NME01 said:

Se7en said:

"Jay Z spent $100 million of his own money to build his own service. We have to show support for artists who are trying to own things for themselves." If this is true, this is around the same amount as the massive contract Prince got in the early 90's that got so much publicity. I can't believe Jay Z would spend that much money in a streaming service, but then again Garth Brooks made his own iTunes Store competitor (Ghost Tunes) for a lot of the same reasons.

It really is embarrassing to hear Prince spout this shit. Did he read some Jay-Z fan girl site to get his info? Jay-Z fronted a group of venture capitalists to aide the marketing and PR behind their takeover of Tidal - which already existed and was lauded for its sound quality.

I have to agree, Prince is kinda cringey-silly right now. Same crap different decade. I agree with supporting other artists but tidal is transprently a hedge funded pump & dump kind of thing, like uber --- the value is projected based on the future while it runs in the red and bleeds the VC money...

There's a certain privilege to being ABLE to sign with a record label. They do spend ALOT of money to get an artist known, they have a right to make their investment back and collaborate on what will continue to sell in the future, their job is to produce sellable product. They do that well.

There needs to be parity for artists over time to have more say & control over their work. Maybe that wil spark an innpvation in the rights & publishing end to service artists in this way to rengotiate for their streaming rts...

And while some indie bands tour and do well enough via youtube and on their own, but to make it BIG, you need big upfront investments of money.

I've said the entire time that the problem with artists being paid for streaming is in the record label/artist contract....that is NOT THE CONSUMERS FAULT AND NOR SHOULD THEY BE OVERCHARGED TO COMPENSATE. thats whats happening with tidal.

How about the recording artists unions stage a class acton against the labels & the publishing companies to renegotiate the deals for streaming payouts. The labels are ripping off artists YES, but foisting that on the consumer is LAZY.

If you can haul out the tidal team for a silly signing why cant you all hire a good team of lawyers to force change on the streaming pay outs? Thats what needs to happen, the change has to come from artists fighting the labels as a collective force. Not from a higher subscription rate.

And while it is admirable that jay-z invested his own money----um, thats what big dawgs do and he's in a different strata now, and he'l be just fins if he loses it...trust me, he wont be selling mixtapes from the tunk of his car.

Prince either doesnt understand how tidal is fronted - or he does and is expecting people to buy the slavery line.

The only way michealangelo and leonardo et al were able to create great art? the papacy. someone has to pay for it. the middle man label part of the equation needs heavy heavy duty reform.

BUTTTTT my god its a payola scheme from day one rt?

[Edited 8/9/15 17:41pm]

jdcxc said:

You have it flipped. Prince's genius was the foundation by which the label reaped tons of $$$...Purple Rain has grossed over $250 million alone. He took a crazy risk that has cost him $100 million Madonna money to pursue the right to say and do whatever the hell he pleases. Young artists can be educated by his mistakes, examples and vision- while at the same time being smarter when making those inevitable one-sided business decisions. And to your last point, if more consumers and artists spoke out like Prince maybe their would not be such a soul sucking corporate machine in place. You didn't hear McCartney, Jagger, etc. saying anything when old blues men were dying broke either.

I assume you're talking about the album and not the movie (which grossed $80 million). There is a huge difference between gross and net. Purple Rain the album doesn't gross what it does without Purple Rain the movie, which WB funded. When WB was promoting Prince, he had hits. When they stopped, the hits dissapeared. His talent didn't change.

The label spend lots of $$ and saw return from their investment. Prince tries to do it himself and doesn't see the same return because he won't invest the money. It's why his songs stopped getting airplay, why his online ventures (NPGMC, etc) failed.

jdcxc said:

Reading posts from both Threads regarding Tidal; seems like P's hardcore fans are even half split about joining Tidal to get this streaming album. (Or even more than half)...?

[Edited 8/9/15 21:24pm]

databank said:

In a way P is one more time ahead of his time

.

Oh for crying out loud, there have been streaming services for ages. Spotify was launched in OCTOBER 2008.

Se7en said:

"Jay Z spent $100 million of his own money to build his own service." If this is true, this is around the same amount as the massive contract Prince got in the early 90's that got so much publicity.

.

Jay Z BOUGHT an existing service.

.

And Prince's contract wasn't really worth $100 million.

XSX said:

Look...as has probably been discussed/exposed here previously (possibly by me when I was on different drugs), the WB return as actually just a giveaway because the corporates needed to divest of some catalogue to skip monopolies legislation. A friend also on Warner in the 90's just got HIS catalogue back in the same way but balked at a resign with Universal (so far).

