I've brought this up before, but I'm really interested in what people think about how the studio bootlegs dried up (if they did which I assume they did...whenever a new Prince song leaks, it's on his terms or something that is coming out commercially). Emphasis on studio since it's easy to understand how live recordings leak.

Do fans believe that he put a lot of that stuff out there or that the people that he worked for were so angry with him (or money hungry....although not sure how that would work) that they put it out there. If it was Prince, did it all stop because of his ego and/or paranoia? How often does he talk about it? I know there was the case where he had his people go into a record store and take all of the bootlegs out in the name of Prince. While I'm not the biggest fan of his super tight controls over Youtube or the whole fiasco from a few years ago, I do admire the control he holds over his catalog while there are plenty of leaked tracks out there for many other artists which show their carelessness. That being said, I do want to hear everything and would want it commercially available, so I guess I'm all over when it comes to this topic.

I realize all of this would be just theories for the most part, but I would love to hear what people have to say.

VinnyM27 said:

Alan Leeds stated (on his Housequake.com interview i think) that Prince was giving a lot of tapes to friends and musicians for a long time and that it was probably the boots' primary source(s), though they always suspected that someone was stealing stuff in order to sell it but they never were able to find out someone actually doing it. I think it was ChronicFreeze saying here that by his time (from 1988 or 89 on), engineers were to be accompagnied by bodyguards in order to look for stuff in the Vault for Prince, so that'd tend to confirm the tapes theory.

The funny thing is that most of the 80's and early 90's boots were pressed in Europe (unless they had american counterparts that i don't know about?) so the tapes had to make quite a trip from MPLS to Italy

Everything stopped after 1995: the latest outtakes we ever got were from "Emancipation"'s sessions. Obviously Prince doesn't give tapes anymore and it's likely that security is also tighter at Paisley Park, particularly considering that the studio hasn't been much open to other musicians in years.

That's all i know... I'm sure a few people here know more about it, but i don't remember any of them telling it
[Edited 5/17/10 15:17pm]

I'm sure Alan knows better than any of us on here how the 80's material got leaked. For the early to mid 90s I personally know someone who worked for Prince and got chummy with someone in the NPG and was given tapes in trust for his own pleasure. I'm not saying this person was the one who put together any particular bootleg, just an example of how it could happen. I also know a former bodyguard who was quite generous with unreleased material.

I always found it interesting that the boot material dried up exactly when he became able to put out whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. Just food for thought...

manci said:

I think it was probably about him seeing it as a bigger potential financial loss, since he was getting more money per record than previously.

errant said:

Sounds about right, too. Maybe he figured he could be "wild and loose" with the material back then.

That's all there is.

Most of the boots came from cassette tapes. Tapes are obsolete, so....

2freaky4church1 said:

and yet CD-R's are easier to create and duplicate....