Hi everyone. I hope you are all keeping well.

Since we should (allegedly) be seeing the release of ‘Vault Series Vol.1’ this Friday, I’ve written an article detailing what’s been happening (or not happening to be more specific) with Prince releases over the past few years. It’s titled ‘The Road to Day 7’.

https://welcome2thedawn.o...day_7.html

It’s been a while since I’ve made a post like this, and it’s a pretty long one, so I apologise in advance if there are any errors, typos or broken links that I’ve missed (I did my best in the time I had).

My site is undergoing a bit of a revamp, so please excuse the janky home page. I’ll get it sorted eventually.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the read. Any feedback welcome. Feel free to continue the discussion in this thread.

Love to all,
Vas

good read! it's staggering to see all of this lined up chronologically and read through it.

Thanks 4 the work done. Nice reading!

this does kind of put into perspective how much bullshit we have lived through the past 3 years

Great article and chrono.

Thank you so much!!!

And so sad at the same time...

Friday 7...

BIG YEAR

Timeline: Summer 2024

As cries begin to intensify at the gates of Paisley Park and social media is set afire with fan demand, the Prince estate makes the executive decision to satiate this tremendous desire, rush releasing BLOODY MOUTH to streaming services worldwide with a pre-order for blood red vinyl records shipping winter 2024. As a result, all war in the world is ended and president Joe Biden declares Bloody Mouth to replace the US National Anthem effective immediately

Well written, I had forgotten about half of the missteps listed in this article and its astounding to see them all laid out chronologically.

I think the most likely scenario for Friday is that we'll get the two tracks from Celebration but zero announcement of an ongoing Vault Series, just two standalone tracks with no context. At this point I wouldn't even put it past them to release nothing on Friday and just make some pointless social media post about the significance of the number 7 in Prince's life

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

fredmagnus said:

so , Vault Series Vol.1 only consists of 2 songs ? where's the rest of Vol. 1

i would assume Vol 1, would have 1,000 songs connected to it

that would be a gift

then we'd only need to hear the 7,000 or so still left to complete our journey

bozojones said:
I think the most likely scenario for Friday is that we'll get the two tracks from Celebration but zero announcement of an ongoing Vault Series, just two standalone tracks with no context.

Will they be in same 12kbps mono quality?

Maybe those were the "pristine" copies for the troo famz. I anctipate 5kbps .wma or .rm real media and the usual subsection % of Prince fans calling the rest of us ingrates.

can we just be honest now, the 1999 and SOTT sde's were good listens but as far as an actual comprehensive and historically worthy representation of these periods of his life, they were woefully slim and undercooked. let's just be honest, if you disagree then you're thinking too small.

I admit I'm obsessed with the official label intentionally putting out bad bitrate MP3s,

This part, though, I know we got some famz of many different artists out here:

Does Bob Dylan's label do this with his bootleg series? Is there any historical examples of intentionally downconverting files like a 9th grader from a legitimate source outside of the purple bubble?

[Edited 7/3/23 18:41pm]

lustmealways said:

can we just be honest now, the 1999 and SOTT sde's were good listens but as far as an actual comprehensive and historically worthy representation of these periods of his life, they were woefully slim and undercooked. let's just be honest, if you disagree then you're thinking too small.

He gets treated like a bubbly pop star when he needs to be treated like. like them Bear Family boxes that put out like every friggin' take Johnny Cash laid out for the year he was at Sun Records. He needs to get treated like in college how you can check out recordings of every piece Stravinsky composed. Every Frederic Chopin op. in chronological order. Like comprehensive Duke Ellington RCA Victor boxsets that compile everything he recorded at the label in a 24 disc set. Academic over flashy.

24 discs the Duke Ellington box is and you got people here calling us ingrates for being underwhelmed by only two discs of Vault bonus tracks for these SDEs. Even in article, "well, $99 for 2LPs, 1CD and a Blu-Ray's not so bad..." My goodness gracious... Us famz gotta work on our self-esteem first, and then, and only then: we storm the Prince capitol on the 7th.

