Looking forward to some new music of course. I have been a fan since the early 80's but I find myself everyday discovering something I have never heard. Always an adventure in the world of Prince!

FullLipsDotNose said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Anecdotes aren't data.

If you say that Prince's fans are over 40 and there are none coming and someone younger than 40 or a new fan comes to you, they don't need statistics - they are a sufficient contradiction to your statements.

Seriously... you ARE data in that equation!

Welcome aboard.

BartVanHemelen said:

FullLipsDotNose said:

You're wrong. There are youngsters out there (myself included) who came to Prince after his death.

.

Anecdotes aren't data.

While that's true, it's irrelevant. No one's done the research, so no one's given the anecdotes the chance to become data. SO--until you (or someone else) does the research to establish the ages of all of Prince's fans--all us 40-somethings are just anecdotes too. I suspect Bart's right and that most people who would support releases would be older (in whatever way that would justify them financially)--but I don't know that that belief is true.

feeluupp said:

Wax Poetics won't agree with you...

BartVanHemelen said:

.

One single dedicated issue of a low circulation mag vs. the experiences of several major magazines.

.

If Prince was a significant seller, magazines would feature him regularly. That didn't happen.

ChocolateBox3121 said:

udo said:

.

So you are reflecting about the shape of things but not about the contents.

Why did you deviate? You cannot admit truth?

.
Sure, you can roll your eyes all you like but I can say I am not a native speaker and speak more languages (to some degree) than most americans do.

It is about a distinction between the contents of the box and the box itself.

That is the comparison to the message and who is saying the message and in what way.

Most people have no or weak response and thus restort to complaining about the box (i.e.: the person and the way the tell the news versus the news itself).

That is a weak strategy which one can easily spot.

BartVanHemelen said:

feeluupp said:

Wax Poetics won't agree with you...

.

One single dedicated issue of a low circulation mag vs. the experiences of several major magazines.

.

If Prince was a significant seller, magazines would feature him regularly. That didn't happen.

I'll probably regret this, but doesn't selling over 100 million albums worldwide (if that is correct) make Prince a pretty 'significant seller'?

I still hear his songs on the radio on an almost daily basis. Admittedly, I don't know a lot of diehard fans, but I do know a lot of people who enjoy his music.

Sure, he's not nearly as popular as Elvis, MJ or The Beatles, but for a quirky, eclectic, relatively non-mainstream artist I think Prince is still widely held in very high regard both as a musician and a songwriter.

If it is the case that his appeal has not yet passed to the younger generations, let's hope that those who are working on the vault material are successful in preserving the most important part of his legacy, his precious music, and releasing it in such a way that it spreads the good news to the young 'uns. I'm confident Prince's music will last the test of time; I suppose to some extent it already has.

In any case, even if you are correct and Prince is not 'a significant seller', I don't believe the breadth of Prince's popularity in any way reflects either the quality of his music or its artistic merit. Perhaps we would agree that Trent Reznor is hugely talented, but even 'The Downward Spiral' reputedly only sold about 5 million copies and Trent is hardly a household name (not that he would remotely care about that, I imagine).

I'm not sure whether a newly released album would need to shift huge numbers to make further releases viable. Presumably there must still be a hardcore of a few tens of thousands of diehard fans that will purchase whichever album they decide to release this year. If not, Prince's popularity must have waned far faster and more dramatically than I realize.

[Edited 5/19/18 5:27am]

While I tend to agree with Bart, generally, I find it a good sign that news outlets that do not report often on music and even less on Prince have had news items on both the coming WB release, as well as the Tidal release. It seems that the mystery of what could be in Prince's vault has caught the general public's interest. So there will be interest and possibly a good number of sales for the coming releases.

.

Of course, that does mean that the coming releases should be relatively commercial and cater to a wide range of tastes and they have to be marketed well and extensively. I have my doubts that all the different parties that all have their hands in part of Prince's legacy are ready and willing to work together to make that a reality.

.

