Indeed.

The article tells the full story of what we've been through so far

rap said:

bizzie said:

.

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

Obvious, why?

.

Because they were part of the "ancien regime", i.e. Comerica, and McMillan and Spicer hated those people.

funkbabyandthebabysitters said:

The low bit rates were fine for file sharing circa 2000

.

People were sharing FLACs on abmp back then.

ghostof82 said:

The article seems to be required reading on How Not To Manage An Artist's Legacy. If only Prince in his later years had reconsidered releasing his archive of vault material, controlled it himself and let it tell his story.

.

It was already way too late by then. He should have monetized it in the mid-/lte-1990s and early 2000s, back when there was still money to be earned in the music biz.

.

bizzie said:

rap said:

Obvious, why?

.

Because they were part of the "ancien regime", i.e. Comerica, and McMillan and Spicer hated those people.

....not only these people but Spicer and MC Millan hate the fanbase too !

Most artists or estates with a release coming out on a Friday would start hyping it up at the beginning of that week, so naturally, the Prince estate is completely quiet on social media so far this week. Maybe we'll get another "On this date in _____, _____ was released" post before Friday if we're lucky!

bozojones said:

Most artists or estates with a release coming out on a Friday would start hyping it up at the beginning of that week, so naturally, the Prince estate is completely quiet on social media so far this week. Maybe we'll get another "On this date in _____, _____ was released" post before Friday if we're lucky!

I don't think we'll get anything at all Perhaps we will get an announcement that these 2
tracks will be released in september or something, and that'll be it.

Besides, it's only 1 track for me, really. That mix of 7 is filler, at best. In fact, it's detritus imo.

All A Share Together Now is cool tho, I'd love to own that in good quality.

The only thing that will be exciting at this point is if they just drop a surprise album on us.

Which they won't. I'm just saying.

Only thing really exciting would be something like 'here it is, suprise surprise, vault series
volume 1 - comprised of tracks that somehow won't make the cut of the official SDE sets,
yet are too good to go unheard any longer. 2 of these tracks are tracks that were left off
the upcoming SDE sets for Parade and D&P, coming september and november, respectively'

THAT would excite me.

rap said:

Thank God for bootlegs.

bizzie said:

ghostof82 said:

The article seems to be required reading on How Not To Manage An Artist's Legacy. If only Prince in his later years had reconsidered releasing his archive of vault material, controlled it himself and let it tell his story. Maybe in a similar way to how Joni Mitchell is releasing archive boxsets of unreleased work alongside separate chronological remasters of her albums. Prince didn't need to write a memoir or an autobiography, his music could have said it all, and Prince had plenty to say, his unique life perspective and experience. He was a genius we shall never see the like of again, and they are selling towels and fridge magnets? I hope Prince is up there looking down and having a good chuckle about how farcical it is.

I love Prince but I think he did it right focusing on new material and not really caring too much about the Vault unless he was dusting off an old track to update like "Extraloveable" or "1000 Xs and Os". Crystal Ball is a mess from sequencing to mastering to track selection to packaging, he was always about the current even when forcing himself to look back so he couldn't help George Lucas trying to "perfect" stuff he did 20 years ago with a contemporary perspective. It's sort of appreciated now... that doesn't make it a good archival or Vault release.

[Edited 7/4/23 16:49pm]

bizzie said:

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:

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.

These were internet-exclusive releases put out when people had dial-up modems and those shitty quality tracks would take like 2 hours to download 2 minutes. Having his fans wait a week and a half to download a single FLAC file would have been insulting to 1998-1999 sensibilites like having fans download 128kbps mono mp3s is insulting to contemporary sensibilities.

That's not even in the same ball park of what I'm talking about. Official labels working with official releases on official pressings on official discs and official media. NPGMC was basically a homemade pop-up operation with no/few prior precedents set. You make it sound like it was competing with bandcamp.

Most importantly, although they did put out the occasionally Vault track, the design of the NPGMC was not a Vault or Bootleg series label. I ask if that exists in "official release" archival-style label/estate/legacy releases.

[Edited 7/4/23 16:57pm]

I wasn't a fan back then but I love love love Crystal Ball 98 even though it's totally fucked-with by him. But like, he had the right to do it no matter how dumb it may be? There's a touch of him in it and I think I can feel that.

I hope the Vault series will be at least a 3 CDs box set to stick with the Crystal Ball concept. One every year woulb be appreciated in addition to the SDE/Originals releases and stand-alone albums.

One Vault release every 3/4 months would be the perfect pace.

WhisperingDandelions said:

bizzie said:

.

