If people want to "finish" the songs it could be released like the MJ Xscape album, give us the songs as they already were as well.

Genesia said:

darkroman said:

Wendy and Lisa would be an amzing choice as they have the talent, creativity and expertise to curate the vault.

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Hopefully if the worldwide distribution of HitNRun 2 proves to be successful, then hopefully the business people will take this opportunity seriously.

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On another note, didn't Prince say in an interview that the vault already contained two finished albums by the Revolution and one by Vanity 6. So no work would be required.

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Not to mention the love and respect - which would be equally important for a project like this.

I don't want "Prince according to W&L", although that could be interesting. Their perspective is important, but it's not the only perspective I'm interested in.

breakbeat said:

W&L would be the best choice to oversee any upcoming albums of Vault material.

[Edited 4/25/16 8:53am]

I agree.

Man, will we finally get to hear Wednesday?

lrn36 said:

What about all the footage? Didn't Kevin Smith say Prince shot a ton of high production music videos that were never released? All those self documentaries inside Paisley Park. All the video of rehearsals and concerts probably going back to the early 80s.

How would K. Smith really know anythihg about that?

I don't want anybody doing any overdubs on his songs in the vault, just release them as Prince made them, as they already are. Prince was against the overdubs Paul, George and Ringo did to John Lennon's "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". In fact Prince said in my Guitar World October 1998 magazine -

[Edited 4/25/16 15:08pm]

Farfunknugin said:

mynameisnotsusan said:

Farfunknugin said:

How would K. Smith really know anythihg about that?

It was a Paisley employee who told him that while he was there - he mentioned a name, I can't be bothered looking. Peoples minds are going to be completely blown at the scale of it. Question - Do you think anyone else actually knows the combination to get into the Vault? Lord, I hope he left some instructions how it should be handled!

One of Prince's former studio engineers theorized that he probably digitized most of the tapes and footage over the years for easier accessibility. All this stuff could be on hard drives and there is no physical vault.

lrn36 said:

mynameisnotsusan said:

Farfunknugin said: It was a Paisley employee who told him that while he was there - he mentioned a name, I can't be bothered looking. Peoples minds are going to be completely blown at the scale of it. Question - Do you think anyone else actually knows the combination to get into the Vault? Lord, I hope he left some instructions how it should be handled!

One of Prince's former studio engineers theorized that he probably digitized most of the tapes and footage over the years for easier accessibility. All this stuff could be on hard drives and there is no physical vault.

.

I don't remember who it was that said all of it is digitized and stored on a secure server somewhere. It was a guest on one of the numerous news programs the past few days. So who really knows.

SmiggyG said:

lrn36 said:

One of Prince's former studio engineers theorized that he probably digitized most of the tapes and footage over the years for easier accessibility. All this stuff could be on hard drives and there is no physical vault.

.

I don't remember who it was that said all of it is digitized and stored on a secure server somewhere. It was a guest on one of the numerous news programs the past few days. So who really knows.

I forgot his name, but he had grey hair, a mustache, and was wearing glasses. I think he worked with Prince in the late 80s and early 90s. Maybe there was talk of digitizing when he was there and he just assumed they followed through.

mynameisnotsusan said: All the video of rehearsals and concerts probably going back to the early 80s. Peoples minds are going to be completely blown at the scale of it.

Totally. At least there is a lot from Prince to actually look foward to still that we haven't seen or heard.

D'Arby has said that they recorded nearly an entire Album/CD, but Warner Bros and Sony could not agree to release it.

Whoever does it, it would be a mammoth task. Someone would have to go through old contracts to see if WB still own any of the music. They may have handed over his official albums, but maybe not the stuff he recorded that wasnt released when he was with them. The protege stuff also might have big question marks over it. Also, all the artists involved in the songs. Are they credited? What royalties need paying out? This is a legal quagmire. We may not hear anything for years to come! Unless Prince documented who played on what songs and who contributed to writing the songs, we may well never hear a lot of it at all. I so hope that Prince had everything in order, it would be such a shame for this wealth of material to be locked up indefinately whilst legal disputes and infighting spiral out of control.