Of course, there is a bittersweet advantage, Prince is no longer around to change his mind and torpedo any marketing campaign that is about to be launched.

GrayDorian said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

One single dedicated issue of a low circulation mag vs. the experiences of several major magazines.

.

If Prince was a significant seller, magazines would feature him regularly. That didn't happen.

I'll probably regret this, but doesn't selling over 100 million albums worldwide (if that is correct) make Prince a pretty 'significant seller'?

I still hear his songs on the radio on an almost daily basis. Admittedly, I don't know a lot of diehard fans, but I do know a lot of people who enjoy his music.

Sure, he's not nearly as popular as Elvis, MJ or The Beatles, but for a quirky, eclectic, relatively non-mainstream artist I think Prince is still widely held in very high regard both as a musician and a songwriter.

If it is the case that his appeal has not yet passed to the younger generations, let's hope that those who are working on the vault material are successful in preserving the most important part of his legacy, his precious music, and releasing it in such a way that it spreads the good news to the young 'uns. I'm confident Prince's music will last the test of time; I suppose to some extent it already has.

In any case, even if you are correct and Prince is not 'a significant seller', I don't believe the breadth of Prince's popularity in any way reflects either the quality of his music or its artistic merit. Perhaps we would agree that Trent Reznor is hugely talented, but even 'The Downward Spiral' reputedly only sold about 5 million copies and Trent is hardly a household name (not that he would remotely care about that, I imagine).

I'm not sure whether a newly released album would need to shift huge numbers to make further releases viable. Presumably there must still be a hardcore of a few tens of thousands of diehard fans that will purchase whichever album they decide to release this year. If not, Prince's popularity must have waned far faster and more dramatically than I realize.

[Edited 5/19/18 5:27am]

I know for a fact. That Prince wanted an album a year released after he transitioned. Which was the reason he NEVER stopped recording and put most of it back in The Vault. Including the unreleased video footage.

EddieC said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Anecdotes aren't data.

While that's true, it's irrelevant. No one's done the research, so no one's given the anecdotes the chance to become data. SO--until you (or someone else) does the research to establish the ages of all of Prince's fans--all us 40-somethings are just anecdotes too. I suspect Bart's right and that most people who would support releases would be older (in whatever way that would justify them financially)--but I don't know that that belief is true.

Give up if you want to and all is lost,
Bart and The Cynics will be your boss.

I bought a whole lotta Led Zep records long after they no longer existed.
Same for The Beatles. I bought some Clash. Some Tim Buckley.
Ooh yeah, Dylan. Joni Mitchell. The Stooges. Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Love. Karen Dalton. The Doors. James Brown. Johnny Cash. Sly & The Family Stone. Stevie Wonder.

I could continue, but we'd be here till next september, see.
I was way fucking younger than they were, and that's the point.

Hey, some are still alive! Incredible!
And some still perform! Astounding!
I here some of their shows have audiences! Where is the world going to?

Get outta here...
I'll kick yo ass.

[Edited 5/21/18 3:05am]

[...]

Academic research

Effects of online access

In his Wired article, Chris Anderson cites earlier research by Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Michael D. Smith, who first used a log-linear curve on an XY graph to describe the relationship between Amazon.com sales and sales ranking.

They found that a large proportion of Amazon.com's book sales
come from obscure books that were not available in brick-and-mortar stores.

They then quantified the potential value of the long tail to consumers.
In an article published in 2003, these authors showed that, while most of the discussion about the value of the Internet to consumers has revolved around lower prices, consumer benefit (a.k.a. consumer surplus)
from access to increased product variety in online book stores is ten times larger than
their benefit from access to lower prices online.

Thus, the primary value of the internet to consumers comes from releasing new sources of value
by providing access to products in the long tail.[16]

The longer tail over time

A study by Erik Brynjolfsson, Yu (Jeffrey) Hu, and Michael D. Smith[17] finds that the long tail has grown longer over time, with niche books accounting for a larger share of total sales.