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.

These were internet-exclusive releases put out when people had dial-up modems and those shitty quality tracks would take like 2 hours to download 2 minutes. Having his fans wait a week and a half to download a single FLAC file would have been insulting to 1998-1999 sensibilites like having fans download 128kbps mono mp3s is insulting to contemporary sensibilities.

That's not even in the same ball park of what I'm talking about. Official labels working with official releases on official pressings on official discs and official media. NPGMC was basically a homemade pop-up operation with no/few prior precedents set. You make it sound like it was competing with bandcamp.

Most importantly, although they did put out the occasionally Vault track, the design of the NPGMC was not a Vault or Bootleg series label. I ask if that exists in "official release" archival-style label/estate/legacy releases.

[Edited 7/4/23 16:57pm]

Back in the late 90s (at least where I come from) dial-up was ancient and 100 Kbps was mostly the norm via coax cablemodem and downloading a 2 minute track didn't even take a minute. NPGMC quality of downloads was really out of touch. They could easily offered FLAC or some other lossless way instead of WMA's wth DRM.
Back then there was alot of complaints and request for them to offer low and hi quality files.

JorisE73 said:

WhisperingDandelions said:

These were internet-exclusive releases put out when people had dial-up modems and those shitty quality tracks would take like 2 hours to download 2 minutes. Having his fans wait a week and a half to download a single FLAC file would have been insulting to 1998-1999 sensibilites like having fans download 128kbps mono mp3s is insulting to contemporary sensibilities.

That's not even in the same ball park of what I'm talking about. Official labels working with official releases on official pressings on official discs and official media. NPGMC was basically a homemade pop-up operation with no/few prior precedents set. You make it sound like it was competing with bandcamp.

Most importantly, although they did put out the occasionally Vault track, the design of the NPGMC was not a Vault or Bootleg series label. I ask if that exists in "official release" archival-style label/estate/legacy releases.

[Edited 7/4/23 16:57pm]

Back in the late 90s (at least where I come from) dial-up was ancient and 100 Kbps was mostly the norm via coax cablemodem and downloading a 2 minute track didn't even take a minute. NPGMC quality of downloads was really out of touch. They could easily offered FLAC or some other lossless way instead of WMA's wth DRM.
Back then there was alot of complaints and request for them to offer low and hi quality files.

Am I remembering this wrong or did they in fact offer 2 sorts of download quality?
In this situation that would still be a choice between meh and bad, but still

Or am I thinking of the regular and the vip membership difference where you got
more songs/videos with the vip membership compared to the regular one?

LILpoundCAKE said:

JorisE73 said:

Back in the late 90s (at least where I come from) dial-up was ancient and 100 Kbps was mostly the norm via coax cablemodem and downloading a 2 minute track didn't even take a minute. NPGMC quality of downloads was really out of touch. They could easily offered FLAC or some other lossless way instead of WMA's wth DRM.
Back then there was alot of complaints and request for them to offer low and hi quality files.

Am I remembering this wrong or did they in fact offer 2 sorts of download quality?
In this situation that would still be a choice between meh and bad, but still

Or am I thinking of the regular and the vip membership difference where you got
more songs/videos with the vip membership compared to the regular one?

yeah they had 128kb and 256kb, both sucked. We asked for lossless back then.

bizzie said:

JorisE73 said:

LILpoundCAKE said:

Am I remembering this wrong or did they in fact offer 2 sorts of download quality?
In this situation that would still be a choice between meh and bad, but still

Or am I thinking of the regular and the vip membership difference where you got
more songs/videos with the vip membership compared to the regular one?

yeah they had 128kb and 256kb, both sucked. We asked for lossless back then.

all I know is Chocolate Invasion and Slaughterhouse didn't sound good until I bought them
for the 5th time or so, from Tidal back in 2015 when they finally offered them as lossless.

by then I had bought at least 3 different versions of them direct from prince, all ranging in
quality from shitty to kind of halfway ok.

Thanks - great article

only 48 hours left until it's July 8

LILpoundCAKE said:

only 48 hours left until it's July 8

heaven's in the backseat of charles f spicer jr's cadillac

lustmealways said:

LILpoundCAKE said:

only 48 hours left until it's July 8

heaven's in the backseat of charles f spicer jr's cadillac

that made me laugh out loud for real

Great read, love reading about what was going to be and what could have been. Seems to be a common thread in Prince's release strategy. Tease and then not release and tease some more for extra effect.

Heres hoping something big is coming................

doh!

[Edited 7/6/23 12:38pm]