Purple Lawyers explain this to me.

I always thought Small Club was a boot?

But it has an "offical" release (sort of) on the Prince YouTube Channel -- with the following text:

Provided to YouTube by Music Video Distributors Inc. Rave Un 2 The Joy Fantastic · Prince Small Club 1988 ℗ LEFTFIELD MEDIA Released on: 2019-03-08 Music Publisher: LEFTFIELD MEDIA Auto-generated by YouTube.

So the estate are giving ad revenue to Leftfield Media?

Really?

It's not on the Prince youtube channel, it looks like Leftfield Media are one of those grey-market releasers who have uploaded the bootleg to an identification system so it's correctly marked as a Prince track, which links to his official channel.

Prince himself used to go after these people, right? It was a matter of pride and respect, the estate are more concerned about bottom line and the pennies Leftfield Media make from this probably aren't worth their time.

That's just my guess.

What is the video quality like?

jimmyv said:

Purple Lawyers explain this to me.

I always thought Small Club was a boot?

But it has an "offical" release (sort of) on the Prince YouTube Channel -- with the following text:

Provided to YouTube by Music Video Distributors Inc. Rave Un 2 The Joy Fantastic · Prince Small Club 1988 ℗ LEFTFIELD MEDIA Released on: 2019-03-08 Music Publisher: LEFTFIELD MEDIA Auto-generated by YouTube.

So the estate are giving ad revenue to Leftfield Media?

Really?

What gives you the wild impression this is on Prince's Youtube?

Music distribution is the wild west right now.

Ultimately anybody can upload anything to streaming services, because it's a tickbox exercise of just checking off "Yes, I am the copyright owner" even if you aren't. And then the algorithms apply it to the "official" channels.

There are all sorts of dodgy labels making rips of long out-of-print vinyl records, and pretending to be the copyright owners because they know it's unlikely the real copyright owner is going to challenge it, unless it's a very big artist where somebody will flag it. And then even if one gets taken down, somebody will just pop up and do the same thing with slightly different artwork and modified track names to avoid flags.

udo said:

What is the video quality like?

HD 1080p by the looks of it.

@lovegalore What gives you the wild impression this is on Prince's Youtube?

@ jaawwnn It's not on the Prince youtube channel

...I mean... it's on the Prince YouTube Channel...

https://www.youtube.com/u...e/featured

and scroll down to Albums & Singles

or:

https://www.youtube.com/w...n1wORAYC0Q

Looks like they uploaded it, unlisted it, but made a playlist and are giving publishing royalties to Leftfield.

See also Rock and Rio -- ℗ Rumble Records

No? It's messed up right? I'm not going crazy?

jimmyv said:

@lovegalore What gives you the wild impression this is on Prince's Youtube?

@ jaawwnn It's not on the Prince youtube channel

...I mean... it's on the Prince YouTube Channel...

https://www.youtube.com/u...e/featured

and scroll down to Albums & Singles

or:

https://www.youtube.com/w...n1wORAYC0Q

Looks like they uploaded it, unlisted it, but made a playlist and are giving publishing royalties to Leftfield.

See also Rock and Rio -- ℗ Rumble Records

No? It's messed up right? I'm not going crazy?

I see what you're saying, artwork looks like it's from this release.

I think this is autogenerated and attributed to the official channel when its picked up, you won't find it under the "uploads" section of the official Prince account but, as it says, Music Publisher: LEFTFIELD MEDIA Auto-generated by YouTube. That makes the most sense to me.

jaawwnn said:

I think this is autogenerated and attributed to the official channel when its picked up, you won't find it under the "uploads" section of the official Prince account but, as it says, Music Publisher: LEFTFIELD MEDIA Auto-generated by YouTube. That makes the most sense to me.

Correct. Theoretically there is nothing to stop anyone here from signing up with a distribution platform and uploading any of our bootlegs. They would almost certainly get published.

I wouldn't advise it though, unless you want to risk being on the receiving end of a lawsuit.

I just don't understand why the Estate tolerates this. There is no European/UK law grey area when it comes to Small Club or Rock In Rio since neither was broadcast in the EU. And any upload that fits into this grey area should be restericted to EU users anyway. Not that I care in the sense that it's good if bootlegs are allowed by the Estate on YT, but here we're talking companies trying to generate income by uploading that stuff on streaming platforms, not regular users uploading boots for other fans to enjoy.

It's one of the better known bootlegs, that cat's really out of the bag. The Estate could shut it down, and even follow the money.

The alternative is to release a master recording from the Estate for free or for fans to flood youtube with uploads so as to stop the monetization until there is an official release. Not really our battle though.