RJOrion said:

i mentioned the same thing awhile back... it seems so sinister to go through this man's personal files and tapes and paperwork, and start selling all his shit ...theres a bunch of vultures and snakes and vampires in the music/entertainment industry...its always been that way when artists die

Not as odd as going through every piece of his personal effects and cataloguing them.
Every damn thing. Every scrap of paper. Every piece of clothing. Every book. It's been like an archaeological dig in some ways....

newpowergeneration said:

Of course he left a will. I think to really think otherwise is naive. I also think that the will was extremely EXTREMELY limiting in what could be done with the released material, let alone the unreleased stuff. As someone said, "Not on Spotify".

Anyway, that's only my personal belief and I have no evidence for it but there's a large part of me that is suprised anyone thinks otherwise... Here follow some more of my keraaazy personal beliefs:

Prince was wrong about the ownership of music. Every piece of music is the common property of all humanity... He understands that where he is now and more than anything just digs people loving anything he did.

The only times P had a will was during his marriages. Those wills were negated upon divorce.
People did encourage him to set things up but he resisted.

Isn't it Steve Parke who mentions it in his book, saying that P equated a will with health insurance, which would guarantee you got sick?

Famously, Ruth Azarte asked him "Who do you think will get it all when you die?"
P jerked around and said "WHO?"
Ruth shouted "THE GOVERNMENT".

And so it is.
For all his lifelong lyrics about the afterlife, death and heaven....this man didn't want to face it. He wanted to float along in life thinking he looked the same as he did ten years before.

laytonian said:

RJOrion said:

i mentioned the same thing awhile back... it seems so sinister to go through this man's personal files and tapes and paperwork, and start selling all his shit ...theres a bunch of vultures and snakes and vampires in the music/entertainment industry...its always been that way when artists die

Not as odd as going through every piece of his personal effects and cataloguing them.
Every damn thing. Every scrap of paper. Every piece of clothing. Every book. It's been like an archaeological dig in some ways....

that too...thats kind of what i was referring to...noyt just the music...his laundry , his travel bags wit the cash in them, his makeup kits, his trash, his memoirs, his drawings and sketches, his locked areas busted open and scavenged... it doesnt seem right.

mrjj71 said:

CAL3 said

. This is a great post and I am with you on this 100%. Thank you for stepping forward with this unpopular opinion. I have expressed some of the same thoughts. . The quote from The View that has become the rallying cry for the raiding of the vault is so obtuse it means nothing. We all know that Prince said a lot of things during his life which were not followed up on. The statement might’ve been made with the utmost sincerity. It might’ve been deliberately misleading. It means literally nothing. Anyone clinging to that statement as a license to pilfer the unfinished material (and yes, it’s all unfinished by definition, since Prince didn’t deem it finished by releasing it to the public or leaving explicit instructions on how to handle any of it) is deluding themselves. . Thank you again for posting this.

cool

CAL3 said:

If Prince didn't want "us" to hear his unreleaased material, he wouldn't have been so loosey-goosey with those cassettes he used to hand out all the time.

olb99 said:

JorisE73 said:

I think if he destroyd them then WB would have sued him for millions becuase they own it, right?

That's an intriguing question. Was Prince even allowed to destroy recordings he didn't release but that were recorded using WB's money? I'm not talking about what he recorded later, after he left WB, obviously.

.

(I'm pretty sure this was already discussed here, so sorry if I don't remember the conclusions.)

[Edited 9/29/20 5:17am]

I replied to this in anothe thread.

WB never owned these recordings, they only owned the right to own them (the masters) IF Prince agreed to release them, but since Prince owned the right to NOT release them, by default he also owned the right to destroy them. Even today if the Estate decided to burn the whole lot, WB may try to sue for loss of income, but since the Estate could argue back that destroyed or not, they were at liberty to sit on it forever anyway, I doubt WB would win.

eugenius said:

If Prince didn't want "us" to hear his unreleaased material, he wouldn't have been so loosey-goosey with those cassettes he used to hand out all the time.

