funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Lol. You hardly presented any evidence. You just stated there was a bidding war. Based on what I dont know. So not much to go on except your insistence there was one. I asked as I'm genuinely interested. How the industry works these days and how deals are made are things I'd like to know. I dont know why there was a sony single and two wb albums. Maybe prince struck a few deals, one for a single,one for two albums with warners, in return for them re releasing purple rain with bonus material. Who knows. But I'd like to know. [Edited 10/24/20 2:34am]

I only said it twice. You are being so disrespectful it's getting insulting. Databank out.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

databank said:

I was proud of it then. I didn't always "get it" entirely but all that, including the name change, was utterly fascinating to me and I just continued to find Prince so god damned interesting. Also, to my ears, he was still bringing the music, especially if you were paying attention and knew where to look.

Very safe to say that his behavior back then makes more sense to everyone now.

I think that the standard record deal with a major label back then was the artist gets .10 cents on the dollar for every unit sold. As Prince became more popular he probably was given .12 cents per dollar. The record company kept the rest (some of it was used for promotion, etc. but the bulk of it went into the executives pockets). Yes, Purple Rain was heavily promoted but what about the albums that came after? Not much was done for those after WB realized that Prince wasn't going to give them another Purple Rain album/movie. So, would you build a house and expect to be paid 12% on the dollar when it gets sold by a realtor? And hand them the blueprints too? No way was I embarrassed by what the 'Slave' era involved. I was behind Prince 100% and am proud of what he accomplished. He was ridiculed by the Press and other artists back then but the next generation of 'artists' are reaping the benfits for his stance now (if they've done their homework that is). As for Purple Rain- I remember Prince saying that he would never know how much that record sold because WB had changed the ISBN/UPC numbers in Europe at different times and couldn't account for the units sold. I believe this was around the time that he was asking fans to send copies of 'unauthorized' copies of albums and maxi-singles to Paisley Park for him to destroy. So am I embarrassed that he stood up for what he believed in? Nah.....

kingricefan said:

BartVanHemelen said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

databank said:

BartVanHemelen said:

The reality is that while Prince was whining, REM and Metallica both struck deals with WEA companies where they gained control of their master recordings. Prince did absolutely nothing and all he did was care about himself and never built anything to support other artists. He used his celebrity status to score deals with other majors, and when they realized he was more trouble than he was worth, he resorted to cheap stunts (free CD with newspaper, free CD with concert ticket), and when that ran out there was... nothing. Didn't release an album for four years cuz nobody would touch him.

While you are right about Prince "enslaving" Paisley Park artists (the Estate still owns quite a few masters, including George Clinton's), your long debunked theory about Prince not being able to get a record deal is getting tiresome, and I really wish you'd call it a day.

.

So once again (sigh):

.

In one of the leaked police interviews recordings, someone from P's camp (whose name I can't recall, I'm sorry, but many here have these recordings so it'd be easy to find the name) revealed that in 2014, Prince found himself in the middle of a bidding war between WB and Sony regarding the release of his next albums, and that WB finally won the bidding war, i.e. the privilege to release AOA and Plec.

.

From this, it is easy to infer that:

.

1/ Prince was more or less always in a position to get a distribution deal with a label (anyway, if not a major, there were the indies, and most indies would have sucked dicks to get a deal with a big artist such as Prince: he could get any indie label he wanted as long as he didn't ask for a bigger advance than they could afford).

.

2/ He wasn't dumped by Kobalt like you used to claim (without a single bit of evidence and despite Kobalt hosting dozens of totally obscure artists who don't sell much, the list is on their website), but quite the opposite (he dumped them in favor of the 2 majors' bidding war, if only because Kobalt is a distribution-only label that probably doesn't pay advances to their artists).

.

That's it. End of discussion. Don't even try.

.

NO!!!

Worst point in his career. Just completely wrong-headed in every sense of the word.

heartpeacesheart said:

kingricefan said:

I think that the standard record deal with a major label back then was the artist gets .10 cents on the dollar for every unit sold. As Prince became more popular he probably was given .12 cents per dollar. The record company kept the rest (some of it was used for promotion, etc. but the bulk of it went into the executives pockets). Yes, Purple Rain was heavily promoted but what about the albums that came after? Not much was done for those after WB realized that Prince wasn't going to give them another Purple Rain album/movie. So, would you build a house and expect to be paid 12% on the dollar when it gets sold by a realtor? And hand them the blueprints too? No way was I embarrassed by what the 'Slave' era involved. I was behind Prince 100% and am proud of what he accomplished. He was ridiculed by the Press and other artists back then but the next generation of 'artists' are reaping the benfits for his stance now (if they've done their homework that is). As for Purple Rain- I remember Prince saying that he would never know how much that record sold because WB had changed the ISBN/UPC numbers in Europe at different times and couldn't account for the units sold. I believe this was around the time that he was asking fans to send copies of 'unauthorized' copies of albums and maxi-singles to Paisley Park for him to destroy. So am I embarrassed that he stood up for what he believed in? Nah.....

It also wasn't their job to account for how many units, it would have had to have been the EU's job and look what happened with that. At the end of the day, nobody accounts for anything but themselves. There's definitely a learning curve that has to happen though. Does belief make one a slave? Maybe only as long as one believes it does.

