"But utlimately seems that Prince did not cut a very good deal with WB yet again. " You have no idea what the terms of the deal are and Prince must have been happy with it as he agreeded to it.

Rhonda Trotter is the tops in her field. I am sure she explained the deal to Prince before he signed it. You are making it appear as if he had no idea what he was signing when he took a damm press release about it.

The deal is bad for the parties trying to break it UMG and Londell and Kopplecrook. Do you realize that Londell is being accused of fraud and how bad that really is?

Anyway WB will get to do everything for the next couple of years and we should get a lot of product and the estate should get money. Not sure what is so bad about that or honoring Prince's wishes and an actual valid contract.

emesem said:

I dont blame LLondell 100% on this. He didnt write the 2014 WB contract (right?). If we give him the benefit of the doubt (and that he did not try to committ fraud), seems like there is considerable ambuiguity (to WB favor) in that agreement and that he did not accurately explain that to Uni and due to confidentiality contrstraints they could not show the actual agreement to Uni.

Poor judgment on Uni's party to bid such a high amount without looking at the contract. Also, given the confidentiality constraints, Londell had a bit of a professional obligation to explain better what rights were actually availiable for UNI to bid on.

But utlimately seems that Prince did not cut a very good deal with WB yet again. ARE GOOD LAWYERS THAT HARD TO FIND? JFC I'm sure BEYONCE HAS A GOOD ONE.

blacknote said:

WB has an exclusive distribution deal with the P estate for another 4 years. There's no war between WB and the estate. The estate is making money from the PR remaster and will likely use those funds to cut Universal a $30,000,000 check for the botched deal (thanks Londell?).

Ownership of the WB era masters reverted to Prince when he signed the distribution deal with WB back in 2014. Now that P is gone, it's in the estate's best interest to work with WB and grant them access to the music if they want to continue making money from this deal.

And they'd better do it quickly.

[Edited 6/28/17 9:25am]

emesem said:

Prince's distrust of competent lawyers and advisors and an unhealthly lack of respect for (or faith in) the real world rules of business and contracts have cost him and his heirs his legacy. Its friggin' tragic.

Its a shame that his talent was so intimidating. If'd only held on to one friend to slap some sense into him.

You have absoultly no idea what you are talking about. Rhoda Trotter is a competent lawyer and Prince got the deal he wanted and that deal is going to stand.

It is not the deal you want, family, UMG or Lonnie. They cannot break it and I think that is great.

Coamerica should start working with WB immediatly to find a home for all vault material and move forward.

Not sure what role Ms Trotter acutally played but I've read that the WB agreement was negotiated by Van Jones and a non-laywer named Phaedra Ellis. I'd also note that Trotter is a litigator who sometimes have no clue how to properly draft contracts.

laurarichardson said:

emesem said:

Prince's distrust of competent lawyers and advisors and an unhealthly lack of respect for (or faith in) the real world rules of business and contracts have cost him and his heirs his legacy. Its friggin' tragic.

Its a shame that his talent was so intimidating. If'd only held on to one friend to slap some sense into him.

You have absoultly no idea what you are talking about. Rhoda Trotter is a competent lawyer and Prince got the deal he wanted and that deal is going to stand.

It is not the deal you want, family, UMG or Lonnie. They cannot break it and I think that is great.

Coamerica should start working with WB immediatly to find a home for all vault material and move forward.

emesem said:

positivity88 said:

The 7-CD Emancipation reissue could be off for awhile. Shucks.

where 'd u come up with 7 cds???

luvsexy4all said:

that is gonna make for the very best "widdle emancipation down to 6 cds" thread EVER!!!

KingSausage said:

luvsexy4all said:

where 'd u come up with 7 cds???

Good lord. They were obviously kidding.

What?! Why would anyone make stuff up on the internet?

IstenSzek said:

imago said:

Let me be the first to say this:

Ya'll go blind.

Do we know when the judge is supposed to give a ruling about this deal ?

TrevorAyer said:

So did WB win the prince war?

Y'all act like since prince is dead WB can just put out whatever the fuck they want. WB would certainly like you all to believe they won.

So WTF was prince waiting for all those years? Didn't he regain full ownership after 30 years due to some law that WB hates? So how does that give WB full rights to do whatever the fuck they want with his work tapes they have lying around.

When prince was alive they had ZERO rights to release ANYTHING. Which is why they could not release PRremastered with the outtakes.

I believe since prince died, the ownership reverts to the heirs or estate. End of story. Ultimately the estate could decide when and how to release anything recorded ever, due to the 30 year limit. And even if the 30 years is bunk (i don't think it is), WB would need permission from the estate to release outtakes.

Clearly the estate worked on this presumption when doing the deal with Universal. And that presumption may still be accurate. All we know is that WB is making claims that they own it all now and is ignoring the 30 year issue that prince waited and fought for, for many many decades. The general public does not know why prince was waiting so long. Maybe the estate does not have a full grasp of the issue either. This feels like a big corporation trying to bully the estate with precedent (pr deluxe) and lots of lawyers and suing. Maaan they hated prince railing against their slave ship mentality for decades, and they certainly aren't going to hand over his "work for hire" (as they would put it) with out a huge expensive fight.

anyone who would continue to pass on misinformation that WB has the right to release anything at this point besides the wretched remaster of the PR disk alone, is literally going against EVERYTHING prince fought for the last 30 years.

with the lack of understanding and quality put into prdeluxe, I can only thank the bootleggers for what they have and continue to provide. They will be the keepers of his true legacy. Thinking WB will do anything other than milk the teet of a few scraps they have laying around would be foolish.

