ButterscotchPimp said:

.....and 100% his CAREER.

rialb said:

In a world where people make perfect decisions when signing gigantic contracts it wouldn't make sense. Unfortunately, in this world, people make mistakes. What's foolish is not learning from them.

SoulAlive said:

Didn't Alan Leeds, say as much?

ButterscotchPimp said:

You summed it up perfectly.In the early 90s,Michael Jackson and Madonna signed huge deals worth alot of money,and Prince wanted a similiar deal,too.The only problem is,Prince doesn't sell records like those two so his deal was doomed to fail.What he should have done was,negotiated a more sensible deal that didn't rely so heavily on unrealistic sales expectations.Ego and money got the best of him.All he saw was dollar signs.

rap said:

rialb said:

Yeah,it was surprising to see Prince calling himself a "slave" when,a year or so earlier,his deal was being touted as "one of the biggest recording contracts ever",worth over $100 million I don't think too many people (outside of his fanbase) sympathized with him.

SoulAlive said:

I don't think that many people inside of his fanbase sympathised too much either. He just looked like a greedy idiot.

TheEnglishGent said:

Greedy idiot might be a stretch, but whiny baby - yeah.

Se7en said:

Can't argue with that.

TheEnglishGent said:

Warners should get some of the blame. Hell they knew wouldn't sell 5 Mill, he ain't been selling 5 Mill. They stuck him & he stuck back. They should have done better promoting his shit. Wasn't he a V-P there? Honestly they should have come to some kind of agreement. Wouldn't they want to nurture him? He's fuckin' Prince damnit. And P should have promoted his shit better too. No, it wasn't the 80s anymore but P's 90s shit was hot half-assed! P was always moving to fast (and thank you P for that, from the bottom of my heart, I enjoyed every minute of it.)& lost interest in what we considered new. Warner was probably trying to force his hand in that contract to sell more albums & be a fuckin POP STAR, whereas P wanted to do be an ARTIST that dabbled in pop. This is where I say he should have kept the Revolution and/or The Time (P in the groups but the bands would have input from everyone & get credited for it) so that he could sell & keep his solo to be the dabbler or vice-versa.

BEAUGARDE said:

It would have been interesting if WB and Prince had come to some sort of agreement and he could have released "pop" albums that would be heavily promoted as such while at the same time releasing "artistic" albums (meaning anything that WB viewed as uncommercial) that would be clearly separate from the "pop" albums.

.
[Edited 1/2/10 1:27am]

KoolEaze said:

For what it's worth Madonna and MJ almost always shift 5 million albums with their studio albums. Definitely Michael Jackson does and I think also Madonna always did it with the possible exception of American Life

From wat I've read and understood, Prince was restricted and wasn't able to put out as much as he wanted.
Alot of artists put up wit it, if u can work wit that...fine...
but if u can't, then hit the road and do wats best for u.
Not all selfishness is bad.
At times u gotta look out for your well-being and happiness...
despite how much money u may lose, or fans whinin and complainin (even up til 2009)...
and Prince went with wat he felt comfortable wit, which is ultimately wat matters in the end.

JayJai said:

What you say may be true but I think Prince was being a little disingenuous when he resigned with WB. At the time he resigned with them he had been with them for about 15 years. He darn well knew the "shackles" that they were going to place on him. It was foolish of him to think that things were going to change.

mzkqueen03 said:

In terms of both artistic and commercial success I have to respectfully disagree with you.

BEAUGARDE said:

Yes, he is Prince and undeniably one of the greatest musicians in history.

But let me ask this: no one ever says "It's fuckin' Warner Bros, damnit!". Think about that. WB is HUGE. Movies, music, television, animation. An entertainment empire - so for them it's all business.

Prince's financial returns for WB is barely a blip on their radar.

rialb said:

I guess he held onto "false hope".
[Edited 7/16/09 19:05pm]

Se7en said:

.
[Edited 1/2/10 1:27am]

SoulAlive said:

Right and add to this that WB put Prince into it's R&B division which Prince rightfully knew cut him from 50% to 75% of his fan base. That decision alone would limit promotion of his music to just R&B markets.

No one ever talks about this not Possessed, not UPPTOWN, no source ever talks about this.This was a major event.

To give you an example . This would be the same as putting Madonna in the R&B division.

People don't talk about this now but CBS/Sony something similar to MJ prompting him to call Tommy Mottola the Devil.

If you want a good fictional referrence look at the Five Heartbeats. The label owner had two sets of books and on set had the real numbers and the other had the numbers that he let the artists see with half the the records sold. He also sold bootleg records in the ghetto which were off the books and he got straight profit on. These real labels did the same thing and it would not surprise me to find out that WB was really Sabotoge Records.

To make a long story short: Prince wanted his cake and eat it too.

He wanted 10 million $ advances for every album on the contract and then blamed WB for not selling the required amount of copies when that didn't happen. Like they should have just put out some more advertisements and that it had nothing to do with the fact that 0(+>, Come and TGE simply weren't good enough and followed eachother up too soon to sell 5 million copies.