SmiggyG said:

lrn36 said:

One of Prince's former studio engineers theorized that he probably digitized most of the tapes and footage over the years for easier accessibility. All this stuff could be on hard drives and there is no physical vault.

.

I don't remember who it was that said all of it is digitized and stored on a secure server somewhere. It was a guest on one of the numerous news programs the past few days. So who really knows.

I've read quotes by more than one person over the last 10 years that people wanted Prince to transfer the old decaying tapes to digital, but he wouldn't do it. So a lot of older incredible music could be lost forever on gummy, ruined audio tape.

rudeboynpg said:

I don't want anybody doing any overdubs on his songs in the vault, just release them as Prince made them, as they already are. Prince was against the overdubs Paul, George and Ringo did to John Lennon's "Free As a Bird" and "Real Love". In fact Prince said in my Guitar World October 1998 magazine -

[Edited 4/25/16 15:08pm]

Thanks for posting this

People on here talking about "finishing" the songs . . once again I'm going to ask. What leads you to believe a majority of these are in unfinished condition. Perhaps the last ones he was working on . . maybe but for someone he seemed to of lived in a studio and maintianing an extensive vault of music why would you assume he would take something out of the studio and bring it to be cataloged in a vault without finishing the song. That doesn't make sense if you intend to move on to hundreds of more songs

FunkiestOne said:

SmiggyG said:

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I don't remember who it was that said all of it is digitized and stored on a secure server somewhere. It was a guest on one of the numerous news programs the past few days. So who really knows.

I've read quotes by more than one person over the last 10 years that people wanted Prince to transfer the old decaying tapes to digital, but he wouldn't do it. So a lot of older incredible music could be lost forever on gummy, ruined audio tape.

Unlikely, The Beatles tapes are all in pristine condition

Rebeljuice said:

Whoever does it, it would be a mammoth task. Someone would have to go through old contracts to see if WB still own any of the music. They may have handed over his official albums, but maybe not the stuff he recorded that wasnt released when he was with them. The protege stuff also might have big question marks over it. Also, all the artists involved in the songs. Are they credited? What royalties need paying out? This is a legal quagmire. We may not hear anything for years to come! Unless Prince documented who played on what songs and who contributed to writing the songs, we may well never hear a lot of it at all. I so hope that Prince had everything in order, it would be such a shame for this wealth of material to be locked up indefinately whilst legal disputes and infighting spiral out of control.

It's really unlikely that such a termanology would be placed in the contract for the rights of the music to extend beyond the term of the contract. Less likely Prince would accept such a deal, as that type of language is only somewhat ommon in publishing deals

The most troubling issue you bring up would be a lack of notes as to who recorded what - unless they're responsible for a part of the lyrics or music composition their playing could and probably would be written off as work for hire - session players are paid a fee but not a royalty. If he had prestanding agreements with those bands those contracts would probably be honored

The nature of the sessions . . seeing as he was practically living at this studio might be a situation where many of the songs were recording by himself during late nights with no one or few people around. Obviously not all of them but there's a good chance people weren't always around when inspiration strikes

The only person i'd trust with curating the vault is Questlove (maybe with support from Alan Leeds).He's an authority with incredible detailed knowledge, a true fan and huge respect for the man.Best of all, he has no potential conflict of interest in this contrary to ex members, ex lovers, relatives etc.

[Edited 4/27/16 3:39am]

Prince's catalogue of released and unreleased material may prove to be as valuable or even more so than the Beatle's or MJ's. Vultures will be circling for many years to come...

beatz01 said:

The only person i'd trust with curating the vault is Questlove (maybe with support from Alan Leeds).He's an authority with incredible detailed knowledge, a true fan and huge respect for the man.Best of all, he has no potential conflict of interest in this contrary to ex members, ex lovers, relatives etc.

[Edited 4/27/16 3:39am]

naw, he wasn't there. And he might hip hop it out

beatz01 said:

The only person i'd trust with curating the vault is Questlove (maybe with support from Alan Leeds).He's an authority with incredible detailed knowledge, a true fan and huge respect for the man.Best of all, he has no potential conflict of interest in this contrary to ex members, ex lovers, relatives etc.