This is kind of bending the laws of causality, in the sense that Prince never meant for these cassettes to leak. It took him some years to react, so it's possible that he didn't care too much about bootlegs at first, but after 1995 he made sure we wouldn't hear anything anymore, and succeeded.

If you actually look at the chronology, the first bootlegs roughly appeared in 1988 but didn't really begin to be released in great numbers before maybe around 1990 or 1991. I didn't do stats so I may be wrong, but my impression is that after 1988 or so, the vast majority of the circulating outtakes are songs that were either submitted to WB or Edel for consideration, or to other artists Prince wrote for, but much less regular Prince songs that weren't attached to any project and/or had no reason to be given away to third parties. This could already indicate he was beginning to be careful as early as 1989.

.

Regardless, Prince said that he expected vault material to be released after he died, and anyway it's a normal thing to release material that deceased artists leave behind, so IDK why this particular debate keeps popping up. There's no forbidden topic, but at some point it becomes just dumb to rehash this discussion ad nauseum. These recordings will be released, period.

databank said:

If you actually look at the chronology, the first bootlegs roughly appeared in 1988 but didn't really begin to be released in great numbers before maybe around 1990 or 1991. I didn't do stats so I may be wrong, but my impression is that after 1988 or so, the vast majority of the circulating outtakes are songs that were either submitted to WB or Edel for consideration, or to other artists

Black Album was 1987, wasn't it?

There were also ads in Goldmine for vinyl bootlegs by then, and I think one or two of them were outtakes records with songs like Purple Music. I think the chronology is moved up a couple years but you're right about when it dries up.

Interesting though, cause all hell breaks lose with CD's around 1991, at the same time when it becomes really easy to dupe things if you work at a label.

lustmealways said:

dumb thread.

Super dumb...

ThirdStrike said:

lustmealways said:

dumb thread.

Super dumb...

What is super dumb is leaving a comment like that.

You may not agree with the thoughts but at least have the decency to put up a good argument to state why you disagree

CAL3 said:

mrjj71 said:

Like everyone I'm always interested in hearing the outakes/other songs etc from Prince's career but should we be listening to them?

I'm pretty sure Prince wouldn't approve of us hearing unfinished ideas or sketches-I know as a musician too,I wouldn't want anyone hearing my unfinished or unpolished material.

I do what's called production music for a living-basically music for tv and film and i'd say I write about 90-100 tracks a year for that but there's also another 40 or so that don't get used beacause I don't think they're good enough.

Now I know that's not the same as actual songs-they're even more personal but there's definitely a reason why all his other songs got left off the albums.

I really love that the albums are getting remastered because I want to hear Prince with the best possible sound and am intrigued by the outakes/demos(although I do think there's only a handful that come anywhere close to being as strong as the released material) but at the same time it doesn't quite sit right for me.

Anyone else or is it just me?!

. This is a great post and I am with you on this 100%. Thank you for stepping forward with this unpopular opinion. I have expressed some of the same thoughts. . The quote from The View that has become the rallying cry for the raiding of the vault is so obtuse it means nothing. We all know that Prince said a lot of things during his life which were not followed up on. The statement might’ve been made with the utmost sincerity. It might’ve been deliberately misleading. It means literally nothing. Anyone clinging to that statement as a license to pilfer the unfinished material (and yes, it’s all unfinished by definition, since Prince didn’t deem it finished by releasing it to the public or leaving explicit instructions on how to handle any of it) is deluding themselves. . Thank you again for posting this.

Thank you!

I also think that if he even if what he said on The View (which should be taken with a large pinch of salt) were true he would...

A. Have left a will with instructions (All reports published suggest that he didn't have a will so unless someone on here can prove that he did,I think we can take assume that the reports are true)

B. Actually have given the code to someone so the door didn't have to be drilled to gain access.

C. Have catalogued the tapes in such a way that there would have been albums grouped together rather than someone going though everything to try and timeline it all.

