The death of Prince has bought only one good thing, that being that the Back catalogie of early Prince albums seems to be trotted out in the wrekka stows now.

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At elast in New Zealand, but I assume the USA, Australia, Canada, Japan and most of Europe would have stores selling them too. On CD I have noticed the albums seem to stop at the Hits/Bsides and only include studio albums from For You through to Lovesymbol. It seems that Come, TGE, Chaos and Disorder and the Vault are not available. Is there any reason for this. I understand that Emancipation to 20Ten would be hard to get as those albums mostly saw a limited release initially, and they are all on different labels or NPG but Come and the Black Album should be available. So is it not Warners behind this marketing scheme to cash in on a dead artist, and if so why not put out all Warners material up to the Vault.

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Is this because they were also NPG albums or because they were under the Symbol name. I have noticed most places (I have been in about 5 shops around Auckland, New Zealand) also have both Hit n runs and even a copy or two of AOA and Plectrum Electrum, but nothing else. And also copies of the Very Best of Prince are available, although I have not seen any copies of the Ultimate Prince, but will assume as it's Warner's it should be available (Quite a few of the albums have sold since April).

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I am not complaining, just curious as the albums are not remasters and only look like repressings (The booklets and slicks look a little overcopied on my copy of "Prince" the only early album I don't have on a disc and bought a few others as back up copies- Digital msic is great, but you need physical copies too ). Also they are cheap at $14.99 or $12.99 per album including SOTT and 1999.

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So questions

1. Can you buy copies of Prince albums from 1978 - 1993 at your wrekka stow and any others? If so how much per album?

2. Will you buy any for your collection or wait for remasters?

3. Why do you think, the slection is limited to this period only?

[Edited 8/29/16 19:37pm]

probably a combination of factors, mainly being that a lot of post 1993 stuff is probably
no longer in print due to contractual stipulations between prince and whatever company
released those albums at the time. none of them were ever in print again when prince
was still alive, so why would they be now? i guess these companies would have to work
out a new distribution deal with the estate, probably?

the last few warners albums probably all had a limited run, also due to some agreement
between warners and prince. at least the black album was promoted as being a limited
release with only a certain amount of copies made in 1994.

who knows, maybe warners can print new copies of 'come' and 'vault', but they likely
don't feel the need since his 1979-1992 albums are the ones that have hits on them the
people know and so they will be more inclined to buy them. in comparison to say 'vault'
which no one outside of real fans will know any song from to peak their interest in store.

naturally both PLEC and AOA are in stores since warners probably printed a lot of them
and they sold quite poorly initially. HNR1 + 2 will be in stores since they are his last real
project and as such have people's interest.

the hits albums being in stores speaks for itself.

it will be interesting to see if albums like Rave or Emancipation or 3121 etc will get a
reprint in the near future. seems like they were all just one off distribution deals with
prince owning the mastertapes to all of them and now the labels can't just reprint the
albums without consent from the estate, perhaps?

good thing for casual fans wanting to discover his catalogue is that all of the albums are
on Tidal, with probably 1 or 2 exceptions.

One factor might be the as simple as cost. There used to be caveats for packaging deductions from an artists royalties (along with the usual marketing deductions).

It would not have surprised me if Prince didn't want Warners printing up millions of product to then be stuck with the bill for unsold product. As their relationship soured he saw this as a way of controlling his music and stopping Warners exploiting it.

We don't have any record stores left around here. I have been using Amazon to buy the Prince albums and DVDs/Blu-Rays I never bought when they came out.

Sorry to hear that 1Sasha, where are you? because there maybe huge department stores nearby that sell albums.

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I mainly mentioned this thread too, as these albums only mysteriously appeared in the weeks after Prince passed away. Going in to the same wrekka stows before his passing, you would have found a copy of Hitnrun Phase2 and maybe one of the past 3 albums, along with TVBOP and if you were super lucky, a copy of the hits/bsides and maybe Purple Rain.

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So it is obvious some record company executive saw the casual fans coming and decided to press up a few thousand copies of each album so they could buy them. And also to help established fans replenish or fill in any gaos of their collections

I heard all his NPG albums except for Plectrumelectrum, Art Official Age, and Hitnrun phase 1 and 2 are out-of-print.

The good news is I heard they are planning to rerelease them I hope it's true!

If I understand correctly, the albums released from Emancipation on all or mostly included deals where Prince still owned them and could do future printings when / wherever he wanted. If that is true the estate shouldn't have to deal with any company except WB. I would personally like to see the digital only npgmc albums get a physical release. Lossless rips from tidal beat the hell out of the original lossy/drm tracks, but I'd drop $ for official physical copies in a heartbeat.