I always wondered if a live show archive with download options would be a sensible business. I know it is the dream of all Prince.org members, but would it make financial sense for the Estate?

There are oviously some artists who have these live show shows available for purchase. Most famous one is probably Bruce Springsteen, who has lots of shows from 1975 to 2017 on his website, most of them available for download in various formats, and also as CDs. See https://live.brucespringsteen.net

I wonder about the economics. Given that Prince has apparently recorded all his live shows, how much would it cost to "produce" the shows into a state that they can be released to the public (you can sense by my wording that I have not expertise about the art of producing music - from the recording to the finished product).

Are we talking 1.000 USD per show? 10.000 USD per show? 100.000 USD per show?

For Bruce Springsteen, it mentions the followiing for a 1978 show:

• Recorded live with the Record Plant Remote Truck by Jimmy Iovine
• Two-inch, 24-track analog master reels transferred by Jamie Howarth, Plangent Processes via Sonicraft, Freehold, NJ
• Mixed by Jon Altschiller; Additional engineering by Danielle Warman
• Mastered to DSD and PCM by Adam Ayan at Gateway Mastering, Portland, ME
• Post Production by Brad Serling and Micah Gordon

So the above was recorded in an analogue way, and then transferred to digital. I trust many of Prince's early shows were recorded in such a way...

Bruce charges 10 USD for MP3, 12 USD lossless, 20 USD HiRes, 39 DSD USD High Res, and 23 USD.

Wonder if anyone knows how much revenue Bruce's live shows create each year. I think Bruce Springsteen has the same fanatic following as Prince (thus still a wider appeal compared to Prince), so it would be interesting to know how Bruce is faring with this?

If anyone has some insights into this (or something similar by other artists, e.g. Metallica, Grateful Dead) , would be great to learn!

Thanks

[Edited 7/12/21 6:56am]

Good question.

Pearl Jam experiment a lot with stuff like personal playlists and all about involvement:
https://generator.pearljam.com/ZktMpA9RowuW7Ab0HWPv

But I also noticed that shows disappear in time. I once read that keeping the service, files and traffic in the cloud will cost in the end more than the peak sales in the beginning.
I don't have a feeling these shows are ripped often between people and most gladly pay

Strive said:

.... Also Prince's live shows were very structured once a tour was named and going. There could be alot of hardcore demand for aftershows and rehearsals but is there really anybody clamoring for soundboards from every Welcome 2 show? Every 1999 show? Every Jam Of The Year show? ...

You are fully right, probably a limited selection of shows from each tour, and some aftershows makes much more sense. But I believe having an archive encompassing his whole career rather than just one show per year would serve better to uphold Prince's legacy.

Maybe one should do a crowdfunding campaign to get the intial costs + 20 first shows produced, surely there are some famous + wealthy Prince aficionados who will pay in and get an OPUS in return or some crazed-after NFTs of a show

Krid said:

You are fully right, probably a limited selection of shows from each tour, and some aftershows makes much more sense. But I believe having an archive encompassing his whole career rather than just one show per year would serve better to uphold Prince's legacy.

.

Who shoul be choosing those limited shows, based on what criteria?

It is all cheap and the community can easily pay €1000 per show.

The market will show the interest, but that is not what is interesting...

udo said:

Krid said:

You are fully right, probably a limited selection of shows from each tour, and some aftershows makes much more sense. But I believe having an archive encompassing his whole career rather than just one show per year would serve better to uphold Prince's legacy.

.

Who shoul be choosing those limited shows, based on what criteria?

It is all cheap and the community can easily pay €1000 per show.

The market will show the interest, but that is not what is interesting...

Well, my original question wasn't on what shows should be chosen. I am just curious what investment would be necessary to have such an archive. But I understand nobody reading this so far really knows such things, and there are probably many unknowns to us here, e.g. state of the original sound board recording and medium it was recorded on.

