Something that the estate curator said in an article, about how he doesn't understand how some of these outtakes in circulaion are in such good quality, got me to thinking.

Is it possibe that some of the circulating material was straight up stolen from Prince's vault/studio? Obviously its all stolen, but what I mean is could it be that the master recording or multitrack has been stolen, and in the hands of bootleggers, leaving Prince (and now the estate) unable to ever release some of these songs as they are no longer anywhere to be found in Prince's vault material?

I know that I'm ignorant of recording studio procedures and how music is stored and archived, so maybe the scenario I'm thinking about is not possible. I just wonder if that could be a reason that some obvious tracks that are in circulation have never been released.

Well, we know that Ian Boxill had master tapes of outtakes from 2006. It's possible that more master tapes were either left wherever they were made or stolen instead of stored like Prince requested.

Most of the outtakes we have though are from tapes that Prince gave away or tapes that associated employees made copies of. Which explains why they mostly dry up after 2001.

[Edited 8/2/19 14:57pm]

Strive said:

Most of the outtakes we have though are from tapes that Prince gave away or tapes that associated employees made copies of. Which explains why they mostly dry up after 2001.

[Edited 8/2/19 14:57pm]

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Most of my outtakes collection drys up after about 1996. I'm guessing that when Prince went fully independent and everything was being done under one roof he was able to clamp down on security. Having to send tapes off to Warner Brothers for approval probably didn’t help matters.

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In addition to demo tapes that Prince recorded from his masters, there was also album test pressings and album sequence cassettes. When Prince was constructing an album he often changed the tracks around over the course of a few weeks / months.

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Don’t quote me on any of these as this is mostly guess work but…

* I always assumed that the studio version of ‘Days Of Wild’ leaked because it was on an early test press of the ‘Gold experience’.

* The reason ‘Poem’ is circulating in tact was because it appeared on an early promo CD of ‘Come’.

* I pretty sure the earliest known leak of ‘The Ball’ segued into ‘Joy In Repetition’, which imply s that it leaked from a test cassette of ‘Crystal Ball’.

* Also leaks of ‘All my dreams’ fade in during the intro. I believe this is because it was originally leaked from an early sequence of ‘Parade’ and segued from ‘Old Friends For Sale’.

Strive said:

Well, we know that Ian Boxill had master tapes of outtakes from 2006.

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No, he did not have tapes. He had digital copies.

Kares said:

Strive said:

Kares said:

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No, he did not have tapes. He had digital copies.

The lawsuit mentioned masters but idk maybe you're right about him only having the multitracks.

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'Master' is a term used for a variety of different tapes (or stages of production), but regardless: he only had copies (obviously in digital form) of the multitracks.
The lawsuit never accused him of (physically) stealing boxes of audio tape reels, it just used the term 'masters' to indicate the seriousness of the case, as having digital copies of the multitracks enabled him to produce bootlegs in perfect quality.

VaultCurator said:

* I always assumed that the studio version of ‘Days Of Wild’ leaked because it was on an early test press of the ‘Gold experience’.

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Or you could read http://princevault.com/in...ys_Of_Wild instead of guessing.

BartVanHemelen said:

VaultCurator said:

* I always assumed that the studio version of ‘Days Of Wild’ leaked because it was on an early test press of the ‘Gold experience’.

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Or you could read http://princevault.com/in...ys_Of_Wild instead of guessing.

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Most bootlegs of 'Days Of Wild' actually originate from my DAT (which was one of the Paisley Park DATs sent to radio networks).

what about the one-cam videos like washington 81 or norfolk 83? werent those stolen one of a kind VHS tapes from paisley?