Given the way he was about which tracks should go together on album and being an amazing self-editor (mostly!) wouldn't he have wanted to have a say on what goes with what?

lavendardrummachine said:

databank said:

If you actually look at the chronology, the first bootlegs roughly appeared in 1988 but didn't really begin to be released in great numbers before maybe around 1990 or 1991. I didn't do stats so I may be wrong, but my impression is that after 1988 or so, the vast majority of the circulating outtakes are songs that were either submitted to WB or Edel for consideration, or to other artists

Black Album was 1987, wasn't it?

There were also ads in Goldmine for vinyl bootlegs by then, and I think one or two of them were outtakes records with songs like Purple Music. I think the chronology is moved up a couple years but you're right about when it dries up.

Interesting though, cause all hell breaks lose with CD's around 1991, at the same time when it becomes really easy to dupe things if you work at a label.

I doubt TBA made it to the stores before 1988, it'd have been quick! But IDK for sure. It's possible indeed that some outtakes made their way to boots in 86 or 87, but I think few. I once saw a chronology of the oldest boots, there appeared to be very few things before the very late 80's.

Yep Yep Yep....indeed listen and view the scale of magesty that was Prince....

databank said:

lavendardrummachine said:

Black Album was 1987, wasn't it?

There were also ads in Goldmine for vinyl bootlegs by then, and I think one or two of them were outtakes records with songs like Purple Music. I think the chronology is moved up a couple years but you're right about when it dries up.

Interesting though, cause all hell breaks lose with CD's around 1991, at the same time when it becomes really easy to dupe things if you work at a label.

I doubt TBA made it to the stores before 1988, it'd have been quick! But IDK for sure. It's possible indeed that some outtakes made their way to boots in 86 or 87, but I think few. I once saw a chronology of the oldest boots, there appeared to be very few things before the very late 80's.

Not a legal copy of course. The cassettes were out there, and I know there were vinyls pressed shortly after.

The outtakes were really limited, you're right.

databank said:

Se7en said:

databank said:

I replied to this in anothe thread.

WB never owned these recordings, they only owned the right to own them (the masters) IF Prince agreed to release them, but since Prince owned the right to NOT release them, by default he also owned the right to destroy them. Even today if the Estate decided to burn the whole lot, WB may try to sue for loss of income, but since the Estate could argue back that destroyed or not, they were at liberty to sit on it forever anyway, I doubt WB would win.

Is this true? I thought all of Prince’s output while under contract with WB legally belonged to WB?

It used to belong to them (it doesn't anymore) the second Prince would agree to release it. Until that point it didn't "belong" to them in the sense that they were not at liberty to do anything with it without Prince's formal agreement.

In simpler terms, WB wasn't legally entitled to send goons to Paisley Park, raid the vault and release what was in it whether prince agreed or not.

So technically I don't know what the legal status of such recordings was, but one could say they basically "did not exist" until Prince said he wanted to release them. Then, they belonged to WB.

Now everything belongs to the Estate even after release, but some material is subject to an exclusive distribution deal with WB.

We should have a sticky for this.

lavendardrummachine said:

databank said:

I doubt TBA made it to the stores before 1988, it'd have been quick! But IDK for sure. It's possible indeed that some outtakes made their way to boots in 86 or 87, but I think few. I once saw a chronology of the oldest boots, there appeared to be very few things before the very late 80's.

Not a legal copy of course. The cassettes were out there, and I know there were vinyls pressed shortly after.

The outtakes were really limited, you're right.

It didn't even take a month for cassettes to be circulating? Wow, these guys were fast!

Whether or not it is morally right to be listening to tracks intentionally (in most cases) unreleased by a musician after his death -- but then released after his death by his estate/family, who will profit from it -- is an unanswerable question. I guess that's up to each person to decide. Prince didn't specify any of this before he died, so it can go either way, I guess.

But the one aspect of it that does sometimes annoy me is when people -- fans, writers, bloggers -- get into a highly critical mode about this kind of material. Like, it's great that we have outtakes from 1999, Purple Rain, Sign O'the Times, etc., but people have to bear in mind that this was material that, for the most part, Prince himself didn't want the public to hear.