Just to give you an example, for a 78 Bruce Springsteen show it says the following:

• Recorded live with the Record Plant Remote Truck by Jimmy Iovine
• Two-inch, 24-track analog master reels transferred by Jamie Howarth, Plangent Processes via Sonicraft, Freehold, NJ
• Mixed by Jon Altschiller; Additional engineering by Danielle Warman
• Mastered to DSD and PCM by Adam Ayan at Gateway Mastering, Portland, ME
• Post Production by Brad Serling and Micah Gordon

So the above was recorded in an analogue way, and then transferred to digital. I trust many of Prince's early shows were recorded in such a way...

And this for a more recent show (2016), where I guess everything was recorded digitally already at the concert:

• Recorded by: John Cooper
• Mixed by Jon Altschiller
• Additional engineering: Danielle Warman & Rob Lebret
• Production supervisor: Toby Scott
• Post-Production: Brad Serling and Micah Gordon

So, would we be talking 1.000 / 10.000 / 100.000 USD costs for the above for a show? I really have no clue...

Their best bet is to license with an existing streaming platform who are in the market for an exclusive Prince Vault channel.

It's more likely than you'd think. I can see Amazon Prime, NBC, perhaps even Warner being interested in digitizing the contents of the vault to acquire for their offerings. This is a highly unique case.

Personally I think it's silly to leave money on the table even for a reboot of the music club. SiriusXM doing a Prince Channel every now and then but I assume they only play obvious hits.

[Edited 7/12/21 15:24pm]

Strive said:

I don't think anybody can answer this. Depends on the condition of the tapes. Depends on the cost to pull it from Iron Mountain and transfer the tape. Depends on the cost to develop the site and the cost of bandwidth. Depends on whether the fanbase is willing to back it with their wallets or just say they will while passing files around. Also Prince's live shows were very structured once a tour was named and going. There could be alot of hardcore demand for aftershows and rehearsals but is there really anybody clamoring for soundboards from every Welcome 2 show? Every 1999 show? Every Jam Of The Year show? The Estate should just do a Dagger Records in house. Once a year, pick some cool goodie from the vault, do a limited pressing of 3121 physical copies then sell downloads. That would be better for the legacy and myth building of Prince. Show every angle and give people a chance to digest what they have.

I would really love to have several shows from each tour PR through SOTT.

Number1Crush said:

Personally I think it's silly to leave money on the table

.

Did we ever see a really smart move from the Estate/WB/etc?

Strive said:

is there really anybody clamoring for soundboards from every Welcome 2 show? Every 1999 show? Every Jam Of The Year show?

.

People would love to buy shows they were at, I suppose. Plus shows with a unique playlist or something else exceptional (guest performance,...).

.

And at some level having a recording of each show would be handy for some hardcore collectors or for people who like to document everything and now have to rely on less than ideal audience recordings.

.

Or simply one "perfect" show from each tour, or leg of the tour (e.g. the Lovesexy Tour in Europe was somewhat different from the US one, and the Japanese concerts were again different). In case of the 1999 Tour: a Triple Threat concert was different than one where The Time didn't support (because Prince could play longer).

.

Perhaps having everything available all the time would not be feasible, but perhaps an ever evolving archive where you could buy one or two recordings from each tour where the shows on offer change regularly (each month a new one?). Perhaps allow fans to vote on what they'd want next?

.

But the economics of it all are a big question mark. Honestly, outside of a millionaire funding all this for their own enjoyment I don't see it happening.

.

And yet again: blame Prince. He should have provided this service aeons ago. That way the Estate could just use the already existing digital archive and exploit that. Instead they have to invest a ton of money without knowing whether that investment will be worth it -- and it doesn't look like that is happening.

.

But the Estate is pretty bad at all this anyway. I still don't get why they didn't do anything for more than six months after the SOTT SDE, and then announced a new release four months in the future! I would have released some "cheapo" thing to fill that gap, like some random concert recording.

Wouldnt releasing these shows (especially on video/streaming) cut into the source material for the bigger future payday of the Netflix Documentary? Also, I cannot see the Estate putting forth this much labor/production for the relatively small scale payoff (I assume). I predict that after the IRS case is settled they will go big with a Hollywood movie, Broadway, Vegas, etc. Sad I know.

When a bootleggar can release CD's (pressed...) with jewel case and artwork for under €10 in small releases you can work out the cost for recording, mastering, pressing, case and artwork, right?

All are then under €5000 for that small release.