finnik said:

Prince is dead. Estate only got what they got. And they need to generate money in years to come.

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Basically they have only one chance.

What would they have to generate enough interest in say 5, 10 or 20 years time?

Didn't they listen to the entire vault yet?

How much cheaper would it be to convince old/current fans to say 'here's my money, gimme what you got' than complete newcomers, stragers and the like?

The fans are getting older and fewer.

Even more so in in a few years time.

I guess/hope that they (Estate, WB, etc) are smart enough to come to the same conclusions.

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For now on they can continue releasing overpriced Super Deluxe Editions. Until 2028. Good year to start releasing overpriced 50th Anniversary Editions with newly discovered previously unheard tracks.

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This would work well for things like live performances, concerts, aftershows, soundchecks, rehearsals etc.. Because there is certaintly a market for those things but not the same market as the deluxe box sets. So ideally they continue to release deluxe sets with vault material, and then create some sort of website for the other goodies that have a smaller market.

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40 dollars a month would obviously be way too much, but they could set it up as a pay per download type system.

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Bruce Springsteen has this for his fans and its an incredible set up. https://live.brucespringsteen.net/

[Edited 11/16/20 8:42am]

udo said:

dm3857 said:

P in his lifetime didn't care for the vault in respect of releasing new material. We got 2 albums from there before he died, Crystal Ball from '98 whose intention, you could argue, was to contradict the bootleggers and Old Friends 4 Sale, a contractual obligation which he was against releasing, so I recall.

We should be grateful for any new vault releases from here on in, because it will turn out to be a helluva lot more than would've got released, were he still here. Something to contemplate, if easily given to a pedantic response, myself included.

I think the Estate needs to so something about the making the catalogue more available whether that be vault or live material but all they need to do is look to Bruce Springsteen's or David Bowie's model. Casual fans will buy hardly any of that stuff but serious fans will.

All of this has been repeated a million times.

For 22 dollars a month, Bill Laswell has started a new subscription service on Bandcamp (https://billlaswell.bandcamp.com/). IIRC There were about 20 albums offered initially, some old releases and a few new shows. Ever since, I'm getting an email every 3 days on average saying there's a new show, album or song for me to download, which I find totally awesome and worth every penny.

It's all vault stuff and it's delivered with artwork, you can stream or download it so even if the service is terminated one day the albums will remain yours.

Laswell has a relatively niche audience and a very small team handling his affairs, yet he managed to pull that off, so there's no question the Estate could if they would, and Bandcamp offering a platform saves a lot of time and resources you'd have to put into handling a whole online store by yourself (though I suspect the Estate may feel an artist of P's magnitude cannot be "lowered" to using an existing platform and need to have his own online store, there's a matter of prestige involved in a "brand" such as Prince).

Anyway for now this doesn't seem to be the strategy and I do not expect it to happen anytime soon. Howe once said it was not unthinkable at some point to revive NPGMC in some way, and Sharon also expressed interest IIRC, and to be honest it's the only way to not sit on most of the huge amounts of recordings in the vault, so I'm sure they'll consider it at some point, but probably not before some years.

fortuneandserendipity said:

Old Friends 4 Sale, a contractual obligation which he was against releasing, so I recall.

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It must be amazing to live in a time where so much info is easily available, yet instead you make shit up.

databank said:

Laswell has a relatively niche audience and a very small team handling his affairs, yet he managed to pull that off

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Perhaps he took the time to maintain his vault?

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Also: completely different situation. Being that niche means you run less risk of someone bootlegging you. Do the same with Prince and chances are any new release if out there within hours. HD encodes of the recent SDEs were out there almost instantly, for instance.

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Plus: about half of Prince's vault can be monetized with great results (as has been proven so far), but that might stop being true once they flood the market.

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BartVanHemelen said:

but that might stop being true once they flood the market.

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Where approximately is the high water mark that is on the edge of flooding?

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

Laswell has a relatively niche audience and a very small team handling his affairs, yet he managed to pull that off

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Perhaps he took the time to maintain his vault?

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He's already released so much music that I'm not sure how much studio material remains unreleased: I'm not completely sure but my impression is that, unlike Prince, Laswell tended to release as much of what he recorded as possible, which he probably could easily do since he was always releasing stuff under various monikers on a multitude of labels at the same time. But maybe I'm wrong: it'll be interesting to see how much surfaces on Bandcamp. So far it's been mostly live gigs, and hopefully he has a ton of those, the cool thing being that since his live shows were based around many very different projects with very different line-ups playing many different genres, it probably won't get boring anytime soon.

