as in a series of albums, or box sets of unreleased material ONLY?

its interesting to have remasters (i personaly dont feel i need them, the original CDs were fine if you ask me, and i like my records of the albums just fine), but id love to just have a series dedicated purely to unreleased songs, like the bob dylan bootleg series that sony do.

i know the way the estate are doing it might make more financial sense as its a two for one sort of deal, and prob there would be less people buying strictly unreleased material (maybe the costs of producing and selling SDEs make more sense - you can also market it easier as its under the banner of a classic album), but if the beatles can have something like the anthology series, i dont see why prince couldnt.

[Edited 9/18/20 3:43am]

EmmaMcG said:

It's a good idea. So it probably won't happen. To be honest, I think they should just create a "Vault" webstore and put all his unreleased material up on it. Charge a dollar per song or 10 dollars for complete albums. Make everything available as soon as possible.

-

Sure the idea is cool, but too costly and not unprofitable.

Just imagine, any possible downloaded albums at 10$, will be spread through

illegal downloads in minutes. Profitabel losts for The Estate.

-

Vannormal said:

EmmaMcG said:

I'm sure Sign o the Times will be available on or even before release day for illegal download. Which is where I'll be getting it.

.

and thats exactly why things arent profitable and wont keep getting released. fuck you

savagedreams said:

.

and thats exactly why things arent profitable and wont keep getting released. fuck you

b nice

Vannormal said:

EmmaMcG said:

It's a good idea. So it probably won't happen. To be honest, I think they should just create a "Vault" webstore and put all his unreleased material up on it. Charge a dollar per song or 10 dollars for complete albums. Make everything available as soon as possible.

-

Sure the idea is cool, but too costly and not unprofitable.

Just imagine, any possible downloaded albums at 10$, will be spread through

illegal downloads in minutes. Profitabel losts for The Estate.

-

It's true for any release by any artists, yet labels and artists still release music, so I don't think your reasoning makes much sense.

savagedreams said:

EmmaMcG said:

I'm sure Sign o the Times will be available on or even before release day for illegal download. Which is where I'll be getting it.

.

and thats exactly why things arent profitable and wont keep getting released. fuck you

Y'all have to stop this fantasy about Prince music not being profitable, there's no market, it won't be released, etc.

To the extent any music release is profitable (they're not as much as they used to be, this is true for everyone), Prince's is. Prince is the 30th biggest selling artist of all times, and one of most famous artists of his generation. Go ask labels like Light in the Attic or Cherry Pop how they manage to make money off obscure reissues by obscure artists if Prince is a dead market.

I suspect this is just fans' insecurities speaking: y'all feel old and irrelevant, so you assume your favorite artist is as well. He's not.

.

To answer the OP for now M. Howe made it pretty clear that all we're getting is one SDE a year (+ maybe the occasional one-off project like P&AM83 or Originals), which ain't that bad in the sense that in 2019 and 2020 we got, for each year, 3 CDs of previously unreleased studio material, 2 live CDs and 1 live DVD = 2 CD's), i.e. one CD every other month. I guess there will come a time when they'll figure a way to release more, but for now a bank is running the show so we have to wait.

I don't know why the estate doesn't issue a regular series of live shows the way Springsteen and other artists do on Nugs.net.

I would love an official bootleg series! I do believe one day we may see something like that. I just hope it doesn't start off Purple Rain centric, I would like the early years thouroughly documented first.

[Edited 9/18/20 11:45am]

OperatingThetan said:

A new NPGMC subscriber service oriented to hardcore fans is the only way the Estate will ever monetise a large percentage of the vault material.

theres more monehy in physical releases.

charging for downloads is a dead duck.

streaming, possibly.

but the money for heritage artists is clearly in the physical market.

still holding out hope for a bootleg series one day.

if anyone deserves and has the material for that treatment, its prince.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

OperatingThetan said:

A new NPGMC subscriber service oriented to hardcore fans is the only way the Estate will ever monetise a large percentage of the vault material.

theres more monehy in physical releases.

charging for downloads is a dead duck.

streaming, possibly.

but the money for heritage artists is clearly in the physical market.

still holding out hope for a bootleg series one day.

if anyone deserves and has the material for that treatment, its prince.

Who would pay for a legal stream of something they could download illegally at the same time? The money is to be made from the old school fanatic collectors who will buy physical releases for the music + the packaging.