Their analyses suggested that by 2008, niche books accounted for 36.7% of Amazon's sales while the consumer surplus generated by niche books has increased at least fivefold from 2000 to 2008.

In addition, their new methodology finds that, while the widely used power laws are a good first approximation for the rank-sales relationship, the slope may not be constant for all book ranks, with the slope becoming progressively steeper for more obscure books.


[...]

The only reason we get a "fat head" instead of a "long tail" is the narcissism
and stupidity of the media companies and their court of buffoons. Poor, poor industry.

Stupidity beyond all levels, because the respectable proportion (around 20~25%, not to mention Prince's fantastic recent scores) of entries in the Billboard 200, coupled with the "long tail" based economic studies, clearly show there is more money to be made in giving the consumer Collect'em All® cultural games, than making him adore this week's Golden Calf.

We've really gone back to the fifties, before Elvis came along.
The sterile aural landscape of fake pops, signed by deafs.

Luckily, we're here. And the kids will take care of themselves.

Feels like a jungle sometimes, I'll give you that.

[Edited 5/21/18 3:50am]

GrayDorian said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

One single dedicated issue of a low circulation mag vs. the experiences of several major magazines.

.

If Prince was a significant seller, magazines would feature him regularly. That didn't happen.

I'll probably regret this, but doesn't selling over 100 million albums worldwide (if that is correct) make Prince a pretty 'significant seller'?

.

Dido was massively popular when a UK magazine put her on their cover. That issue was one of their worst sellers, along with their issue with Prince on the cover.

.

I still hear his songs on the radio on an almost daily basis.

.

Anecdotes, not data. You listen to certain stations that play music you like, which includes Prince. You likely also overestimate the amount of plays he gets.

.

In any case, even if you are correct and Prince is not 'a significant seller', I don't believe the breadth of Prince's popularity in any way reflects either the quality of his music or its artistic merit. Perhaps we would agree that Trent Reznor is hugely talented, but even 'The Downward Spiral' reputedly only sold about 5 million copies

.

Back in 1992, when Prince signed his infamous $100 million contract, only three Prince albums had sold more than 5 million copies: https://musicfans.stackex...m/a/89/129 .

.

Presumably there must still be a hardcore of a few tens of thousands of diehard fans that will purchase whichever album they decide to release this year. If not, Prince's popularity must have waned far faster and more dramatically than I realize.

.

HNR2 sold merely a couple of thousand copies before his death.

mediumdry said:

While I tend to agree with Bart, generally, I find it a good sign that news outlets that do not report often on music and even less on Prince have had news items on both the coming WB release, as well as the Tidal release.

.

Digital reporting costs next to nothing when all you need to do is slightly reword a press release.

.

Also, you're likely a victim of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

.

Of course, there is a bittersweet advantage, Prince is no longer around to change his mind and torpedo any marketing campaign that is about to be launched.

.

True, but it does require that others become involved. A good example was the recent NC2U release, where they had several prominent news outlets with articles that featured interviews with Paul Peterson and Susan Rogers. Rogers also made the rounds for PRDeluxe (and IIRC I saw interviews with some Revolution members in Uncut or Mojo). Let's hope the next archival release comes with a significantly illustrated backstory, so that for instance there's at least a mention on the cover of a magazine like Mojo and a multi-page article inside. Hopefully there's a stack of rarely seen photos available, or video footage.

bonatoc said:

I bought a whole lotta Led Zep records long after they no longer existed.
Same for The Beatles. I bought some Clash. Some Tim Buckley.
Ooh yeah, Dylan. Joni Mitchell. The Stooges. Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Love. Karen Dalton. The Doors. James Brown. Johnny Cash. Sly & The Family Stone. Stevie Wonder.

.

As did I. (There's even a theory that the current "death of rock" is in part caused by the continued presence and easy availability of the back catalogues of legendary artists. Why bother with a band like Kingdom Come when you can access the best of Led Zep with the click of a button?)

.

Also note that for many of those artists there's only a limited discography. That's a whole different beast from "a new Prince album each year for decades to come".

.