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On a sidenote I'm kind of curious to see how long it'll take before the Bowie estate runs out of studio material (I believe there is very little in the vault) and before the live releases become redundant (they can release every show from every tour, but at some point, it'll be the same setlists over and over). I suspect that at the pace they're going, which is pretty hectic, they will run out of particularly interesting material in a decade or so.

fortuneandserendipity said:

databank said:

On a sidenote I'm kind of curious to see how long it'll take before the Bowie estate runs out of studio material (I believe there is very little in the vault)

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Sure, but so what? They're curating, they don't need to earn money to pay for massive overhead, storage, etc. The P estate has a massive tax bill, and even if they wanted to fight it, they'd need to pay expensive lawyers etc. Bowie's doesn't have any of those issues, because Bowie got his business affairs in order decades ago, probably even before the heart attack he suffered in 2004.

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Prince was a super-bad business man. He failed to monetize the contents of his vault, failed to use those contents to gain control of his back catalogue, and then didn't even bother to properly maintain his vault. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that at several times his entourage talked him out of destroying his most lascivious recordings. And that is just one aspect.

databank said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Perhaps he took the time to maintain his vault?

On a sidenote I'm kind of curious to see how long it'll take before the Bowie estate runs out of studio material (I believe there is very little in the vault) and before the live releases become redundant (they can release every show from every tour, but at some point, it'll be the same setlists over and over). I suspect that at the pace they're going, which is pretty hectic, they will run out of particularly interesting material in a decade or so.

I actually don't think there is a lot studio material leftover, if any. There are demos that Bowie had put to tape after Blackstar was completed and that Tony Visconti said he heard but, alas, they are only demos. Hence the No Plan EP that came out a year after he died. I really think that if we were to get any unheard finished studio material from the Bowie Estate, we would have heard it by now. Most likely they will be versions of already released songs or things like live radio studio or concert broadcasts.

OperatingThetan said:

Milty2 said:

databank said:

On a sidenote I'm kind of curious to see how long it'll take before the Bowie estate runs out of studio material (I believe there is very little in the vault) and before the live releases become redundant (they can release every show from every tour, but at some point, it'll be the same setlists over and over). I suspect that at the pace they're going, which is pretty hectic, they will run out of particularly interesting material in a decade or so.

I actually don't think there is a lot studio material leftover, if any. There are demos that Bowie had put to tape after Blackstar was completed and that Tony Visconti said he heard but, alas, they are only demos. Hence the No Plan EP that came out a year after he died. I really think that if we were to get any unheard finished studio material from the Bowie Estate, we would have heard it by now. Most likely they will be versions of already released songs or things like live radio studio or concert broadcasts.

Well they have released some: many demos from 1969 on the last boxset, the Let's Dance demo and a couple of Earthling outtakes last spring. There's also a bootleg of Outside outtakes so this at least does exist, and there must be one or 2 dozens of scattered outtakes, demos and alternate mixes, but probably not that much more, no.

CAL3 said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

P in his lifetime didn't care for the vault in respect of releasing new material. We got 2 albums from there before he died, Crystal Ball from '98 whose intention, you could argue, was to contradict the bootleggers and Old Friends 4 Sale, a contractual obligation which he was against releasing, so I recall.

We should be grateful for any new vault releases from here on in, because it will turn out to be a helluva lot more than would've got released, were he still here. Something to contemplate, if easily given to a pedantic response, myself included.

. SMH... . Another “let’s all be glad Prince died prematurely because now we get to hear the vault content!” post... . No decency among some “fans”

Rubbish. That's not what I said. You need to improve your reading comprehension.

BartVanHemelen said:

databank said:

On a sidenote I'm kind of curious to see how long it'll take before the Bowie estate runs out of studio material (I believe there is very little in the vault)

.

Sure, but so what? They're curating, they don't need to earn money to pay for massive overhead, storage, etc. The P estate has a massive tax bill, and even if they wanted to fight it, they'd need to pay expensive lawyers etc. Bowie's doesn't have any of those issues, because Bowie got his business affairs in order decades ago, probably even before the heart attack he suffered in 2004.

.

Prince was a super-bad business man. He failed to monetize the contents of his vault, failed to use those contents to gain control of his back catalogue, and then didn't even bother to properly maintain his vault. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that at several times his entourage talked him out of destroying his most lascivious recordings. And that is just one aspect.