So, I tend to be a bit irritated when you hear people saying that this material isn't up to scratch, or it isn't as good as they had expected, or evaluating it like they would an officially released album in Prince's lifetime. Please bear in mind that the musician didn't authorize people to hear this. You can like it or not, but don't treat it as a Prince album, which it isn't.

ThePanther said:

databank said:

It didn't even take a month for cassettes to be circulating? Wow, these guys were fast!

It did. That might have been sarcasm but there was more than a month lead time because of review copies. The early cassette bootlegs were off other cassettes, they weren't taken off vinyl, and when the record didn't come out early December, it was on.

databank said:

Se7en said:

databank said: Is this true? I thought all of Prince’s output while under contract with WB legally belonged to WB?

It used to belong to them (it doesn't anymore) the second Prince would agree to release it. Until that point it didn't "belong" to them in the sense that they were not at liberty to do anything with it without Prince's formal agreement.

In simpler terms, WB wasn't legally entitled to send goons to Paisley Park, raid the vault and release what was in it whether prince agreed or not.

So technically I don't know what the legal status of such recordings was, but one could say they basically "did not exist" until Prince said he wanted to release them. Then, they belonged to WB.

Now everything belongs to the Estate even after release, but some material is subject to an exclusive distribution deal with WB.

We should have a sticky for this.

Generally speaking,when you sign a record deal,they don't need your permission to release whatever they want....Hence so many cases of bands not agreeing with the record company's choice of singles etc.

Prince's deal may well have had a clause that gave him more creative control as far as choices go(as in convincing them When doves cry with no bass was right) but it's certainly not the norm.

A great article here on the pros and cons of most deals...

https://iconcollective.ed...ed-artist/

[Edited 10/1/20 3:14am]

[Edited 10/1/20 3:16am]

Sure, why not? While I think it's fair enough to say that what we are hearing from the vault wasn't explicitly sanctioned by Prince, we're talking about a guy who handed out cassette tapes with vault tracks to various fans over the years. He teased the release of vault tracks a number of times, from "Moonbeam Levels" to get people to sign up to the lotusflow3r site or the second edition of Crystal Ball, etc.

I also strongly, strongly dispute the notion that the vault material is not up to scratch with the released material. Everyone is free to have their own opinion, of course, but there are so, so many vault songs that I absolutely cherish.

I just finished ranking every single Prince song that I know well enough to have an opinion on (733 in total). There are 507 I rate a 7 or above, and among these, 361 were released by Prince, 79 have been released posthumously, and 67 have yet to be released. In my top 100, Prince released 69, 20 have been released posthumously, and another 11 are unreleased. In my top 20, 15 were released by Prince, 2 were released posthumously, and 3 are still unreleased. There are wondrous songs that Prince didn't release, and they have brought me tons of joy over the years, and the ones that have been released after his death feel like additional gifts from beyond, continuing a lifelong journey of love, encouragement, and inspiration from the musician I consider to be the GOAT.

databank said:

lavendardrummachine said:

Not a legal copy of course. The cassettes were out there, and I know there were vinyls pressed shortly after.

The outtakes were really limited, you're right.

It didn't even take a month for cassettes to be circulating? Wow, these guys were fast!

The first vinyl picture sleeve boot I remember was 'From 1999 Till Now'. An unofficial remix set. I got that in 1985. The first unreleased material I got was a cassette in July 86, which contained 'Heaven', the tracks that made up 'Charade' and a June 7th interview with the Electrifying Mojo.

From there, the vinyl bootks started to come thick and fast. I got the Live it Rotterdam set in late 86. Chocolate box wasn't long after and Crystal Ball was out in 1988.

I saw a real copy of The Black Album a couple of weeks before the launch date, but I didn't get a boot cassette copy until Jan/Feb 88. The first crappy vinyl boot of it was out not long after, but I didn't get the excellent vinyl boot reproduction until the June 88.

mrjj71 said:

databank said:

It used to belong to them (it doesn't anymore) the second Prince would agree to release it. Until that point it didn't "belong" to them in the sense that they were not at liberty to do anything with it without Prince's formal agreement.