[Edited 9/18/20 12:18pm]

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

theres more monehy in physical releases.

charging for downloads is a dead duck.

streaming, possibly.

but the money for heritage artists is clearly in the physical market.

still holding out hope for a bootleg series one day.

if anyone deserves and has the material for that treatment, its prince.

i don't buy it. if the estate put up concerts for 10 dollars a pop, maybe 8 bucks, on a service like Bandcamp or their own site/platform, they'd sell like hotcakes and i don't think that stream of money would slow down for a while. as someone mentioned above, there's just too much stuff to not look into digital distribution at some point.

lustmealways said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

theres more monehy in physical releases.

charging for downloads is a dead duck.

streaming, possibly.

but the money for heritage artists is clearly in the physical market.

still holding out hope for a bootleg series one day.

if anyone deserves and has the material for that treatment, its prince.

i don't buy it. if the estate put up concerts for 10 dollars a pop, maybe 8 bucks, on a service like Bandcamp or their own site/platform, they'd sell like hotcakes and i don't think that stream of money would slow down for a while. as someone mentioned above, there's just too much stuff to not look into digital distribution at some point.

Bill Laswell certainly is doing a great job rereleasing every past record for which he owns the masters, as well as some vault and new material, on his BC: https://billlaswell.bandcamp.com/

savagedreams said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

a live bootleg series would be perfect for a box set - imagine a box with one live album from each 80s tour (to start with) from the late 70s through to 1988. its what fans have wanted for decades.

OperatingThetan said:

A new NPGMC subscriber service oriented to hardcore fans is the only way the Estate will ever monetise a large percentage of the vault material.

YES

I would GLADLY pay to have a constantly be fed new things...

1 new song a week or so would be fine with me...

I just want to keep discovering and I don't want to have the pace slowed down because of what the general public can handle.

That's why a service like this would great ..

OH and Prince isn't here to f*ck it up either

DotsofU said:

OperatingThetan said:

A new NPGMC subscriber service oriented to hardcore fans is the only way the Estate will ever monetise a large percentage of the vault material.

YES

I would GLADLY pay to have a constantly be fed new things...

1 new song a week or so would be fine with me...

I just want to keep discovering and I don't want to have the pace slowed down because of what the general public can handle.

That's why a service like this would great ..

OH and Prince isn't here to f*ck it up either

I wish he was.

I think they will exhaust the SDEs before mopping up the rest with a Vault/Archive series - There are so many alternate mixes and versions of songs that it's the inevitable home for them (not for 10 years though!). Live recordings are another story!

I think we're there already, in all but name. We've got the official release of old bootlegs, like P&M 83. We've got the release of live concerts: so far 1999, Purple Rain, with SOTT coming in a few days. The Dylan series has started focusing more on individual albums / eras, which is more or less what these large remaster / vault releases do. Vols 1-3 of Dylan were a collection of unreleased tracks from different eras, which is not so different from Originals, if you think about it, although there should be more volumes of Originals. Hopefully soon.

.

The biggest difference I see is that the Dylan series has the confidence to move around to all the parts of his career. Some of the best ones are from lost-era Dyaln, the religious years or Self-Portrait. The Prince releases are single mindedly obsessed with 80's Prince, superstar Prince. Not a track past 1990, so far. A shame.

[Edited 9/20/20 10:00am]

I'd love chronological collections of material that didn't really fit on the Super Deluxes. Maybe alternating with additional Originals volumes and/or live recordings. Not necissarily big huge box sets, just something to keep us busy between major remasters.

Based on SOTT and 1999 deluxe, i'd say this route is becoming increasingly likely. The estate seems to have possibly, maybe, finally got the memo that Prince isn't going to have a number 1 hit and a massive increase in his fanbase based on releasing an old vault track.

Considering that "cinematic mix" of Nothing Compares that came out my guess is there was some internal wrangling over whether or not to let someone get very "creative" with his work.

jaawwnn said:

Based on SOTT and 1999 deluxe, i'd say this route is becoming increasingly likely. The estate seems to have possibly, maybe, finally got the memo that Prince isn't going to have a number 1 hit and a massive increase in his fanbase based on releasing an old vault track.

Considering that "cinematic mix" of Nothing Compares that came out my guess is there was some internal wrangling over whether or not to let someone get very "creative" with his work.

I would assume Howe thought it's better to tinker a little and get more user/radio-friendly music and no one will notice anyway. Certainly the critics didn't notice, there wasn't a single professional review pointing out the mixes issues with Originals. Then some of us got serious about it here and probably also on that other big reissues/audiophiles message board (can't remember its name right now, it's named after a dude) and Howe thought OK maybe better not to antagonize the core audience and things began to get better with 1999. Obviously he still believes he can get away with BSing us (see the comment about us being able to recreate DF123, CB86 and Camille with released tracks), but maybe at some point he'll realize that full transparency is the best option with a fanbase as meticulously obssessed with details as P's fanbase

I actually thought the Cinematic Mix was a better mix, but don't tell the estate I said that!

jaawwnn said:

databank said:

jaawwnn said:

I actually thought the Cinematic Mix was a better mix, but don't tell the estate I said that!

Thing is it's not about better. But you know that.

This is why we need the bootleg series! You can get your Witness guitar only version, I get my Wonderful Ass '83, and then they can release good mixes for the general public.