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PrintableBartVanHemelen said: Prince left WB after delivering two crappy, "will this do" throwaways: C&D and The Vault, which seem to be configured to just about fit some minimum definition of an album: 9 tracks each, slightly more than 40 minutes,...
To answer this "faux pas" in your own unique style: "What are you, a MORON? Sheesh! Get your facts straight, you idiot! "Chaos" has 11 tracks! "The Vault..." has 10! Both have a running time of LESS than 40 minutes... Can't you READ the timer on your cd player? Do I have to spell this shit out for you? (repeat ad nauseum) | |
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BartVanHemelen said: Tremolina said: Because of the pressure he puts on WB to not release the Hits and not take a break with new material, but to release the Undertaker - for free by all means,
For crying out loud, TU was gonna be a freebie with a guitar mag. It was NEVER gonna count towards his deal. Ditto for compilations. Ditto for old material, which WB would consider compilations, knowing fully well Prince wasn't gonna promote it. WB didn't want it, research showed radio wouldn't play it. Prince negociated a deal to release it 100% independently, a one-off, and was forbidden from using WB's channels. TMBGITW became a hit through a massive pr campaign, and through shady deals where massive amounts of singles were bought by cronies, to ensure chart success. Once it charted, radio couldn't avoid it and it became a hit. Prince then started believing his own hype, and wtarted milking the situation by wanting to release a remix-ep, which of course went pear-shaped (Euro-release was put on hold because US manufatturers couldn't produce the complicated inlay in decent time). Then it was on to the 1800-new-funk compil etcetera, and quite frankly WB could have sued Prince for breach of contract numerous times. Tremolina said: hen Prince (or WB?) pulls out another trick and agrees to release the Black Album as part of the contract (and the Girl6 soundtrack), as I have understood it.
READ my post, it's all there. Sheesh. As for Prince making big bucks off of record releases: don't believe the hype. The ridiculous advance for Rave perhaps, but you can't earn money from a record that doesn't sell. Don't forget that PP wastes tons of money on vanity crap like videos that will never be released. IMHO Prince makes far from money from the royalties from his 1980s hits than from his post-1995 releases. Making money from records was never a big sourc eof income for artists, and since p2p etc it has virtually vanished. High-priced concerts is where the money is, and hoping a song you wrote is on a big-selling record or becomes a hit througha cover etc. There's an artist out there who never made any money until one of his songs ended up on the soundtrack to The Bodyguard, and simply because that album sold so much he earned lotsa dough. Or look at guy in Take That who co-wrote a bunch of the songs: he earned money while his former band members were getting poorer by the minute. 
Hey Bart, thanks for your super kind reply! I really appreciate it. 
Just a couple of points: 1 I never said TU was gonna count towards his deal. And you didn't either. Only that Prince wanted to release it for free and WB didn't. 2 WB research sucks donkey balls when it doesn't instantly recognise TMBGITW as a hit. 3 It is said by everybody thatthe 1992 contract required him to produce and release 10 albums, which were those ultimately then? There is a lot in your post but not that. 4 I know artist royalties usually suck, even for 'superstars', but you know just as well as I do that it's usually all about the advances, like in this case with Prince. If the deal was that Prince would get a 6 figure advances for every album and 10 million or so if the latest album had sold more than 5 million copies, then Prince still had a million dollar income every year from these advances. Not the 10 million a year that he wanted to tho' because he didn't sell a lot - which is why he tried to get out of the deal asap, but he still got millions of advances for fullfilling a 10 album deal within 4 years, no? | |
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they wanna mess with a brother  "I don't make the rules. I just play" | |
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I think there's a really key piece of the Prince/WB breakdown that always gets overlooked in these conversations:
Prince was signed and his early career nurtured by the old guard of Warner Music execs. They were men (and women) who truly loved and appreciated the MUSIC that drove the music industry. Many had cut their teeth working with the legendary artists of the previous generation and in Prince they recognized someone of the same caliber. For the most part, the suits at Warner Bros. gave Prince a very wide latitude. And when they weren't sure his decisions made good business sense (i.e. not initially supporting "When Doves Cry" as the lead single from "Purple Rain"), Prince proved his mettle (in this case, his first number one pop record). Naturally, this granted him even more artistic leeway and also more "pull" within the company (the founding of Paisley Park Records). As happened in U.S. industries of all types throughout the 80s, bottom lines and profit margins became increasingly important, just as multinational comglomerates began swallowing up record companies. It only made business sense to these new owners that they treat the labels (investments) as straight business ventures — rather than as artistic endeavors that generated appreciable income, which is really how they had been run before. By the time Prince began to have issues with WB (the relative failure of "Graffiti Bridge," refusal to release certain material as stated here), most everyone who would have been sympathetic to and supportive of his positions were gone — retired, fired or bought out of his/her contract. I honestly believe that things would have never escalated to the "Slave" stage if Prince had not had to deal with the cadre of bean counters running Warner Bros. at the time. Peace. | |
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Yeah, I think you are right, that the personal relationship part is pretty much overlooked in this. I read some of those people who worked with him throughout the 80's had practically all left the company in the early 90's. After the mega AOL Time Warner merger in 1994 I guess that couldnt have made things better for Prince. But then again, he is now happily working with another business conglomerate, so that can't be it in the end either. | |
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Summary:
Neither party was getting what they wanted from the other. Prince wanted to release as many albums as possible through WB, they cited "oversaturation" as their reason not to (the reason why the 3-disc Dream Factory became the 2-disc SOTT), etc. WB saw one of their highest-profile artists declining in sales and popularity, and IMO were very generous and let Prince have as much freedom within his contract as possible while still trying to be profitable. Both sides suffered, both sides gained. [Edited 3/22/07 16:38pm] |
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