He wanted to release an album a year and remain artistically free. No compromises for the sake of commerce. They let him, but probably also told him that he should make stuff that sells better like "hiphop". He did and failed. Hell, he lost a lot of fans thanks to introducing Tony M. Coupled to releasing an album a year, it was no surprise that he didn't sell 5 million copies. Releasing an album a year may not be "saturating the market" yet, but it sure as hell doesn't guarantee a sale of 5 million copies a year either.

And then at the end of the feud it also was about ownership. Not sure if the following was really the case (hell nothing is sure when it comes to this issue) but apparantly Prince had "xpectations" that he was about to own his masters, or at least co-own them with WB. If I am not mistaken the Paisely park label was a joint venture operation with WB. Being a joint venture it implies co-ownership of the masters. WB footed the bill and Prince operated the business. But when Prince wasted to much Paisley money on all the "talent" that he discovered but that didn't return investments, WB pulled out the plug, demanded debts to be paid and when prince couldn't do that, they walked away with all the property rights. (Or... he didn't own a single right from the beginning and was just pissed about it when the shit had already hit the fan...)


--
[Edited 7/20/09 6:40am]

jiorjios said:

Probably, but they never released an album a year.

I'm not sure how much of Alex Hanh's book is accurate, but if it's even 50% accurate, Prince sort of lost his damned mind during the symbol years.

It appears that he had signed a major record deal, but the number/figures were inflated by Prince and contrary to what Warners was claiming? Either way, it was a lucrative deal whether Prince did well or not.

But he blaimed WB for "only" selling just shy of 3 million copies of the Symbol Album despite the fact that he released it so close to D&P and made some really bad touring and promotional decisions himself.

Additionally, when they agreed to let him release The Most Beautiful Girl in the World and it ended up being a big hit, muddied the water even more.




I once thought the symbol concept was really cool. But I was naive and actually believed an artist could re-invent themselves from the ground up. I also liked following an artist that was a bit off his rocker.

However, once his music started sounding tired and boring towards the end of the symbol years, and the unprofessional rhetoric used on his l40a website started becoming prevalent, I realized it was all about money.
Shutting down a huge portion of his fanbase from the Internet during the initial website "purge" also led me to believe he wasn't the least bit interested in rebirth, but in money.
Anyone who truly believed that they had been reborn would be threatening fansites for copyright violations attributed to that (at the time) forgettable "Prince" guy who died.



But yeah--it was all about money.

Kind of embarrassing really considering all the various devices he has to employ to get a hit record now (album give-aways, including cds with concert tickets, etc. etc.) Don't get me wrong--I love that he's skirting the system, but an artist of Prince's calibre shouldn't need to do that to sell records. Prince shoots himself in the foot, and then complains.

Prince says he wanted artistic freedom and he got it when he left WB which is shown in Emancipation. I doubt WB would have allowed him to release a 3 CD album like that, but then again, would they have been correct. How often do you see on the board here what a great single or a double album it would have been?

Anound the time that the WB/Prince feud started Barry White had a huge hit Practice What You Preach and he was interviewed on BET he said something that struck me and I still remember in relation to the whole Prince deal.The interviewer asked him why the song was such a huge hit worldwide .

Barry said ..." I don't know why the song is a hit but I will tell you this. If the record company doesn't want you to have a hit you won't have a hit. My last album was better than this one and it did not sell at all."

Now here are the facts with WB

Prince only had 5 number one songs.
When Doves Cry
Let's Go Crazy
Kiss
Batdance
Cream

Three number one albums
Purple Rain
Around The World IN A Day
Batdance

Questions that surround the Prince Era with WB.
Why did SOTT not sell well in the US ?
Was it the price $20 USA ?

Why did U Got The Look get leapfrogged twice at #2 and never hit #1?

Was it a lack of promotion that did SOTT in ?

muleFunk said:

I don't think it was the price.I think that (after 'Purple Rain'),the general public had a hard time keeping up with Prince.He was releasing his albums very frequently and as a result,sales began to drop off.Releasing the offbeat "If I Was Your Girlfriend" as the second single didn't help matters,either.



Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam's "Lost In Emotion" kept it out of the top spot,but a Number Two single is nothing to sneeze at.





I don't think there was anything lacking with the promotion.There were a few minor mistakes on Prince's part (not releasing "Housequake" as a single.....filming a bland video for the title track...) but for the most part,this album was promoted effectively.It just didn't become a huge seller.The late 80s was a weird time for Prince (commercially).He was taken off the pedestal and had a harder time reaching a wide audience.

That is the standard myth today considering all of the bullshit that has been published.Prince in 1987 was a force and his only rivals were MJ,Madonna, and U2.

I was told that one of the battles against WB was with single release and promotion. The reason IIWYG was released was because WB was trying to get Prince back on urban radio.Even with that faux paus Look was #2 and ICNTTPOYM was top ten as well.

Prince pissed a lot of WB people off with the Purple Rain deal and several underlings were shocked that it blew up like it did. Prince had several WB upper mangement people in his corner. When they left WB the people whom he pissed off left him out to dry.

P should have toured the U.S. with Sign O' The Times & really focused on promotion instead of rushing with The Black Album & Lovesexy.