[Edited 4/27/16 3:39am]

HELL NO

OldFriends4Sale said:

beatz01 said:

The only person i'd trust with curating the vault is Questlove (maybe with support from Alan Leeds).He's an authority with incredible detailed knowledge, a true fan and huge respect for the man.Best of all, he has no potential conflict of interest in this contrary to ex members, ex lovers, relatives etc.

[Edited 4/27/16 3:39am]

naw, he wasn't there. And he might hip hop it out

Nonsense, the dude has too much respect for Prince to do something silly like that.

Whether he's the best or not I have no idea, but he's certainly earned the rights to be in the running imho

[Edited 4/27/16 6:00am]

OldFriends4Sale said:

beatz01 said:

The only person i'd trust with curating the vault is Questlove (maybe with support from Alan Leeds).He's an authority with incredible detailed knowledge, a true fan and huge respect for the man.Best of all, he has no potential conflict of interest in this contrary to ex members, ex lovers, relatives etc.

[Edited 4/27/16 3:39am]

naw, he wasn't there. And he might hip hop it out

That's exactly WHY he would be more qualified than ex members, relatives etc.He's not biased.As for "hip hop it out"..?! Have you ever read his lengthy comments or interviews about Prince AT ALL ??

The man kows what he is talking about and has a love for Prince's WHOLE work.Also, he's spot on with his musical analyses - i don't know anyone who can connect the dots better than him.

And Alan as support - he has been there.

[Edited 4/27/16 6:02am]

beatz01 said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

naw, he wasn't there. And he might hip hop it out

That's exactly WHY he would be more qualified than ex members, relatives etc.He's not biased.As for "hip hop it out"..?! Have you ever read his lengthy comments or interviews about Prince AT ALL ??

The man kows what he is talking about and has a love for Prince's WHOLE work.Also, he's spot on with his musical analyses - i don't know anyone who can connect the dots better than him.

And Alan as support - he has been there.

[Edited 4/27/16 6:02am]

Good points!

Thizz said:

FunkiestOne said:

I've read quotes by more than one person over the last 10 years that people wanted Prince to transfer the old decaying tapes to digital, but he wouldn't do it. So a lot of older incredible music could be lost forever on gummy, ruined audio tape.

Unlikely, The Beatles tapes are all in pristine condition

I am a sound engineer and usually with analogue tape over the age of 20/25 years its worth "baking" before use, its literally what you imagine. You put the tape in a specially designed oven and cook it! This stops the tape from shredding on the tape machine when played back. In my experience we paid a specialist to bake the tape and then we made a digital copy, as long as the tapes havent been in a humid atmosphere or been subject to high or low temperatures whilst in storage it should all be fine.

KingSausage said:

I don't care who does it, as long as they do it while Josh is out of town.

...or Larry Graham.

beatz01 said:

OldFriends4Sale said:

naw, he wasn't there. And he might hip hop it out

That's exactly WHY he would be more qualified than ex members, relatives etc.He's not biased.As for "hip hop it out"..?! Have you ever read his lengthy comments or interviews about Prince AT ALL ??

The man kows what he is talking about and has a love for Prince's WHOLE work.Also, he's spot on with his musical analyses - i don't know anyone who can connect the dots better than him.

And Alan as support - he has been there.

[Edited 4/27/16 6:02am]

still no, I like him though

paulludvig said:

beatz01 said:

That's exactly WHY he would be more qualified than ex members, relatives etc.He's not biased.As for "hip hop it out"..?! Have you ever read his lengthy comments or interviews about Prince AT ALL ??

The man kows what he is talking about and has a love for Prince's WHOLE work.Also, he's spot on with his musical analyses - i don't know anyone who can connect the dots better than him.

And Alan as support - he has been there.

[Edited 4/27/16 6:02am]

Good points!

lol U do know he is friends with Lisa & Wendy and LOVES the Revolution & the Family right?