Hello,

there seems to be a lot of speculation about the contract with Warner Brothers (the one with the apparent 100 m dollar fee). Read a bit here and there about various conditions set in the contract, but is there a detailled account of this somewhere here on the org or on other sources on the net?

I am just curious, but would imagine that the details are kept private...

If anyone can help me out very much appreciated

If I can remember, Prince signed a contract for $100 million, but in order to receive money to equal the 100 million, each album under the contract had to reach platinum (1 million sold) to get the advance of 10 million for the next record. If he didn't achieve platinum status on the previous album, then he only received 3-4 million for that record which probably barely covered the cost to make the record. Thus, this is where the fight ensued because it seemed as if Warners started to pull the plug on Prince's exposure and promotion after that. No promo, no sales. Simple as that and somehow in the fine print they were able to own his masters and name. I'm not sure if this was in his first contract or this one, but he obviously didn't read the contract or he trusted Warners laywers telling him he had the best deal at the time when in essence he got duped.

joyinrepetition said:

Never read much of the situation in that much detail..explains the reason's for the actions he took..dont blame him

Erika2k8 said:

No offense to joyinrepetition, but I wouldn't take all that as gospel, there's a lot of presumption, guess work and over/understating in that reply. Warners could only promote an artist who wanted to promote the records too, Prince made various decisions that also steered the direction of his promotion, or lack of it.


With regards to the contract, this is all paraphrased from The Vault:

31 August 1992: Prince signs a new contract with WB.

His extisting contract was extended, and the reconfigured contract called for $10 million in advances per record, with a royalty rate of approx. 20%.
The deal was structured so that if an album doesn't sell 5 million copies worldwide, he won't receive a $10 mil. advance for the next one.

As part of the deal PP Records became a joint venture with Prince and WB. The deal also included two new publishing agreements, providing that Warner Chappelll Music and Prince would establish a new joint venture music publishing company that would "actively seek to discover and promote young songwriters". Prince's existing Controversy Music entered into separate administrative agreements with Warner Chappell. As part of the deal, Prince was hired as a VP of WB Records and would maintain an office in LA to supervise his labels and to advise WB on its own artists. Prince was closely involved with each step of the negotiations with Gilbert Davidson and Jill Willis, President and VP of Paisley Park Enterprises, respectively.


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[Edited 9/8/08 9:46am]

Krid said:

I doubt WB would give you a copy let alone post it on the net. That's a legal and binding document.

luv4u said:

No, of course I did not expect to see a scanned copy of the doc on the net (makes you wonder how P signs - with "Prince" or his full real name...). I just read a bit here and there, but as apparently this contract was/is the main reason for the quarrels with WB, I was just curious if ever anything "semi-official" got out.

NouveauDance, you didn't see a decline in promotion of Prince's work after the album? WB definitely cut some of their promotion for Prince's albums. Unless WB thought, since Prince has a VP position, he should have taken care of his own promo. Who really knows, but I tell you one thing, he learned from his mistakes.
[Edited 9/9/08 5:44am]
[Edited 9/9/08 5:45am]

This was a trap and I can't believe that Prince fell for it.How many Prince albums have sold more than 5 million copies worldwide? About 3? With few exceptions,most Prince albums have not been massive sellers.Warners knew this.

joyinrepetition said:

Actually,it was five million copies that Prince was expected to sell in order to receive a $10 million advance for the next album.




5 million copies was an unrealistic goal.I think the surprising success of 'Diamonds and Pearls' convinced Prince that he could sell large amounts of records but the truth is,most of his albums were not big sellers.Sales-wise,he's never been in the same league as Michael Jackson and Madonna,which is one reason why this deal didn't work out as planned.




Let's face it,Prince was looking to make some big bucks.All he saw was dollar signs.Nothing wrong with that,but this deal had several unrealistic goals and sales expectations that he clearly couldn't meet.

joyinrepetition said:

To be fair,Prince didn't exactly make it easy for Warners to promote/market his music after the 'Love Symbol' CD.He changed his name to a weird symbol,announced that he would be giving them "old" music from his vaults,wrote "slave" on his cheek,withheld music videos which would have promoted the singles ("I Hate U") and dissed them in every interview...lol...how do you promote an artist's music under those circumstances? LOL