If I buy a bootleg of the song "Wonderful Ass" and Prince hasn''t officially released this song then how is he losing money because he isn't getting paid for that song anyway. I damn sure would buy it from him if NPG was selling it.

I don't understand this, either.

No matter what bootleg I've bought previously, if Prince released the same thing in perfect sound quality, I'd buy it.

The only people who buy bootlegs are the hardcore fans who will buy everything official anyway.

Prince doesn't lose money when it comes to bootlegs.

Piracy, however is a different thing. That is very wrong.

It may damage the CD sales if he eventually does release it. That’s the theory. In practice most people would probably buy it anyway.

It doesn't damage his sales one single bit, not at all.

But it is stolen property.

The only people who buy bootlegs are fans, fans who either have everything officially released, or have most of it, want everything, and intend to get everything.

You can't walk into a highstreet chain store and purchase a bootleg, so no casual listener who wants a best of is gonna buy one.

They have no impact whatsoever on Prince's income.

But like I said, they are stolen property.

It's not necessarilly about $$$. If Prince came to the conclusion that "wonderful ass" or any unreleased song shouldn't be released, then that's his right. Now does that mean I won't try to hear it anyway, hell no. But I can understand if it pisses off Prince.

MiaBocca said:

They actually do have an impact on Prince's income. To make a song or album it takes time, talent, and effort to produce. Studio time, paying band members, an engineer, a few techies, etc etc.
Hey, i'm not taking the high road cuz i have bought them--but they do cost money and effort to produce--and to have them sold without any compensation is stealing.

There's a story about Picasso(and i'm paraphrasing)"
...a woman approaches Picasso while he's eating dinner at a restaurant and asks him to draw something for her. He quickly sketches something on a cocktail napkin that is fairly good for how long he took. He looks at her and says 'that'll be $2000'(i forget the actual price he said). She's astonished and asks how could this be, it took him minutes to draw this on a napkin.
He explains to her 'I'm not charging you for the drawing, but for the time and effort it's taken to be able to draw this way'.

If you look at it as "I paid money for a bootleg that i would've gladly paid to Prince", then, yes, they do cost him.

It's his fault though. All he has to do is release it and we'd all line up to buy it.

I would say the reverse is true.When Prince was turning out inferior products like Emancipation/New Power Soul many folks used bootlegs to keep their interest alive.
If somebody asked me to give up Emancipation or City Lights the the answer is easy.If the answer is'nt east you haven't heard City Lights.

i agree with most of what has ben said, but...

one of the ways that boots can damage official release sales: if an artist releases something that has been out as a boot, folks who have the boot (the hardcore fans) don't stream in to the stores to buy it when it first hits the shelf. this causes "the buzz" to be luke-warm in the first week or so of sales, thus soft on the charts. pop music buyers tend to follow pack mentality, if it's hot or massively popular it must be good, and they must have it. so, if something doesn't have a 'good buzz" early it has a tendency to die on the vine.

i know many people who did not buy the rainbow children, for example, for several months because they had it as the download. by that time it was history. i know that isn't the greatest example, because the rainbow children really didn't have great commercial potential to begin with, but that dynamic can certainly effect things

Take a look at the Black Album.
A lot of people bought the bootleg album and when it was released in 94, it didn't sell that many.

There are more bootlegs sold then official Black Albums.

So, Prince has lost money because of the bootleg. Not everyone is buying it again...


Peace,
TheKid

Thats true... the Black Album is the most pirated album in the world...

The Black Album didn't sell well because:

1. It was approximately 8 years old
2. More importantly wasn't promoted

I think Prince himself is behind the release of most bootlegs. He could easily have made a fortune just on getting Moonraker and other distributers to sell the stuff. How else could so many tracks get loose like that?

The people that buy bootlegs are usually the hardcore fans who have spent hundreds if not thousands of dollars on Prince stuff over the years anyway...

I don't think that live concert bootlegs do any damage, because it is something that Prince would not release. He could release them all, like Pearl Jam recently did, be he won't. Instead he released only ONE official live box set in 24 years, and a compiled one at that.

As far as bootlegged songs go, I actually do think that they do damage.

• Songs are heard "unfinished", and not as Prince envisioned
• Many projects (The Gold Experience for example) have had their tracklistings completely changed, partially due to bootlegging.
• Some songs are simply experimental, containing elements that might be used in other projects. What this does is cause a "familiarity" - it sounds as if Prince is repeating himself, when in fact we were never meant to hear the bootleg!
• As we know, Prince's attention span is very limited. I'm sure that once a song is "spoiled" for him, he has no intention of releasing it as planned - he either reworks it endlessly or instead just locks it away in the Vault.

But I agree - he needs to release this music, and we WILL buy it. Remixes, outtakes, unreleased songs - WHATEVER.