I also very much doubt the quality if there for such an enterprise.

.

Last year there were to "Blast From The Past" boots released, each a 4CD set. They were preceded by leaks of many of its contents. Quite frankly, I cannot say I have properly digested all of that yet. Same with the recent leaks. In part because there's too much other stuff vying for my attention: not just other music (both old and new) but also books, television, movies... I don't even play games, but that is a major part of many people's free time.

You keep repeating this, as though it were some indication of Prince's popularity. But who cares how many copies of HNR2 were sold? Nobody bought "Cut the Crap" but that doesn't stop them from maintaining the Clash catalogue.

BartVanHemelen said:

HNR2 sold merely a couple of thousand copies before his death.

dustoff said:

You keep repeating this, as though it were some indication of Prince's popularity. But who cares how many copies of HNR2 were sold? Nobody bought "Cut the Crap" but that doesn't stop them from maintaining the Clash catalogue.

BartVanHemelen said:

.

You could try reading what I wrote IN CONTEXT. Hint: read the preceding line. Which this was an answer to.

dustoff said:

You keep repeating this, as though it were some indication of Prince's popularity. But who cares how many copies of HNR2 were sold? Nobody bought "Cut the Crap" but that doesn't stop them from maintaining the Clash catalogue.

.

Is that a cash generating strategy?

I hope someone from the estate is reading all of the posts by Militant and Bart in this thread, because they're both repeatedly spot on.

wouldnt it make sense to ask the consumers ( prince .orgers)

Citation, please. Or it's anectdotal, not data.

BartVanHemelen said:

That issue was one of their worst sellers, along with their issue with Prince on the cover.

BartVanHemelen said:

mediumdry said:

While I tend to agree with Bart, generally, I find it a good sign that news outlets that do not report often on music and even less on Prince have had news items on both the coming WB release, as well as the Tidal release.

.

Digital reporting costs next to nothing when all you need to do is slightly reword a press release.

.

Also, you're likely a victim of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon.

.

Baader-Meinhof is well known to me and is not the case here. I was specifically talking about the NOS newsfeed. And while that indeed is digital reporting, it does actually have editorial review and they had to translate the press release to Dutch at least.

.

Of course, there is a bittersweet advantage, Prince is no longer around to change his mind and torpedo any marketing campaign that is about to be launched.

.

True, but it does require that others become involved. A good example was the recent NC2U release, where they had several prominent news outlets with articles that featured interviews with Paul Peterson and Susan Rogers. Rogers also made the rounds for PRDeluxe (and IIRC I saw interviews with some Revolution members in Uncut or Mojo). Let's hope the next archival release comes with a significantly illustrated backstory, so that for instance there's at least a mention on the cover of a magazine like Mojo and a multi-page article inside. Hopefully there's a stack of rarely seen photos available, or video footage.

.

I haven't given up hope yet that the collective that has the rights will get its act together somewhat.

September 28 !

Hit'nRun Phase 3

-

Possibly, apparently.

(with recorded stuff from 2014-2015, or back to mid 90's even?)

-

https://www.twincities.co...n-…/amp/

luvsexy4all said:

wouldnt it make sense to ask the consumers ( prince .orgers)

But we may very well be too small of a subset in the context of the overall market. They know most of us will buy whatever they put out anyway.

My sense is, as Vannormal's link shows, they will put out his more recent material to attract the music biz's enduring target audience (18-30/35).

Vannormal said:

September 28 !

Hit'nRun Phase 3

-

Possibly, apparently.

(with recorded stuff from 2014-2015, or back to mid 90's even?)

-

https://www.twincities.co...n-…/amp/

Absolutely wrong 4 the September release...this is not HNR 3 or his latest studio material !!

love2thenines2003 said:

bonatoc said:

Give up if you want to and all is lost,
Bart and The Cynics will be your boss.

