Does he have a Problem maybe with Releasing Vault Material? Would he? I mean could stuff be owned or licensed to Warner's? If he is going through another divorce or Lonely time maybe the problem Isn't Women But maybe it's Control of his Music....
[Edited 12/22/05 4:11am]

I don't see how Warners could hold the rights to unreleased material. I doubt that Prince had a deal where everything he recorded while under contract belonged to them. He didn't have any trouble releasing the Crystal Ball vault material. Besides, he could simply re-record them and release that version instead, like he did with 1999.

No, the only thing stopping Prince releasing old material is Prince himself.

metalorange said:

I agree that it's not likely that WB owns every recording he ever made but never released. On the other hand you can't exclude the possibility that they own some of it. What's more likely indeed is that Prince isn't willing to release his old material ánd that there could be legal / licensing problems with the musicians he made those old recordings with.

Abrazo said:

.. I agree with you on this thought.

Anyway, he got his share from Warner Brothers. He won the lawsuit. I am sure he was very well compensated.

Abrazo said:

I can't think of a scenario where Warners would own any unreleased material. For one, Prince did deals to deliver fully finished albums. It is not like he presented Warners with lots of songs and they chose, keeping the unused ones. I don't see any reason he would hand over the master tapes until the final configuration was agreed.

For two, look at the way he gave them the 'The Vault' album - fully completed with artwork, (along with Chaos & Disorder) take it or leave it. If they had any part in the decision making process, they would surely have added to the album whatever they 'owned', or have released this music by now to cash in on Prince.

As for issues with past collaborators, well I'm sure there is plenty of solo stuff Prince could release but hasn't, plus again, Crystal Ball was released fine and that had plenty of associated musicians on it. No issues there. I'm sure any co-writers would be keen for him to release their songs so that they could cash in.

If WB paid the fees for the studio time then WB would own (or at least have some control over ) thoes recordings. For example: WB would secure Sunset Sound for weeks at a time for Prince. WB also put millions into Pasily Park. So it is almost a SURE thing that some of thoes Masters do belong to WB. However, WB may not know which ones.




not if they can not get into the Vault. also as far as i know the term of the contract did not allow any where near that much cntrol on WBs part.



I am sure that is not much of an issue. Most of them we paid for their time. i have a feeling that they do not get paid a % of sales. Publishing is something that would be handled at the time of the creation (usualy by whoever wrote it) and there are specific ways in which thoes are dealt with.

talk2bill2 said:

I really don't know if Warners ever did pay the fees for studio time outside of Paisley Park, or whether they just paid Prince and he paid it, or if that would give them any rights to the music recorded. Usually record companies just pay an advance and then it's upto the artist to pay for everything.



Did they? Didn't they just pay Prince and he used his money how he wanted? If they put millions into Paisley Park, surely they would partly own the place as well as the master tapes? And I don't think that is the case. And it is, I'm sorry, absurd to suggest that they do own the rights to master tapes, but don't actually have the physical tapes, and don't know which ones. How would they be able, then, to tell if Prince released one of 'their' songs?! He could just say, 'oh no, this isn't one of yours'.

Prince once had the idea of re-recording his past albums. That way, he argued, he would own the new master tapes, and of course being the writer, he wouldn't have to ask permission to essentially do 'covers'. He did this with 1999. So he could at the very least re-record any vault material and put it out, if he so wished. A bit of faffing around, I admit, but then I expect most of the Vault material is not mastered to a completely final level, especially to modern standards, and would require extra work to release anyway.

At the end of the day, Prince OWNS the songs. Warners merely have the publishing rights on those songs they have been given. They are the only people allowed to make money from those songs generated from the master tapes. Other than Prince who automatically has royalties from anything published and sold. There's really no point in Warners having master tapes to songs for which they have no publishing rights. And if they indeed did have publishing rights too - well, they would have published them.





If Prince credits them as a co-writer, then they usually get a royalty from that automatically. Prince credited his father as writer of one or 2 songs, which he in fact had no involvement in, it is believed as a way of gifting him some income. If they are credited as just musicians who played on the record, then they just get paid for their time.

Prince not releasing vault stuff is entirely Prince's decision.

metalorange said:

It's a highly likely scenario that while under contract, any creation of material could be jointly, or wholly owned by WB. It's similar to some jobs in the workforce. If you create any form of software, inventions, etc., it is owned by the company. The sidebar would be when the item(s) in question actually came to be.

metalorange said:

If I had to argue with the prior point made, this would be some ammo. You're onto something here.[/b]

metalorange said:

I don't believe it's that simplee. It all depends on which copyright form was used by the claimant (Prince/WB). Whether it was for the perfomance of the work or the underlying work. It's tricky like that, but filing a particular one would/could protect all parts.

metalorange said:

Think of the scenario in which Prince made his works for hire. Not saying he did, but his contracts could state this. Not saying either that his work was made for hire if he had such a clause. However in this scenario WB could use such a clause and at least the claim that they do own it.



I don't know that for sure and I don't think you do that either. Especially his 70's and 80's contract could have had different terms in that respect.



Agreed, but that was part of the 100m deal, which most likely was pretty different from his former deals.



Crystal ball may have taken years to arrange with those musicans and/or WB, behind the screen negotiations we don't know of.

xpsiter said:

Yep, work for hire. However, legally it's not very likely that Prince made his works for hire.

It doesn't boil down to whether WB paid him, the studio and/or whatever for the unreleased recordings. It boils down to the exact terms of the deals he signed.