MiaBocca said:

It is not "stolen property", and it doesn't normally "hurt" him financially, because many fans stick with Prince often because of bootlegs. So what does he want? Alienate even more of his fans?

EvilWhiteMale said:

This was certainly true in the WB era. I think he still does it now, once in a while. He "leaked" live versions of a couple of songs from one of the Japanese shows to a local radio station, and the whole of opening night in Tokyo was freely broadcast over the net. It's since been made into a terrific bootleg.

huggy said:

How is *not* stolen property.

Prince ones the original recordings, and they are his to with as he pleases, if they are copied, sold, and distributed without the owners consent, that's pretty much stealing in my book.

TheKid said:

But Prince knew that People were Buying it in Swap Meets.also Warner Brothers back in 1991 Sold a Copy to a Fan for 13 thousand Dollars on the Burbank,CA BackLot.He even said don't buy it in the "Alphabet Street" Video but He knew it was out there.IMHO:without Bootlegs than Prince's Music would have truly Suffered.thank about it:the Black Album Alone brought alot more attention to His Side Projects&did Wonders for Him.I also believe He passed stuff out&stuff He was so-so with just floated.but He knew about over hafl of it.back in the day Bootlegs were Great for His Artistic Respect if nothing else.

Actually I don´t think the bootleg itself causes him to loose money, tho I think some material he simply wants to have private.

Loose money is when we all are downloading cds from Kazaa, or copy cd to another cd instead of buying it etc, there we got the money... And as we see, the whole music-industry is changing cuz of that.. Not because of the bootlegging, I guess..

I think the Black Album was "leaked" by Prince,because he did not intend for the album to be released.
BY 91 so many people had the album then the offical release was a non issue.

as if prince is ever going to release "wonderful ass" (or any song that uses a curse word, or has sexual connotations.)

we're lucky he released "crystal ball"... otherwise we would've never had the version of "days of wild", "hide the bone" and other tracks that are on it... we would've only received watered down, larry graham-influenced versions...

prince only hurts himself by not releasing the music that is already available... period.

we all know he records everything... including your whispers about how he's lost his mind when you were at the celebration last year... if he wants to continue to let others profit from his talent, rather than himself, that's on prince.

at this time it's more important for prince to continue to whine about warner bros, and to go after fans for sharing things that will never see the light of day... until prince goes after those that are actually profiting, he's just coming off like an ass to those that admire him...

p.s. mulefunk, the black album was released in 94, not 91...

As a photographer, I would be pissed if someone broke into my stash of images and started sharing them with everyone. There's works that I may not like or think represent me. So from that angle I can see Prince being mad about boots.

But financially, I think he's benefitted from it more than anything. Certainly with the NPGMC and CB, because many people were signing up anticipating some of these unreleased tracks finally seeing the light of day.

At this point the music is out there if you want it, its been out there for over 15 years. Its not worth complaining about anymore. The thing is I think alot of fans would support an official release of this stuff in a minute.

TheKid said:

Because it wasn't good value for money. If they'd done some decent packaging (i.e. used black plastic for the CD materials instead of taking a very lame standard issue jewel box and putting some black paper in it, fr instance, plus added a booklet with exclusive, extensive liner notes, unpublished pictures,...), remastered it (the master they use is the exact same as the one from 1987, while CD mastering technology has advanced greatly since then), and added bonus tracks (yes there are, like an extended version of Superfunkicalifragisexy), and promoted it, it would have sold far better. But in the end it was a LIMITED EDITION and AFAIK most of the copies have been sold, though you might encounter the odd one here and there.

nas3110 said:

You're both talking out of the wrong orifice. There is NO EVIDENCE of Prince ever giving stuff to bootleg companies, in fact plenty of the stuff that they've released can be traced back to very specific sources, examples of this have been leaked regularly.

As far as radio broadcasts etc goes, those weren't given to bootleg companies, those were simply broadcast and bootleggers -- knowing very well that fans would want these things -- released them as fast as they could.

If Prince was reasonable and more sane and had more business sense, he would have released many of those things himself independently, or he would have negociated with WB to do special editions of the classic albums in exchange for getting back the rights to them sooner. Instead, we get watered down and edited versions of songs that have been out there for ages, while there's plenty of unreleased stuff in the vaults.

MiaBocca said:

According to lawbooks copying and publishing musical works, unreleased studiorecordings and concert performances without the copyrightowner's and performing artists' permission does not equal stealing. It equals copyright infringement when the copying and publishing is not covered by any copyright limitations.

Taking a soundcassette that is owned by prince from his studio without his permission equals stealing. The reproduction and publication of this tape without his permission equals copyright infringement if it is not covered by any copyright limitations.

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[This message was edited Sun Feb 16 15:53:46 PST 2003 by huggy]