I've forgotten the point I was here to make so that'll have to be it.

.

WBR ain't going to give up the important back catalogues they own, because those are what will earn them income WRT streaming servcies etc.

.

The deal with Prince was just a way to avoid a whinefest in the short term and perhaps some legal threats, while locking up his back catalogue for X amount of years.

Doozer said:

I have this one figured out quite well. When you sign a contract with another party and you RECEIVE checks, you'd be well advised to accept the fact that the party WRITING the checks is making more than you are. If you ever think you're in a position of power then you only need look at where your income is coming from. If it's from another individual or corporation, then you've never had the upper hand.

.

See also: Chris Rock explaining the difference between rich and wealthy.

.

As for Prince taking a "huge risk" - another choice would have been to deliver on his part of the bargain, fulfill his obligations without behaving like a petulant child, THEN take the risk of going it alone. Instead, he chose to throw a public fit until he got what he wanted.

.

Actually, he should have behaved like an adult and renegociated. REM got control of their WEA back catalogue, Metallica got control of their WEA back catalogue. Both due to contract negociations in the mid-1990s.

.

Hell, all Prince needed to do was learn a little bit about msuic history and look what ahppened to the Stones with their manager Allen Klein and how he cheated them out of the rights to their back catalogue back in the late 1960s/early 1970s (something they only partially fixed in 2002!).

.

But he saw "$100 million contract" and saw "biggest ever" and he signed AGAINST the advice of his entourage.

.

Prince didn't get what he wanted. Oh yeah, he left WBR with one less album than he had to deliver. Big fucking deal. All he did was ruin his reputation by delivering sub-par material to fulfill his contract and (later) by sabotaging two compilation albums.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

In a way P is one more time ahead of his time

.

Oh for crying out loud, there have been streaming services for ages. Spotify was launched in OCTOBER 2008.

Rhapsody was the first music streaming service when it was launched December 3, 2001, Mr. Know-It-All. https://en.wikipedia.org/...service%29

He built the ultimate artist to fan format, direct and without any middle man, with money streaming in constantly, back in 1999-2000. with the NPG Music Club.

Be it downloads or streaming and the odd physical album, that would be so good.

But he broke that mould for some unfathomable reason ....

BartVanHemelen said:

Doozer said:

As for Prince taking a "huge risk" - another choice would have been to deliver on his part of the bargain, fulfill his obligations without behaving like a petulant child, THEN take the risk of going it alone. Instead, he chose to throw a public fit until he got what he wanted.

.

Actually, he should have behaved like an adult and renegociated. REM got control of their WEA back catalogue, Metallica got control of their WEA back catalogue. Both due to contract negociations in the mid-1990s.

.

Hell, all Prince needed to do was learn a little bit about msuic history and look what ahppened to the Stones with their manager Allen Klein and how he cheated them out of the rights to their back catalogue back in the late 1960s/early 1970s (something they only partially fixed in 2002!).

.

But he saw "$100 million contract" and saw "biggest ever" and he signed AGAINST the advice of his entourage.

.

Prince didn't get what he wanted. Oh yeah, he left WBR with one less album than he had to deliver. Big fucking deal. All he did was ruin his reputation by delivering sub-par material to fulfill his contract and (later) by sabotaging two compilation albums.

I thought he fufilled the contract with Come, TGE, Chaos & Disorder and then later WBR released The Vault: Old Friends For Sale and later... The Very Best of Prince and Ultimate, those two against Prince's wishes.

Astasheiks said:

Reading posts from both Threads regarding Tidal; seems like P's hardcore fans are even half split about joining Tidal to get this streaming album. (Or even more than half)...?

[Edited 8/9/15 21:24pm]

That's okay. It isn't meant for us ancient relics that are "...wanting to always hear that classic Purple Rain Prince sound..." no way. It's for those new "...fans who just love to hear what Prince has to say..." they are referred to "...as The Purple Collective or The Purple Army..."



Ummm...yeah.

feeluupp said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Actually, he should have behaved like an adult and renegociated. REM got control of their WEA back catalogue, Metallica got control of their WEA back catalogue. Both due to contract negociations in the mid-1990s.

.

Hell, all Prince needed to do was learn a little bit about msuic history and look what ahppened to the Stones with their manager Allen Klein and how he cheated them out of the rights to their back catalogue back in the late 1960s/early 1970s (something they only partially fixed in 2002!).

.