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Could not agree more.

My guess is Prince even had no clue what to do with all his material versus he couldn't care less too.

He was always out for the new, and thought he could float on his so called endless creativity.

But didn't he earn (just enough to pay the bills) with his tours and live performances ?

He did some secret fat payd one off gigs for multimillionaires here and there all over the world iicc, right ?

Maybe he thought he could float on his on going creativity, which is bizarre knowing that his sales went dowhill anyways.

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Vannormal said:

BartVanHemelen said:

.

Sure, but so what? They're curating, they don't need to earn money to pay for massive overhead, storage, etc. The P estate has a massive tax bill, and even if they wanted to fight it, they'd need to pay expensive lawyers etc. Bowie's doesn't have any of those issues, because Bowie got his business affairs in order decades ago, probably even before the heart attack he suffered in 2004.

.

Prince was a super-bad business man. He failed to monetize the contents of his vault, failed to use those contents to gain control of his back catalogue, and then didn't even bother to properly maintain his vault. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that at several times his entourage talked him out of destroying his most lascivious recordings. And that is just one aspect.

-

Could not agree more.

My guess is Prince even had no clue what to do with all his material versus he couldn't care less too.

He was always out for the new, and thought he could float on his so called endless creativity.

But didn't he earn (just enough to pay the bills) with his tours and live performances ?

He did some secret fat payd one off gigs for multimillionaires here and there all over the world iicc, right ?

Maybe he thought he could float on his on going creativity, which is bizarre knowing that his sales went dowhill anyways.

-

Hans-Martin Buff said P ordered him and assistants to permanently delete all the records from the vault that had cussing, this shortly after becoming a JW. On the other hand, according to Susan Rogers, one of P's associates had been helping him/her self to the contents of the vault and had copied virtually everything. Really everything in there, and by implication right up until 2016. But how far back this began, and whether it preceded the vault purging, is unknown.

fortuneandserendipity said:

Vannormal said:

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Could not agree more.

My guess is Prince even had no clue what to do with all his material versus he couldn't care less too.

He was always out for the new, and thought he could float on his so called endless creativity.

But didn't he earn (just enough to pay the bills) with his tours and live performances ?

He did some secret fat payd one off gigs for multimillionaires here and there all over the world iicc, right ?

Maybe he thought he could float on his on going creativity, which is bizarre knowing that his sales went dowhill anyways.

-

Hans-Martin Buff said P ordered him and assistants to permanently delete all the records from the vault that had cussing, this shortly after becoming a JW. On the other hand, according to Susan Rogers, one of P's associates had been helping him/her self to the contents of the vault and had copied virtually everything. Really everything in there, and by implication right up until 2016. But how far back this began, and whether it preceded the vault purging, is unknown.

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Interesting, I did not know that.

(I'd like to have that source please, thank you very much. )

But to be honest, that has much more to do with (or says so much about) his believes than the taking care of his vault material, but I understand your point.

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The fact that one of his associates had to copy everything was if i'm not mistaken to put everything in a digital format, right?

It is known that Prince once in a while pulled out an older song to re-do it.

So it went quite far back I believe, because he re-did "If I could Get Your Attention", or "Extralovable" (from analog tapes?).

At least that's what I think. Maybe also to remaster ''Purple Rain''.

I have no idea how it works to remaster anything, or if it is possible to do it directly from analog tapes or whatever. So slap me for that.

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SexyMuthaF said:

Why delete songs because of cussing? Why not just overwrite the cuss words, like he overwrote lyrics for The Cross? Makes no sense. [Edited 11/23/20 23:25pm]

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Indeed.

But with Prince's twists and turns one never knew really what he was up to next.

But, ''The cross'' just became ''The Crist''.

There was no deleting of cursing iirc.

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give me the keys, i'll do it right

Vannormal said:

fortuneandserendipity said:

Hans-Martin Buff said P ordered him and assistants to permanently delete all the records from the vault that had cussing, this shortly after becoming a JW. On the other hand, according to Susan Rogers, one of P's associates had been helping him/her self to the contents of the vault and had copied virtually everything. Really everything in there, and by implication right up until 2016. But how far back this began, and whether it preceded the vault purging, is unknown.

-

Interesting, I did not know that.

(I'd like to have that source please, thank you very much. )

But to be honest, that has much more to do with (or says so much about) his believes than the taking care of his vault material, but I understand your point.

-

The fact that one of his associates had to copy everything was if i'm not mistaken to put everything in a digital format, right?