In simpler terms, WB wasn't legally entitled to send goons to Paisley Park, raid the vault and release what was in it whether prince agreed or not.

So technically I don't know what the legal status of such recordings was, but one could say they basically "did not exist" until Prince said he wanted to release them. Then, they belonged to WB.

Now everything belongs to the Estate even after release, but some material is subject to an exclusive distribution deal with WB.

We should have a sticky for this.

Generally speaking,when you sign a record deal,they don't need your permission to release whatever they want....Hence so many cases of bands not agreeing with the record company's choice of singles etc.

Prince's deal may well have had a clause that gave him more creative control as far as choices go(as in convincing them When doves cry with no bass was right) but it's certainly not the norm.

A great article here on the pros and cons of most deals...

https://iconcollective.ed...ed-artist/

[Edited 10/1/20 3:14am]

[Edited 10/1/20 3:16am]

A choice of a single from an album is not the same as releasing a song for the first time. You are being confused. There have been occasional cases where labels have abusively released recordings they had in their possession after the artist left said label: it usually didn't end well.

Please reread what I posted as I'm not going to explain it again and end-up in a loop conversation as I did with Shlomo the other day.

SquirrelMeat said:

databank said:

It didn't even take a month for cassettes to be circulating? Wow, these guys were fast!

The first vinyl picture sleeve boot I remember was 'From 1999 Till Now'. An unofficial remix set. I got that in 1985. The first unreleased material I got was a cassette in July 86, which contained 'Heaven', the tracks that made up 'Charade' and a June 7th interview with the Electrifying Mojo.

From there, the vinyl bootks started to come thick and fast. I got the Live it Rotterdam set in late 86. Chocolate box wasn't long after and Crystal Ball was out in 1988.

I saw a real copy of The Black Album a couple of weeks before the launch date, but I didn't get a boot cassette copy until Jan/Feb 88. The first crappy vinyl boot of it was out not long after, but I didn't get the excellent vinyl boot reproduction until the June 88.

Thx . Since I missed these years I love these walks down memory lane

databank said:

mrjj71 said:

Generally speaking,when you sign a record deal,they don't need your permission to release whatever they want....Hence so many cases of bands not agreeing with the record company's choice of singles etc.

Prince's deal may well have had a clause that gave him more creative control as far as choices go(as in convincing them When doves cry with no bass was right) but it's certainly not the norm.

A great article here on the pros and cons of most deals...

https://iconcollective.ed...ed-artist/

[Edited 10/1/20 3:14am]

[Edited 10/1/20 3:16am]

A choice of a single from an album is not the same as releasing a song for the first time. You are being confused. There have been occasional cases where labels have abusively released recordings they had in their possession after the artist left said label: it usually didn't end well.

Please reread what I posted as I'm not going to explain it again and end-up in a loop conversation as I did with Shlomo the other day.

Well,forgive me if i've confused what you've said but i'm simply saying that most of the time the record company will have the final decision on what's released...singels,albums and releasing songs for the first time full stop.

But...this definitely doesn't give WB the right to ,as you put it,send goons to raid the vault but they certainly 'existed' whether they were released or not.

Every time any songwriter writes a song he has to register it with his publisher and record company...including any unreleased songs.

I know this only too well because i'm in the middle of trying to get back my own catalogue of songs from a previous publisher myself.

This is also why the Universl deal fell through because...

"The Prince estate hired Troy Carter to replace McMillan – a Jay-Z foe – as entertainment advisor in April after it was discovered that McMillan was less than forthcoming concerning the status of Prince’s catalog: After Universal struck the deal with the estate, the label learned that Warner Bros. owned the rights to Prince’s catalog spanning 1979 to 1995 until 2021, and not 2018 as Universal was led to believe."

Again,sorry if we're meaning different things here