But he saw "$100 million contract" and saw "biggest ever" and he signed AGAINST the advice of his entourage.

.

Prince didn't get what he wanted. Oh yeah, he left WBR with one less album than he had to deliver. Big fucking deal. All he did was ruin his reputation by delivering sub-par material to fulfill his contract and (later) by sabotaging two compilation albums.

I thought he fufilled the contract with Come, TGE, Chaos & Disorder and then later WBR released The Vault: Old Friends For Sale and later... The Very Best of Prince and Ultimate, those two against Prince's wishes.

The Black Album also went toward fulfilling that contractual obligation.

feeluupp said:

I thought he fufilled the contract with Come, TGE, Chaos & Disorder and then later WBR released The Vault: Old Friends For Sale and later... The Very Best of Prince and Ultimate, those two against Prince's wishes.

.

I'd point you to the Princepedia article, but apparently that part of the Org doesn't work anymore. Hurrah.

.

In the first months of 1996, a termination agreement had been worked out that would allow Prince to leave the label after delivering two more albums instead of the three that he still owed them at that time. Prince also agreed to a reduction of his advances on royalties. Allegedly, Russ Thuret, one of the few remaining execs who had been with WB back when Prince first signed with them had been instrumental in getting Prince out of the deal.

.
The termination agreement was signed on April 26, 1996, at a meeting where Prince handed Warner Bros. Chaos And Disorder and The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale, and told them these were the last they should expect from him. Both these records came with the artwork as released, and WB had no say over the contents. Both were rather short (40 minutes) and contained less than a dozen tracks, in sharp contrast to previous records which contained 70+ minutes. It is assumed that Chaos And Disorder and The Vault: Old Friends 4 Sale contain "just enough" music as per contractual agreements.(Note that Prince had threatened in an interview from late 1995 to hand WB three albums with "old" music called "The Vault", but that it is unlikely these three albums were actually ever compiled. Most likely this was merely a figure of speech by Prince, a threat to WB.)

.

WBR was also allowed to release two compilations, this was already part of the contract. All this "against his wishes" is bullcrap, dude signed on the dotted line. Adults have responsibilities, but Prince has shown over and over again he isn't one.

.

[Edited 8/10/15 7:58am]

Se7en said:

feeluupp said:

I thought he fufilled the contract with Come, TGE, Chaos & Disorder and then later WBR released The Vault: Old Friends For Sale and later... The Very Best of Prince and Ultimate, those two against Prince's wishes.

The Black Album also went toward fulfilling that contractual obligation.

.

NO IT DID NOT.

.

http://the-black-album.in...story.html

.

No one knew that a month before, on 25th of October, Warner was negotiating a $4 million deal with Prince about the release of three albums. Which were The Black Album, The Gold Experience and a soundtrack for a yet to be determined Warner Brothers film. The deal fell through but the release of The Black Album was saved by a $1 million check that went into Prince’s direction.

.

See also Princepedia.

.

It's really simple, just look at what Prince announced at the end of 1995:

.

"The Vault - Volumes I, II and III" is a series of three albums announced on 22 December 1995 during a press release announcing that Prince had given notice to Warner Bros. of his desire to terminate his contract. The albums, to be credited to Prince, were to serve as the fulfillment of his contract

.

Can everybody count along? That's one, two, three albums he owed them. Now count how many were released later, and keep in mind that compilations do not count. All this is well-documented and has been known for years. It's been in the Princepedia on this site for aeons, I should know because I put it there.

.

[Edited 8/10/15 8:02am]

bashraka said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Oh for crying out loud, there have been streaming services for ages. Spotify was launched in OCTOBER 2008.

Rhapsody was the first music streaming service when it was launched December 3, 2001, Mr. Know-It-All. https://en.wikipedia.org/...service%29

.

Did I say it was the first?

BartVanHemelen said:

Se7en said:

.

See also Princepedia.

.

It's really simple, just look at what Prince announced at the end of 1995:

.

"The Vault - Volumes I, II and III" is a series of three albums announced on 22 December 1995 during a press release announcing that Prince had given notice to Warner Bros. of his desire to terminate his contract. The albums, to be credited to Prince, were to serve as the fulfillment of his contract

.

Can everybody count along? That's one, two, three albums he owed them. Now count how many were released later, and keep in mind that compilations do not count. All this is well-documented and has been known for years. It's been in the Princepedia on this site for aeons, I should know because I put it there.

.

[Edited 8/10/15 8:02am]

Thanks for the clarification, Bart. I'd always thought that everything he released on WB in that timeframe went toward fulfilling that contract.