It is known that Prince once in a while pulled out an older song to re-do it.

So it went quite far back I believe, because he re-did "If I could Get Your Attention", or "Extralovable" (from analog tapes?).

At least that's what I think. Maybe also to remaster ''Purple Rain''.

I have no idea how it works to remaster anything, or if it is possible to do it directly from analog tapes or whatever. So slap me for that.

-

The associate who did copy recordings did so without P's knowledge. And Susan Rogers alludes to this person as someone who worked at Paisley after she left in '87, but of course that's getting on 30 years. Word reached her about it from an ex-P exployee that saw it going on, but didn't intervene. Whether a band member or engineer, it would have to be someone quite close to him, who knew exactly when he would be out of Minneapolis, on tour or living elsewhere. He never guessed it was going on.

As to the deleted vault records, there probably weren't that many swearing songs, considering there weren't a lot of those songs on the official albums. Sexy MF original recording was got rid of. Unfortunately I can't recall the source for either Hans-Martin Buff or Susan Rogers, I'm just going off memory.

I'm just speculating, but if the 'culprit' was an ever-present like Sheila E, then everything he recorded would be in that person's hands. And I guess, there would always be that chance more stuff gets released as bootlegs, stuff we've never heard. No sign of that yet though.

fortuneandserendipity said:

Vannormal said:

-

Interesting, I did not know that.

(I'd like to have that source please, thank you very much. )

But to be honest, that has much more to do with (or says so much about) his believes than the taking care of his vault material, but I understand your point.

-

The fact that one of his associates had to copy everything was if i'm not mistaken to put everything in a digital format, right?

It is known that Prince once in a while pulled out an older song to re-do it.

So it went quite far back I believe, because he re-did "If I could Get Your Attention", or "Extralovable" (from analog tapes?).

At least that's what I think. Maybe also to remaster ''Purple Rain''.

I have no idea how it works to remaster anything, or if it is possible to do it directly from analog tapes or whatever. So slap me for that.

-

The associate who did copy recordings did so without P's knowledge. And Susan Rogers alludes to this person as someone who worked at Paisley after she left in '87, but of course that's getting on 30 years. Word reached her about it from an ex-P exployee that saw it going on, but didn't intervene. Whether a band member or engineer, it would have to be someone quite close to him, who knew exactly when he would be out of Minneapolis, on tour or living elsewhere. He never guessed it was going on.

As to the deleted vault records, there probably weren't that many swearing songs, considering there weren't a lot of those songs on the official albums. Sexy MF original recording was got rid of. Unfortunately I can't recall the source for either Hans-Martin Buff or Susan Rogers, I'm just going off memory.

I'm just speculating, but if the 'culprit' was an ever-present like Sheila E, then everything he recorded would be in that person's hands. And I guess, there would always be that chance more stuff gets released as bootlegs, stuff we've never heard. No sign of that yet though.

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Very strange.

That means it must've been someone he trusted with the code(s)/key(s) to the vault(s) ?!

An engineer maybe, although he changed engineers often...

Never heard of that story to be honest. How daring of that person too.

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Prince himself reached out new and unheard songs on cassettes and later on discs to his bandmembers... that seems more plausible to me.

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Rehearsals and live registrations, even soundboards are much easier to execute.

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Strange, was Sheila that ever-present ? I don't think so.

Do musicians know how to copy (older) analog tapes ?

Discs are easy to copy of course, but duplicating from analog tepes sound something as for an engineer...

Then again I know shit of the posibilities or the technical stuff when it comes to that.

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Here are my 5 cents on this:

I really doubt there is such a big audience of Prince fans willing to subscribe to a monthly set-up, to make it worth for all the remastering that needs to be done upfront... especially as we hard-core fans tend to bitch about the audio quality if it is not spotless

Mind you - the special editions released so far are of records which were popular way beyond the hardcore fan - here an upfront investment in remastering+packaging + marketing is way less risky.

How about answering the following question - if you need to invest your own money, how much would you spend on producing + marketing a Special Edition of AOA or 3121? How many sales would you expect?

And - just my personal view on it - if I am very honest, I listened to the SOTT vault tracks maybe three times in its entirety since I got the release. And I consider myself a big and long-time fan. Would I really spend money to listen more and more obscure Prince tracks? I do not know... There is other good music out there, and still enough Prince music to discover in the SDE of this year and last...