Honestly, if WB is making .88-.90 cents on every dollar they most definately knew how many units were being sold, even if the market was in Europe. That's a lot of money for their accountants to just say 'Hey, who cares how many units we sold.'. They changed the barcodes/UPCs so that the amount of units sold could get 'lost' somehow. But they knew exactly how many were sold at the end of the day.

jdcxc said:

BartVanHemelen said:

The reality is that while Prince was whining, REM and Metallica both struck deals with WEA companies where they gained control of their master recordings. Prince did absolutely nothing and all he did was care about himself and never built anything to support other artists. He used his celebrity status to score deals with other majors, and when they realized he was more trouble than he was worth, he resorted to cheap stunts (free CD with newspaper, free CD with concert ticket), and when that ran out there was... nothing. Didn't release an album for four years cuz nobody would touch him.

REM and Metallica...hmmm. It took Prince 5 albums before he was marketed like they were from Day 1.

Name a Black artist who gained control of their Masters. Study the history of Black artists and the apartheid nature of the music biz...racist record labels, radio segregation and ownership. Of course Prince had missteps and strategic errors in battling a huge multinational corporation and anti-artist industry norms. U have been carrying the water for music biz practices for years, but the current state of the industry has proven Prince to be ahead of his time.

What? Circa Murmur and Kill 'Em All??

Metallica had those Megaforce Records bucks bringing in the big PR guns.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Dude, no artist can sell mega numbers year on year Esp not when youre changing style year on year That's not how the industry works Also not how fans and the public respond In 94 he complained letitgo wasnt a hit and blamed WB A year later eye hate u went top ten Not every single is going to be a hit [Edited 10/24/20 9:22am]

I'm not going to disagree with your point but when Prince was banished to the Black Music Division of Warner Brothers they cut 50% of his base and 70% of his radio airplay.

It's very easy to blame WB after that happened.

muleFunk said:

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

Dude, no artist can sell mega numbers year on year Esp not when youre changing style year on year That's not how the industry works Also not how fans and the public respond In 94 he complained letitgo wasnt a hit and blamed WB A year later eye hate u went top ten Not every single is going to be a hit [Edited 10/24/20 9:22am]

I'm not going to disagree with your point but when Prince was banished to the Black Music Division of Warner Brothers they cut 50% of his base and 70% of his radio airplay.

It's very easy to blame WB after that happened.

Really? When was that?

tab32792 said:

When he signed these deals back then, evidently he didn’t read the fine print. Hundreds of artists have fell victim to that. So he probably didn’t know he didn’t own his work nor did he know that there were all these people getting paid off him that didn’t do much of anything pertaining to creating the music. Secondly, he wanted to release more than that current model of industry/record company could promote. They saw it as over saturation. Which I understand however he looked at it like how can you tell me what is too much? They then waved the contract in front of him like you signed this and we essentially own you so you do what we say. In a historical context what does that sound like to you? Slavery. So there’s that. If you didn’t get it? Fine. That’s cool. But to question whether or not we should be proud of it is a whole other thing; especially coming from someone that isn’t apart of the long line of slavery. It way beyond him being a millionaire etc. it’s about ownership control etc. if you have no historical context you won’t get it and will only look at it as embarrassing and silly. He started something that is still being talking about and discussed to this day and doesn’t get proper credit for it. Ownership and independence

when he signed these deals back when? in 1992? when he had 14 years of experience being signed to a major? when he had enough money to afford the right lawyers and advisers?

jaawwnn said:

muleFunk said:

I'm not going to disagree with your point but when Prince was banished to the Black Music Division of Warner Brothers they cut 50% of his base and 70% of his radio airplay.

It's very easy to blame WB after that happened.

Really? When was that?

yes id like to know that too.

seeing as eye hate you was a top 20 hit in the US in 1995, a mere year before he left the label.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

jaawwnn said:

Really? When was that?

yes id like to know that too.

seeing as eye hate you was a top 20 hit in the US in 1995, a mere year before he left the label.

It happened in 92 when he signed that contract.

One of the interesting things about Prince's career is that he only had 5 Number one hits. When you start looking at it further you start to see that he had a very interesting run of Number 2&3 hits. Songs in my biased opinion should have been Number 1.

Purple Rain went to Number 2 on the Billboard chart.

Raspberry Beret went to Number 2 on the Billboard chart.

Sign O The Times went Number 3 on the Billboard chart.

U Got the Look went Number 2 on the Billboard chart.

Two of the weakest Prince singles went Number 1 after this Batdance in 89 and Cream in 1991.

Diamonds and Pearls went to Number 3.

Then 7 was either Number 3 or Number 7 on Billboard depending what chart Billboard wanted to use.

Not saying he was wrong or right but he blamed WB for this and he took a dive when he was put in the WB division. I have the USA Today paper that said this. It's in a box somewhere and if I find it I will put it up.

Something to be proud of now?

Who was ashamed of it, before?

It was nothing that Prince was or should have been ashamed.

BartVanHemelen said:

JoeyCococo said:

Especially now. There is so much awareness now about this kind of thing....this dude gave up a lot to battle.

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Prince didn't "battle" anything. He whined like a sulky teen and stomped his foot, that's all.

You must've had your blinders on, again.