Hey,how do you think the last 15 years of Prince would have been if he had stayed with Warner Bros. Do you think he would be selling more if had was still with them?

making more money is always a good thing ..leaving WB was a smart bizz move

Good to leave, however, he has made a lot of bad business moves to market his music.

daPrettyman said:

I agree with you on that.

Leaving WB was a good thing, but not at that moment. I think he should have finished out his contract with top-notch material first.

Good thing-if Prince thought the time was right 2 go,so b it.

Se7en said:

How could he deliver top-notch material when he was oppressed?

daPrettyman said:

good move.
[Edited 1/23/08 15:44pm]

If it made him happy it was a good thing.

Great Move.

He owns his Masters since 1996
He has gotten $10 Million per major album release
He has made $25 Million off Crystal Ball & Emancipation
He owns his own Music Club which made him a bunch of money
He made $80 Million for the musicology tour
He made $16+ Million on a UK 21 Night concert
He made a bunch in Vegas playing nightly

It's like he hit the lottery over & over since he left. It was not only a good thing. It was a brillant move.
[Edited 1/23/08 21:28pm]

ElectricBlue said:

R u his accountant? Come on, NOBODY but him knows how much he made off of Crystal Ball. He didn't report any numbers. All we know is the estimated amount he said he sold during pre-orders (and many of those were never delivered...and he still got paid for them). I don't want 2 come off angry or upset, because I'm not....it's just the facts.

Besides, I thought the Musicology tour grossed over $100 million? I thought he got paid upfront for the Musicology tour and got paid for all of the merchandising? Am I wrong?
[Edited 1/23/08 23:48pm]

Well Said

daPrettyman said:

mellow1 said:

-----
Co-Sign Look at WB and the music industry in general and look at Prince.
He has done well for himself over the last decade.

purplecam said:

I agree with you on that as well!

However Prince or any record company that he has had, has never been really been amazing at Marketing his music, especially when it comes to the associated artists side of it.

It always seems that Prince loses interest as soon as a project is complete and is already headstrong into producing the next one!

I think Prince's leaving Warner Bros. was a good move for him, they were taking advantage of him and he had wild oats he had to sew- everybody does.

Se7en said:

Good point!

But when the Material for Come, Gold, Chaos and disorder, and some extra stuff that didn't make any of them was originally set for The Dawn Project (Prince first triple album)- the project was extremely strong - much stronger than the individual albums released.

It was actually because of WB not only disallowing a triple album of work, but also turning down his second idea of releasing 2 albums (Come and Gold) simultaneously, that the whole slave thing kicked off, and we got the albums we did, plus Black and the Vault.

ElectricBlue said:

#1 at the bank, huh.

PurpleKnight said:

I agree, the lack of quality control took the best of his EGO

Se7en said:

I disagree. They weren't letting him do HIS thing, sure they were good for him coming up but they wanted to stunt his creativity. It was time for him to leave the nest whether he would fly or fall, it was Time to go!

[Edited 1/24/08 4:44am]

Se7en said:

I agree with this.The 90s could have been an amazing decade for Prince.Instead,he released a string of less-than-brilliant albums,trying to "punish" Warners but I think he wound up doing more damage to himself.

Flowerz said:

Exactly.The name change/slave era was a mess If he had handled things differently,he probably could have negotiated (peacefully) to get his masters back.

SoulAlive said:

Very true, but I think that WB's view was that when they advance $100,000,000 for a 5 album contract they want to have a say on the content and the quality of the albums!!! At the end of the day, they are in it for the money and what the albums will make them in return.

One of their big objections, if I remember correctly, was that Prince intended and proposed that his triple album 'The Dawn' will count for 3 of the 5 albums of the contract!

WB obviously were not impressed!

SoulAlive said:

-----
If had given them top notch material they would not have promoted since he made it known that he wanted to leave. If he had been quite about wanting to leave with the popularity of rap I doubt his records would have sold more than D&P w hich did about 5 million. I am not sure what you mean about quality. I think the symbol CD is pretty good and WB did a horrible job promoting it.

P did not need to punish WB they punished themselves he just wanted to get out of the contract as quickly as possible to get off the sinking ship.

He did no damage to himself if you take a look at the industry today.

mentalist said:

-----
"Very true, but I think that WB's view was that when they advance $100,000,000 for a 5 album contract they want to have a say on the content and the quality of the albums!"

Well if record companies are really concerned about quality we would not have some of the crappy music we have today. They put out whatever is popular and black pop stars were not popular in the 90's.

At this point they should be impressed with anyone that would stay with them

wlcm2thdwn said:

In what ways were they trying to "stunt his creativity"?

They might've wanted Prince to conform to a model of commerce and marketing more in line with his contemporaries, but 'stunting his creativity' wouldn't benefit them now would it.

laurarichardson said:

I thought I was the only one who thought The Symbol album was poorly promoted by WB. That album should have been the biggest album of 1993 and I'm not joking. Too many potential hits on that album.