JayJai said:

Sorry, kid, but this 'aint about you. I have no idea what you do (how could I?) and simply used your line to bounce off a broader (perhaps vulgar) point about Prince world versus our world. Can I go home now?

I think it's part of an attempt to be topical. And that's the topic he knows.

Some of us might complain about our jobs, too, and not all of our complaints would amount to much more than being annoyed. We're really lucky in that most of us on prince.org will never experience true exploitation the way some of our ancestors did and some people all over the world do even today.

And those who experience true exploitation would think we had no reason to complain with our cars, TV's, & dinners at Chili's. Likewise we think Prince has nothing to complain about.

But we still complain because our jobs are annoying! I'm sure being Prince is not always great, either.

NDRU said:

I get what you're saying, but being Prince is better than being the average bear.

Nothinbutjoy said:

yeah and I do agree that hearing him complain about his lot in life doesn't always sit well with me. It sounds preachy & ungrateful, not so much topical. Especially claiming that he is "getting stuck with the bill" which sounds near outright false.

And Prince has certainly never had to struggle to make ends meet or work a real job. It's tough to sympathize.

But when I think about it, I don't really want to listen to anyone complain

laurarichardson said:

This response is white noise, Are you drunk?

rbrpm said:

A lot of peeps got stung by that Madoff scam.. You hinting that P was one of them?

ernestsewell said:

what if those stores don't want it?

stanleylieber said:

yes and why would a sale of an old copy of Controversy be invalid just because it isn't counted by soundscan?

Soundscan is just a poll of music buyers, basically. Subject to error like any poll.

Nothinbutjoy said:

i agree with this. prince is advancing a noble cause but his public statements make him sound like he either doesn't understand the business or is lying on purpose.

- soundscan couldn't have counted 'purple rain' sales for the first seven years because it didn't exist until 1991.

- it was clear on the tavis smiley preview clip that prince was trying to draw an allusion to the fake 'controversy' over his recent album only getting to #2. it's simple: ask target how many copies were sold, then compare numbers.

- there is no possible way prince is 'conducting an audit' of the sales of 'purple rain' over the last 25 years. there is literally no way to do this.

- i was 100% on board with prince's rebellion against warner brothers from 1992 until 1996, when we started to find out how full of shit he had been in his public statements. go on, try to make sense out of it. i dearly wish he had the courage of his convictions and quit participating in corporate media entirely.

NDRU said:

soundscan is likely as corrupt as any other component of the music industry. that's not even really the point. prince just wants his piece of the corrupt pie. if these guys were OVERcounting his records at the expense of someone else's we wouldn't be hearing about it from him.

look at the way he treats his own employees. he's not fundamentally different from the people who run large corporations in that regard. he takes what he can and buys the rest.

stanleylieber said:

Artist typically hire companies do audits (just not 25 years later) however it could be an audit of, say, the last 5 years of PR sales. Of course its very hard to verify whether the record company is "hiding" sales but this is now more difficult to do.

I have no idea what he's talking about nor do I understand what he thinks he proposes is the solution. Any kind of business requires trust and CONtracts to enforce that trust. The bit I saw of the interview still shows a guy extremely bitter and confused. And he is clearly one of the "winners" of the music company game.
[Edited 4/24/09 16:43pm]

emesem said:

i think he used to do a reasonable job of presenting his case. at least his claims made some sort of internally consistent sense (even though we later found out he had been lying about the particulars). in the tavis clip he seemed to be groping for words. i know what he's talking about and i'm still not entirely sure what he was trying to say.

i agree he was probably stiffed for royalties for his entire career. this literally happens to almost everyone (and that's not an excuse; just an observation that his claim isn't far-fetched). companies in music, movies and print publishing are all notorious for conveniently forgetting to include foreign sales when they tabulate compensation. another common trick is to count certain products that are actually sold for money as 'promotional items.' most entertainment contracts in the 1980s and before didn't include any participation in profits derived from promotional activities, even though companies sometimes made good money from it.

