that's his problem then... (or are you trying to make a point regarding boot labels? Surely you're not comparing an individual seller with a fullblown bootlabel now, are you?)


Or the reasons I pointed out in the previous posts regarding bootleggers...


I don't know where you get this idea from since bootleggers also get their material from the internet, another example: a couple of years ago (1998) someone freed horrible copies of "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic" and "We Got The Power", 2 days later bootlegs show up on eBay for ridiculous amounts with rehash and just these two tracks tacked at the end... And this is another fact why collectors didn't release more tracks...


I just don't get where you get the idea that you're bypassing bootleggers since they have as much access to the Internet as anyone else...



Yes I do... I've been burned twice by different labels and seen what these labels do and are capable of...


Not true since bootleggers steal from everywhere they can...


Which occasionally happens (an amazing full copy of "Rebirth Of The Flesh" a year ago) and see my example of RUTJF and WGTP what happens to those...


Or from a collectors point of view just to be able to use them to get other rare tracks... Don't see how this is "a power trip of sorts" since this is quite common practice among collectors who would like more "uncirculating"/rare material and just simply to keep it out of hands of bootleggers...


Not from my point of view, I see it as trading...

Neversin.
[Edited 6/21/05 18:27pm]

Neversin said:


Okay, let me just explain this point. Say the internet didn't exist. The only way for me to get rare Prince tracks would be to go down the market and buy bootleg CDs, or if I knew a fellow fan, trade CDs with them. Therefore the bootleggers had a massive grip on the potential market.

But now we have the internet. I know not everyone is connected or has great access - but the fact is more and more people everywhere are. One of the things you can do on the internet, rightly or wrongly, is hook upto p2p file sharing systems. Type in 'Prince' and 'rare' and chances are lots of mp3s will appear which you can download for free. It doesn't matter whether the track is originally from one label or another or is tagged as such - for me, it just gets put in a folder named 'rare Prine tracks'. When I come across a better copy, I then overwrite the older one. And people can upload from my computer if I happen to be online.

As well, the internet has allowed me to interact with Prince fans from all over I would never have met otherwise, allowing me to swap with fellow collectors privately. And there are even websites here and there which allow you to download bootleg cds for free, if you can find them.

So someone like me, and many others like me, no longer deal with bootleggers, we just hunt around for the tracks online. This is how the internet specifically helps to bypass bootleggers. That's a whole chunk of people no longer needing to buy original bootleg CDs that would have done in days-gone-by - so therefore logically, the internet is eating into the profits of the bootleggers. Imagine a world where everyone was connected and got their Prince tracks online - there would be no need for bootleg labels.

Now, yes, after a track is put online a bootlegger can download it and incorporate it into one of their own CDs and sell it to people who don't use the internet in this way or have access. But even in this case, no one is forcing the punter to buy the cd - it is their choice, and I think the majority of punters would know that they run the risk of the track not being in great quality.

I kind of get the feeling that you have never downloaded tracks from a p2p file sharer, that all your Prince rarities come from trading directly, am I right? Well this is the New Generation!!

metalorange said:

Sure I've downloaded tracks but mainly from private FTP servers and NG's (if trading isn't possible) and it's not like one would find rarities on p2p filesharers like eMule, bittorrent or limewire or whatever, just crap from crappy bootlegs... That "New Generation" doesn't work if one wants to keep bootleggers out (which was my point from the beginning...)
If bootleggers were just shut down more traders would come out and form trees to get stuff out and not the occasional 1 track every 2 years...
It seems this keeps going round and round so I think it's better that we'd just agree to disagree...
The best middleground seems then that Prince should release his bootlegged material in unedited, untampered perfect quality which would make it all obsolete and him raking in money as if it fell from the trees, but that's a concept the guy doesn't understand ("Crystal Ball" being the prime example of how far he's removed from understanding his fans and his bootlegged material...)

Neversin.