And anyone who bitches about bootleggers stealing money from prince ... well ... not only do they put out better product, provide shit prince nor wb would, and take more care in packaging .. but wb has stolen more from prince than any small run bootlegger ever will ...

The reality is that the ESTATE should have full rights to everything upon his death due to the 30 year law that reverts ownership to prince. Anything to the contrary is lawyers and loophole efforts. I hope the ESTATE sticks to their guns and wins agains WB. WB is just another money grubbing corporation that cares littel for the product or the consumers. Yay 'merica!

In reality i think we can all agree that someone who "Writes" something or "Creates" something should own it no matter what. Sadly though people sign deals way back and that was not how things were then and many signed away their lives. Prince did sign off on the PR remaster, not the outtakes, that was decided by the estate, now why they gave what they gave we wont know, but these tracks were most likely demos and things that PRINCE had given them that they still had possession of and were going to package with the remaster and the concert film was obviously something they owned, just like when they reissued his movies etc... The problem with his estate is that no one really knows who is controlling things, the fact is that a label is really going to have to be called in to release future remasters, his estate is not going to fund that process and fund the process of pressing things and shipping to stores and outlets and paying people to do the remastering. So we may like the idea of his estate doing this all by itself but the fact is that it would go broke handling every detail itself and we would not make it past one remaster project.

emesem said:

Not sure what role Ms Trotter acutally played but I've read that the WB agreement was negotiated by Van Jones and a non-laywer named Phaedra Ellis. I'd also note that Trotter is a litigator who sometimes have no clue how to properly draft contracts.

laurarichardson said:

You have absoultly no idea what you are talking about. Rhoda Trotter is a competent lawyer and Prince got the deal he wanted and that deal is going to stand.

It is not the deal you want, family, UMG or Lonnie. They cannot break it and I think that is great.

Coamerica should start working with WB immediatly to find a home for all vault material and move forward.

.

Neither of them were qualified to prepare a recording contract. It was done poorly, to say the least.

lastdecember said:

TrevorAyer said:

So did WB win the prince war?

Y'all act like since prince is dead WB can just put out whatever the fuck they want. WB would certainly like you all to believe they won.

So WTF was prince waiting for all those years? Didn't he regain full ownership after 30 years due to some law that WB hates? So how does that give WB full rights to do whatever the fuck they want with his work tapes they have lying around.

When prince was alive they had ZERO rights to release ANYTHING. Which is why they could not release PRremastered with the outtakes.

I believe since prince died, the ownership reverts to the heirs or estate. End of story. Ultimately the estate could decide when and how to release anything recorded ever, due to the 30 year limit. And even if the 30 years is bunk (i don't think it is), WB would need permission from the estate to release outtakes.

Clearly the estate worked on this presumption when doing the deal with Universal. And that presumption may still be accurate. All we know is that WB is making claims that they own it all now and is ignoring the 30 year issue that prince waited and fought for, for many many decades. The general public does not know why prince was waiting so long. Maybe the estate does not have a full grasp of the issue either. This feels like a big corporation trying to bully the estate with precedent (pr deluxe) and lots of lawyers and suing. Maaan they hated prince railing against their slave ship mentality for decades, and they certainly aren't going to hand over his "work for hire" (as they would put it) with out a huge expensive fight.

anyone who would continue to pass on misinformation that WB has the right to release anything at this point besides the wretched remaster of the PR disk alone, is literally going against EVERYTHING prince fought for the last 30 years.

with the lack of understanding and quality put into prdeluxe, I can only thank the bootleggers for what they have and continue to provide. They will be the keepers of his true legacy. Thinking WB will do anything other than milk the teet of a few scraps they have laying around would be foolish.

And anyone who bitches about bootleggers stealing money from prince ... well ... not only do they put out better product, provide shit prince nor wb would, and take more care in packaging .. but wb has stolen more from prince than any small run bootlegger ever will ...

The reality is that the ESTATE should have full rights to everything upon his death due to the 30 year law that reverts ownership to prince. Anything to the contrary is lawyers and loophole efforts. I hope the ESTATE sticks to their guns and wins agains WB. WB is just another money grubbing corporation that cares littel for the product or the consumers. Yay 'merica!

In reality i think we can all agree that someone who "Writes" something or "Creates" something should own it no matter what. Sadly though people sign deals way back and that was not how things were then and many signed away their lives. Prince did sign off on the PR remaster, not the outtakes, that was decided by the estate, now why they gave what they gave we wont know, but these tracks were most likely demos and things that PRINCE had given them that they still had possession of and were going to package with the remaster and the concert film was obviously something they owned, just like when they reissued his movies etc... The problem with his estate is that no one really knows who is controlling things, the fact is that a label is really going to have to be called in to release future remasters, his estate is not going to fund that process and fund the process of pressing things and shipping to stores and outlets and paying people to do the remastering. So we may like the idea of his estate doing this all by itself but the fact is that it would go broke handling every detail itself and we would not make it past one remaster project.

.