but the way he explains it! who is the intended audience? what is the intended effect?

soundscan made things more fair, not less fair. soundscan provides an ostensible third party accounting of sales. yes, they're probably corrupt. but with soundscan it's a lot easier to ferret out such corruption. for example, with his new cd set, all prince has to do is compare target's numbers with soundscan's numbers. one retailer, one total. soundscan can't hem-haw the way wb could hem-haw back in the '80s about the best guess figures on 'purple rain.'

pald1 said:

This is crazy! It doesn't matter what business you are in, it is the principle of the matter. If you are a great car salesman, and you sell 30 cars a month,yet month after month you only get paid for 22 of those sales....at what point do you say something.If you worked for it...you earned it, period!

I guess Prince's moaning about the music industry will continue another 15 years

I wish he would change the agenda, it's sooo tiring to listen to.





-----
[Edited 4/24/09 23:48pm]

stanleylieber said:

then if he's as bad as the large corporations why do you invest in him?

thedance said:

they dogged him out of his masters. he has every right to complain as would you if you were in his shoes. You'd be a fool to stay silent

I don't think he's moaning about the industry.

People today are just now starting to come around about stuff Prince was talking about 10, 15 years ago.

They're starting to "get it".

15 years ago he was called "crazy", and ""ungrateful". Now folks are understanding where he was coming from back then.

PEJ said:

same reason you do (and same reason you invest in other corporations), i'm sure.

i like prince's music and i don't mind paying him for it. but you'll never see me going into business with him.

Paris9748430 said:

yeah, and punks who thought he was a corporate tool back in '79 were still right.

PussiDelicious said:

Co-sign. And that's part of what bothers me about Prince's obsession with this...

One thing people dont seem to get..... the conflict.....

Prince is prayer book boy.....

What are the bean counter stories in the bible about.....?

Prince forgets Moses parted the sea and then it un-parted again.....
There was a good reason why it un-parted again.....

I swear he only knows half the lessons,,,,, if that...
and its gonna cost him his beans..... and a bag a marbles.....

Copycat said:

Ah. Wouldn't that be nice? But, then again, he's only concerned about his $$$. Not ours.

riding to the cleaners in a pinstripe suit
oh preacher
that ain't truth

PEJ said:

You must have a different definition of "dogged" than I do.

Willfully signing a CONtract to get your ass on a "major" label does NOT mean you were "dogged". Unless the part about WB owning the masters was in tiny.tiny. font at the very bottom of the page. Hell, he got to PRODUCE his own shit...which not a lot of teenagers did back then.

Yeah! I am a slave too! Release me from all this work. And I do not earn as much money I am supposed to!

From now on I will go to work with the word "Slave" on my face!

Are you scared now?

He's warning the artists that are coming after him and it really has been beneficial to others. There are a lot of other artists that have been cheated and conned by the record industry so don't try to make it sound like Prince is the only one on this!! SAY WHAT YOU NEED TO SAY PRINCE.
[Edited 4/25/09 4:59am]

SUPA only a white boy would say something like this:

Yeah, singing about slavery is old already. He has all the power and yet acts powerless.


and not a very smart one at that.
[Edited 4/25/09 5:03am]

to be honest i'd rather hear him talk about his finances any day of the week
instead of him going off on some religious rant about what is right and what
is wrong.

stanleylieber said:

How so? In theory, it would be relatively simple to get production records from WB (or Columbia House or BMG). From there, you would compare that number to sales/returns/promos/damaged.

Obviously there would be some margin of error because some companies are out of business (Harmony House, etc.) and some were mom & pop stores. I remember seeing Purple Rain in a Perry Drugstore (anyone remember those?!)

Again, in theory this could work if you assigned someone to it and they were thorough enough. Who knows if Harmony House's records (example) are available?

Keep in mind that Prince's share of the Purple Rain album sales were relatively small . . . we're talking about $1 per album, nowhere near what his "take" is now, but even so, a miscount of 1 million albums is a lot of money to him.

Here's a thought: remaster the damn album and we'll buy it again.