Abrazo said:

right BUT chances are WB had that as a term of the contract. and the Work for Hire deal could well come into play. it may not have anything thing to do with what prince thinks and it is all tied into how WB ownes the masters. it is industry standard... and if an industry standard is not excluded by the contract it will hold.

Abrazo said:

That's entirely true. We are never likely to know the exact deal details for sure. But it doesn't mean we can't speculate. This thread, like many on this site, is pure speculation. Personally, I like to speculate based on evidence and logic. Based on that, the fact Crystal Ball WAS released shows that it is POSSIBLE for Prince to release vault tracks from any era. Whether it takes years to organise, has to pay various royalties, etc etc are clearly just details that can be overcome if Prince has the will power to make it happen.

NouveauDance said:

Zelaira said:

IF it's true WB somehow has control over his older unreleased stuff (which I doubt is true), why would he be fretting about it? I mean, he sometimes seems to be trying to disown his past anyway, so maybe he wouldn't want to release any of that stuff anyway? Plus he's always making more music and has made lots since he broke with WB. JMHO.

As has been said before, it's entirely Prince's decision whether he releases
any of his unreleased tracks or not. Though we don't know the exact details of
his contract under WB, we can be certain of certain things by what has already
been released and the circumstances of those releases.

1. Prince always has final say over what's released. He decides what albums get
released, what songs are on them and what the artwork looks like. WB don't have
any control over this, they can only accept what they're given and distribute
it or choose not to release it at all. They can ask for changes or suggest
things, but they can't demand them or make changes without Prince's permission.
Which is also why there are no remasters, as to remaster an album would be
classed as 'changing' it, and therefore is not allowed without Prince's
permission.

2. Outtakes/songs recorded at the time, but not included on released WB albums or
singles etc. are not owned by WB, and WB has no hold over them. This is proved
by the release of the Crystal Ball album, which was released without any
permission or consent from WB, and contains tracks which we almost all recorded
while Prince was still under contract to WB. So it is clear that WB only 'own'
the recordings contained on the finished albums and singles they released at
the time of the contract.

talk2bill2 said:

A work for hire clause in a contract will not hold when the artist didn't make a work listed in the work for hire clause in the Copyright Act and if it doesn't pass the test that the courts developed to determine whether a work is made for hire or not.

metalorange said:

I agree, but since we don't know the details and can only speculate CB could either have been compiled with or without any co-operation of WB and other artists. I really don't know how it was done but think NPGMC could give a hint to that.

--
[Edited 12/23/05 9:49am]

BorisFishpaw said:

So how do you place the lyrics of the song 'Face down' in this picture? The lyrics of that song seem to suggest that WB did have a say in what songs made it to the album.

'told them he wanted to sing a song about a black child running buck wild and they just laughed in his face, talk to your lawyer but you got no case, what you need to is keep your place'



I don't think that's a correct legal reasoning. I think if WB owns the copyright they can change the recordings without his permission. However I think they can't do digital remasters without his permission (at least not of his 80's albums) because digitally remastering is a modern form of duplication that didn't exist back then, so this right couldn't have been covered by the copyright transfer of ownership clause. Which also proves that he didn't make his albums for hire, because if he would have WB would also own digital remasters rights and wuld have released those by now, me thinks.




How sure are you about that? 100% or still a bit of speculation?

Abrazo said:

As Boris said, Warners could ask for changes or suggest things - in other words, they could reject songs if they wanted and refuse to release the music. They rejected the 'Come' album a few times I believe and of course they held back the Gold Experience. Besides, I always thought that line was about Prince trying to release 'Get Wild' as a single and the NPG album Exodus when Warners had only given him permission to release 'The Most Beautiful Girl' as an independent release.





I think you're arguing a losing battle here! You could turn this around and say, can you prove that Prince had to ask permission? The evidence is far more weighted on the side that he didn't, there are many thankyou's on the Crystal Ball liner notes but nowhere does it say 'with kind permission of Warners' like you would expect if that was the case. There's no evidence Warners had any involvement in the album and the music is copyrighted to Prince's label.
[Edited 12/23/05 12:00pm]

I think Prince wont be releasing vault material so he can fool us by slippin in a few tracks here and there on his CDs.

origmnd said:

"re-recorded of course"

Another example of Prince releasing old songs is "Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic." That song was written in 1988 while Prince was working on 'Batman.' The song was rejected back then, when he was under contract to WB, but was issued through Arista in 1999 with no Warners involvement.

I bet Warners has rights to songs he officially submitted though. Like the axed Camille songs from Sign O The Times (when it was Crystal Ball and 3 albums long). Sorta like Black Album.

CinisterCee said:

Again, I think the evidence suggests the opposite. The Black Album was all set to be manufactured when Prince, not Warners, pulled it. If it was upto Warner's, the Black Album would have been released, but Prince had final say. It was only released years later through the deal Prince did to get out of his record contract, as a way of not having to record any new material for them.

All that suggest that even when Prince has submitted songs to Warners, they really don't have that much control over them without Prince's permission.

metalorange said:

Right, I'm just saying, I'm not sure that Black Album could have been released on Arista like the song "Rave Un2..", as it was submitted to Warners previously. Warners would have to release those axed Sign O The Times tracks.

Well, after reading the new interview with Alan Leeds, he makes a comment that pretty much blows a whole in my theory:



Of course, Alan states he's no lawyer and doesn't know for sure - but he's certainly closer and more clued up to the subject than the rest of us.

metalorange said:

I remembered this thread when I read that, too. If WB and Prince have to work together to make it happen, methinks we won't be seeing anything from the vault.

IMHO, if it was well-handled and packaged, they could start selling that stuff to his fanbase and make more money than he will with songs like TAC.