Well, I know many threads have been written about P v/s WB and copyright owning.

My doubt is, and I guess this varies from contract to contract,

Does P own the copyright or nad masters for those songs WB rejected at that time?

When P presented a project i.e. Camille, WB rejected it,

Did P take those songs home and could he use them today if he wanted to?

Or at the moment of presenting the project the songs became part of WB?

I put the Camille example just as that. I know he reused most of them while still under WB contract, except Rebirth of the Flesh.

But what about the others?

Could he use them without having to re-record them as they were actually presented to WB?

Just asking.

Thanx

It depends on how the deal was structured.

If the label owns some publishing, or they paid for production work/mastering, then they have some control. That was how things were done, where today, you see more deals set up with labels playing more of a disributors role.

So, on one of the early records, it's likely the label owned any output from the studio time they paid for. What Prince recorded in his private studio is his... unless he submitted it to fullfil a contractual obligation, for an album, and it wasn't used...then it gets murky, and depends where the masters are.

It seems that, past maybe the first 2 albums, Prince didn't send the songs to WB even if WB was paying the bill.

I think Alan Leeds once said that Prince would need WB's approval to release anything recorded during their association, including live stuff, but obviously Prince didn't give a shit when he released Crystal Ball in 98, or all the WB-era stuff he put out on NPGMC in 2001. On the other hand he released a few previously WB songs on both CB and NPGMC 2001, that he didn't own at all, as a "fuck you, sue me if you dare" to them, and they didn't move.

So my guess is that in the end, Prince does what he wants with the unreleased stuff and that the only stuff he can't use is the stuff that was released by WB at the time.

.

[Edited 1/25/17 13:41pm]

I was asking info about this, since he said he was/was going to re-record his whole catalogue for releasing it again when he became a "slave".

I suppose he didn't, or at least he never put it out.

Maybe because at that time he was also getting into the Witnesses and he might have considered that those songs didn't fit his new spiritual beliefs.

Who knows...