BartVanHemelen said:

bashraka said:

Rhapsody was the first music streaming service when it was launched December 3, 2001, Mr. Know-It-All. https://en.wikipedia.org/...service%29

.

Did I say it was the first?

Shit, Prince was using the REAL player in some of his late 90s websites, which was a streaming music "service" if you will. Horrible quality, 56K modem so it was always buffering. This was the only place I've ever heard his version of Shania Twain's You're Still The One.

BartVanHemelen said:

bashraka said:

Rhapsody was the first music streaming service when it was launched December 3, 2001, Mr. Know-It-All. https://en.wikipedia.org/...service%29

.

Did I say it was the first?

Since you like correcting people so much on their posts, turnabout is fair.

BartVanHemelen said:

Actually, he should have behaved like an adult and renegociated. REM got control of their WEA back catalogue, Metallica got control of their WEA back catalogue. Both due to contract negociations in the mid-1990s.

I agree with this.If Prince had behaved in a more civil manner (instead of writing "slave" on his cheek and talking shit about Warners in every interview),he may have gotten control of his master recordings much sooner.He chose to behave like a spoiled brat.

SoulAlive said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Actually, he should have behaved like an adult and renegociated. REM got control of their WEA back catalogue, Metallica got control of their WEA back catalogue. Both due to contract negociations in the mid-1990s.

I agree with this.If Prince had behaved in a more civil manner (instead of writing "slave" on his cheek and talking shit about Warners in every interview),he may have gotten control of his master recordings much sooner.He chose to behave like a spoiled brat.

MUCH of negotiation has to do with good will, and its true he really hasnt attempted to foster much goodwill even if only to serve his own goals.

SoulAlive said:

BartVanHemelen said:

Actually, he should have behaved like an adult and renegociated. REM got control of their WEA back catalogue, Metallica got control of their WEA back catalogue. Both due to contract negociations in the mid-1990s.

I agree with this.If Prince had behaved in a more civil manner (instead of writing "slave" on his cheek and talking shit about Warners in every interview),he may have gotten control of his master recordings much sooner.He chose to behave like a spoiled brat.

.

Let's just remember that WBR was going to release Exodus in the US, and all Prince had to do was not badmouth them in the press. Guess what happened?

BartVanHemelen said:

XSX said:

Look...as has probably been discussed/exposed here previously (possibly by me when I was on different drugs), the WB return as actually just a giveaway because the corporates needed to divest of some catalogue to skip monopolies legislation. A friend also on Warner in the 90's just got HIS catalogue back in the same way but balked at a resign with Universal (so far).

I've forgotten the point I was here to make so that'll have to be it.

.

WBR ain't going to give up the important back catalogues they own, because those are what will earn them income WRT streaming servcies etc.

.

The deal with Prince was just a way to avoid a whinefest in the short term and perhaps some legal threats, while locking up his back catalogue for X amount of years.

Source of what you're saying about the WBR agreement?

BartVanHemelen said:

Se7en said:

"Jay Z spent $100 million of his own money to build his own service." If this is true, this is around the same amount as the massive contract Prince got in the early 90's that got so much publicity.

.

Jay Z BOUGHT an existing service.

.

And Prince's contract wasn't really worth $100 million.

He bought and redeveloped an existing service.

BartVanHemelen said:

Aerogram said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

WBR ain't going to give up the important back catalogues they own, because those are what will earn them income WRT streaming servcies etc.

.

The deal with Prince was just a way to avoid a whinefest in the short term and perhaps some legal threats, while locking up his back catalogue for X amount of years.

Source of what you're saying about the WBR agreement?

.

Common sense, standard industry practices.

I actually proposed that Prince create his own music app MONTHS ago and now iot seems to me like he's heading in that direction.

I understand your frustration Prince.... compare it to 'slavery'

this dude here really breaks down how the industry CONtracts work..

How can you win this battle?

The frustration builds up to the

point of explosion!

[Edited 8/14/15 14:28pm]

SoulAlive said:

Exactly.It's ridiculous for Prince to be advising young artists not to sign with major labels,when that's exactly what HE did back in 1977.Without a major label,he would have never became the huge,popular,well-known artist that he is now.

Doozer said:

No young, unsigned artist could dream of doing what Prince is able to do because of his past history with a major label. .

The industry muscle of major record labels works well when it is actually used to develop an artist and create something. But half the time or more, they are screwed over so badly that if they ever had a promising future, now they don't.

Very INSIGHTFUL thread!!