I bought a whole lotta Led Zep records long after they no longer existed.
Same for The Beatles. I bought some Clash. Some Tim Buckley.
Ooh yeah, Dylan. Joni Mitchell. The Stooges. Creedence Clearwater Revival.
Love. Karen Dalton. The Doors. James Brown. Johnny Cash. Sly & The Family Stone. Stevie Wonder.

I could continue, but we'd be here till next september, see.
I was way fucking younger than they were, and that's the point.

Hey, some are still alive! Incredible!
And some still perform! Astounding!
I here some of their shows have audiences! Where is the world going to?

Get outta here...
I'll kick yo ass.

Not to hijack the thread but only to say....I have been to many Rolling Stones concerts....Freaking outstanding...Back to business kids!

love2thenines2003 said:

Vannormal said:

September 28 !

Hit'nRun Phase 3

-

Possibly, apparently.

(with recorded stuff from 2014-2015, or back to mid 90's even?)

-

https://www.twincities.co...n-…/amp/

Absolutely wrong 4 the September release...this is not HNR 3 or his latest studio material !!

This is waht it's in the article :

-

Not one, but two, new Prince albums are in the works, and the first even has a solid release date of Sept. 28.

-

Warner Bros. Records – Prince’s label during his years of peak popularity – is behind the fall release, with streaming service Tidal set to issue its own previously unheard work from the Purple One in 2019.

-

While declining to identify whether it’s a concert, an unreleased album, a compilation or something else, Carter said it was “time-specific” and that “all of us fell in love with it and decided this was special enough for fans to hear. So we’re putting the final touches on it.”

-

The estate and Tidal have since worked things out and it’s a safe bet the record next year will be “Hit n Run Phase Three,” featuring new songs Prince recorded in 2014 and 2015. It is also possible the material could date as far back to the mid-’90s, when Prince parted ways with Warner Bros. Whatever the case, Tidal will have the exclusive on the new work for two weeks, after which time the estate will handle a physical release.

-

But, you're right about one thing : "H'nR Phase 3" is not confirmed.

Vannormal said:

Vannormal said:

love2thenines2003 said:

Absolutely wrong 4 the September release...this is not HNR 3 or his latest studio material !!

This is waht it's in the article :

-

Not one, but two, new Prince albums are in the works, and the first even has a solid release date of Sept. 28.

-

Warner Bros. Records – Prince’s label during his years of peak popularity – is behind the fall release, with streaming service Tidal set to issue its own previously unheard work from the Purple One in 2019.

-

While declining to identify whether it’s a concert, an unreleased album, a compilation or something else, Carter said it was “time-specific” and that “all of us fell in love with it and decided this was special enough for fans to hear. So we’re putting the final touches on it.”

-

The estate and Tidal have since worked things out and it’s a safe bet the record next year will be “Hit n Run Phase Three,” featuring new songs Prince recorded in 2014 and 2015. It is also possible the material could date as far back to the mid-’90s, when Prince parted ways with Warner Bros. Whatever the case, Tidal will have the exclusive on the new work for two weeks, after which time the estate will handle a physical release.

-

But, you're right about one thing : "H'nR Phase 3" is not confirmed.

I feel JAY-Z(which is how he wants his name spelled now) should be given Prince's last P&M concert in Atlanta to release.

ChocolateBox3121 said:

I feel JAY-Z(which is how he wants his name spelled now) should be given Prince's last P&M concert in Atlanta to release.

.

That person from the `tidal` entity?

The ones that are supposedly not paying the artists?

Why would you feel that way?

Please enlighten us with some reasonings.

udo said:

ChocolateBox3121 said:

I feel JAY-Z(which is how he wants his name spelled now) should be given Prince's last P&M concert in Atlanta to release.

.

That person from the `tidal` entity?

The ones that are supposedly not paying the artists?

Why would you feel that way?

Please enlighten us with some reasonings.

After Prince was so against things like Spotify and other streamers for not paying artists enough or rightly he hooks up with shady Jay-Z and Tidal. Tidal seems to be even more artist unfriendly than the other streamers.
I hope The Estate is smart enough to only give Tidal that last CD in 2019 and drop them like a brick after that.