Se7en said:

RJOrion said:

The natural conspiracy theorist that i am, Im really starting to think that the powers that be (banks, lawyers, labels, writers), are purposely sabatoging and diminishing what value the Prince Estate and its legacy, has left...because since he mysteriously came up missing from this realm, none of what has been going on with his posthumous affairs has made the slightest bit of sense.

I disagree.

What people have to realize is that even when Prince was still alive, his albums for the last 20 years of his life were not selling well. You had some outliers (Musicology, 3121) but most of them were very low sellers. The "mystique" of new Prince music was a bit more glamorous than the music itself.

So without Prince here in person to create excitement around a new release, you're left with just the new release to stand on its own. Some of these releases (SOTT:SDE and 1999:SDE) are really special. Some others (Originals, Piano & Microphone) are "OK". And then Welcome 2 America was somewhere in the middle.

Plus, with Prince gone, his music is now on streaming. The average listener is not going to part with their cash for a physical release, when they can listen for free. Hard to compete with that.

People also complain about t-shirts, glassware and blankets being sold on the website . . . but those are money-makers that keep the Estate going when album sales are dismal! A T-shirt brings them the same income as single-disc album does.

One thing to point out is this: Nobody makes money from their recorded music in the streaming era. There are no sales to speak of. Taylor Swift makes her money from touring....not from her recorded music.

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Remember, in the late 90's (Napster era) the music industry basically bottomed out. Even big time artists* who sold a lot and managed to make money off of it (Metallica) could see the writing on the wall. Selling music was never going to be as lucrative as it had been.

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*Think about tLC. Those girls NEVER got paid despite the million upon millions that they made. Prince himself claimed that he made more money from his music when he was independent (Emancipation for example) that he did in his heydey with WB.

[Edited 9/10/23 7:52am]