[Edited 7/3/23 18:51pm]

lustmealways said:

VasChristian said:

Hi everyone. I hope you are all keeping well.

Since we should (allegedly) be seeing the release of ‘Vault Series Vol.1’ this Friday, I’ve written an article detailing what’s been happening (or not happening to be more specific) with Prince releases over the past few years. It’s titled ‘The Road to Day 7’.

https://welcome2thedawn.o...day_7.html

It’s been a while since I’ve made a post like this, and it’s a pretty long one, so I apologise in advance if there are any errors, typos or broken links that I’ve missed (I did my best in the time I had).

My site is undergoing a bit of a revamp, so please excuse the janky home page. I’ll get it sorted eventually.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the read. Any feedback welcome. Feel free to continue the discussion in this thread.

Love to all,
Vas

Can you confirm if Michael Howe is still employed by the Estate??

WhisperingDandelions said:

I admit I'm obsessed with the official label intentionally putting out bad bitrate MP3s,

This part, though, I know we got some famz of many different artists out here:

"This sort of practice is commonplace amongst private traders, leakers and bootleggers as a method of preserving the value of their original source copies, but never before had such a stunt been pulled when it came to an official Prince release."

I gotta raise you one higher: has this kind of stunt been pulled for an official release period? Like ever?

I mean the estate's pressed MP3s to disc before and probably will again because they are pure evil,

.

Prince included a cassette rip of Horny Pony on NPGMC. NPGMC sold VHS tapes that were copies of Japan TV broadcasts of a TV special. Frankly, most NPGMC MP3s were awful until another company took over, then they were at best OK. TRC was initially released as a 64kb MP3. Lossy WMAs that were sold through NPGMC in later years stopped working when the NPGMC closed, and before that it was nearly impossible to convert them to .WAV because they had DRM.

WhisperingDandelions said:

lustmealways said:

can we just be honest now, the 1999 and SOTT sde's were good listens but as far as an actual comprehensive and historically worthy representation of these periods of his life, they were woefully slim and undercooked. let's just be honest, if you disagree then you're thinking too small.

He gets treated like a bubbly pop star when he needs to be treated like. like them Bear Family boxes that put out like every friggin' take Johnny Cash laid out for the year he was at Sun Records.

.

I've been saying this for decades. "Impossible" say the famz, ignoring that Rhino has put out box sets which contain every whisper put to tape by The Stooges, a band not exactly known for selling millions of records.

.

Cherry Red has put out *two* 5CD box sets for The Rah Band, a frikking one-hit wonder: https://www.cherryred.co....-band-the/ .

.

Like I've said before: if you are not competent enough to make money selling Prince music, a frikking legend who sold millions of records, hand it to someone who is. Please explain why there are several bootleg labels who have put out hundreds of CDs while the Estate cannot manage more than one underwhelming release a year.

rap said:

Can you confirm if Michael Howe is still employed by the Estate??

.

It's obvious Howe and Carter have been fired by the new leaders of the Estate.

bizzie said:

rap said:

Can you confirm if Michael Howe is still employed by the Estate??

.

It's obvious Howe and Carter have been fired by the new leaders of the Estate.

Obvious, why?

Landonfunkmonkey said:

I'm pretty sure we will only get the two songs on Friday. That of course will be yet another disappointment. Hope there is some news on further releases shared as well.

And *maybe*, at best, a pre-order link for said both tracks on a purple 7" scheduled for next October that will get eventually delayed until January next year.

I only hope for new leaks and bootlegs of any kind, at least most of them feel way more down in detail and professional than the real deal.

I reckon there's not a perfect way to run posthumous releases with such a vast vault. Criteria is subjective, and I also can take for granted missed opportunities, but the lack of any kind of output is just depressing.

Thanks, Vas, for this super article. Sometimes it can be easy to miss the forest for the trees, and your piece helps a lot in this regard. (ie, to see the full extent of how screwed up the estate has been.)