Krid said:

Here are my 5 cents on this:

I really doubt there is such a big audience of Prince fans willing to subscribe to a monthly set-up, to make it worth for all the remastering that needs to be done upfront... especially as we hard-core fans tend to bitch about the audio quality if it is not spotless

Mind you - the special editions released so far are of records which were popular way beyond the hardcore fan - here an upfront investment in remastering+packaging + marketing is way less risky.

How about answering the following question - if you need to invest your own money, how much would you spend on producing + marketing a Special Edition of AOA or 3121? How many sales would you expect?

And - just my personal view on it - if I am very honest, I listened to the SOTT vault tracks maybe three times in its entirety since I got the release. And I consider myself a big and long-time fan. Would I really spend money to listen more and more obscure Prince tracks? I do not know... There is other good music out there, and still enough Prince music to discover in the SDE of this year and last...

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You are absolutely right.

And those hard core Prince fans talking about (perfect) sound quality will do the same with other artists releases... at least from what I heard in other artists forums.

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Concerning ''AOA'' & ''3121''; my guess is very few people (or Prince fans) would be interested in paying big $$ for a SDE. Some found the SOTT SDE already very expensive.

Of all the reissues, I only buy them when I can get them as a bargain.

And I collect a lot of Prince, but i'm not a $$ fool for something I already have.

For instance, this week I bought ''The Rianbow Children'' on clear vinyl with slipmat (still wrapped) for only 12,95 Euro, and both ''Planet Earth'' & ''Versace experience'' (reissue vinyl) for only 8,95 Euro each.

Happy me.

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And with your last pargraph I could not agree more.

My guess is that most (hard core) Prince fans are in it for the collecting rather than consuming the goods. Before I get slapped the booty, I could be wrong though.

Peace.

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Vannormal said:

My guess is that most (hard core) Prince fans are in it for the collecting rather than consuming the goods.

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I wouldn't say that, but I would argue that 2020 is waaaaay too late anyway. I've said this before: by now we should be on the third or fourth cycle of reissues, with the first one being "remastered + expanded" reissues towards the end of the 1990s, then deluxe editions by the mid-2000s (more bonus tracks, a live album,...), "lost albums" or archival box sets by the mid-2010s, perhaps accompanied by a website offering live recordings.

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Maintain a fan base, and subtly "milk it" with reasonably priced re-editions that feature more and more each time. (Note that a remaster from the end of the 1990s could also sound somewhat outdated by now -- as has happened with other artists -- and that a later re-release could also involve yet another modern remaster of already available material.)

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It's criminal that in 2020 there are still tracks or versions that remain vinyl-only, that there is tons of material available on bootleg only, and that the only way to obtain new music is through expensive box sets which offer far too little details WRT their sources. Especially when compared to the work of boutique movie labels like Arrow who offer exhaustive details on the sources of their releases and how those sources were worked on to achieve the release. I really wish they would nerd out on this stuff and offer us detailed info on each track; I wouldn't even mind a cassette source if that was the only available one. But don't do what happened with "Rebirth Of the Flesh" (which is obviously not entirely from the same source).

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To me the SOTT SDE feels a bit like a letdown: overpriced for what it offered, especially because it is severely lacking in some areas. And I expect to feel the same with the next handful of SDEs who will likely follow the same relatively conservative approach as the SOTT one when we perhaps would love a more absurd approach (like the "complete sessions" box sets of The Stooges). I don't get the people who complain the set featured two concert recordings, I'd have loved more (e.g. the First Avenue "rehearsal" gig) and I'd have loved at least a disc with highlights from the rehearsals (jams, songs not performed during the concerts, covers,...) with the full rehearsal recordings available online.

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And they should seriously offer better product for RSD. This year they had picture discs of SOTT, last year the truncated UK edition of 1999 -- who gives a shit? Offer us the original Camille!

.

Looking at what is happening now, quite frankly I don't see us ever getting a "Paisley Park Records" box set that has all the PPR side projects (in remastered and expanded editions) including those albums by The Time and Sheila E from before PPR. I don't see us getting all those soundboard cocnert recordings, all those unreleased videos, etc. Unless some billionaire decides to throw a bunch of money at the estate and tells them to hurry up and get it out now.

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The worst thing is: there was a market for this in the 1990s and beyond, but Prince didn't cater for it and gave bootlegegrs a golden opportunity. And now it is all in a vast vault in California and there is a good chance that a great number of it will never be heard by anyone outside a small goup of people; hell, there is a good chance a significant part of it will never be heard by anyone.