Since so much unreleased material has come out on places like YT over the past few years, I'm wondering how much is really left? Are real, long-time collectiors sitting on a ton of stuff that hasn't made it to the general interwebs? Or is anything left unheard even by them?

MendesCity said:

A lot of material from 1995-2016 is not circulating.

databank said:

And most of the circulating leaks have not come out "on sites like YouTube" nor "over the pasr few years". There's a whole, 40 years old, parallel history of Prince bootlegs that is probably vastly unknown to younger fans and that would deserve a whole book to be written about.

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Nobody would buy such a book, even not if it revealed incredibly sensitive info about the sources and the people who made the bootlegs.

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[Edited 6/3/25 12:08pm]

saintmont said:

MendesCity said:

Since so much unreleased material has come out on places like YT over the past few years, I'm wondering how much is really left? Are real, long-time collectiors sitting on a ton of stuff that hasn't made it to the general interwebs? Or is anything left unheard even by them?

Good question ! For instance, how many of the unreleased songs that were heard at Celebrations were known ?

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If you care about this, why not investigate, i.e. look up which songs were played at which celebration, and then link to their entries on PrinceVault, and then look at the history of each page. Simple as that.

apart from the tracks that we have been able to collect and cherish over the past 35/40 years
there are at least 250 tracks that I know in name only.

quite a chunck of those came to light only from the police photos of paisley park in 2016 from
their titles being visible on boxes of tapes.

i'd say there were about 30/40 tracks that I'd never even heard of on those photo's, most of
them dating from between 2003/2010.

so if you take that as a rough guide, i'd say there have to be at least 8 songs per year that are
as of yet completely unknown to us from about 1996-2016.

which would make about 160 songs ate a conservative estimate.

add to that the aprox 240 ish tracks that we know titles for but which are not circulatig to any
of the 'casual' fanatics.

that would mean that, once again, conservatively, we're looking at 400+ songs.

but there were a few surprises on each SDE until now so that means there must also be some
songs from pre-95 that are as yet unknown (to most of us).

put to that all of the tracks we know about and already have as bootlegs, i'm still anticipating
-with a lot of excitement despite slow proceedings lately- about 600+ songs that I would love

love love love LOOOOOOOOVE to have at my fingertips to enjoy to the end of my days.

[Edited 6/3/25 14:27pm]

olb99 said:

rudeboy4711 said:

Even beyond the truly unheard and unknown material, there's still plenty of vault material that has only circulated as low quality bootlegs that desperately needs a hi-res official release. Hell, there's even shit that Prince released in his own lifetime (i.e. "Crystal Ball" and "Sexual Suicide") that could use a proper master so it sounds better than the brickwalled mess he gave us in 1998.

Sometimes people get so hung up on the "already heard it" part that they don't think about the sound improvements that could & should be made to select previously released material. Not you, OP, just some fans in general.

bozojones said:

Even beyond the truly unheard and unknown material, there's still plenty of vault material that has only circulated as low quality bootlegs that desperately needs a hi-res official release. Hell, there's even shit that Prince released in his own lifetime (i.e. "Crystal Ball" and "Sexual Suicide") that could use a proper master so it sounds better than the brickwalled mess he gave us in 1998.

Sometimes people get so hung up on the "already heard it" part that they don't think about the sound improvements that could & should be made to select previously released material. Not you, OP, just some fans in general.

100% agree! I'll take whatever i can get, but I hope that (if and) when music starts to emanate from the estate, it will include high quality remasters of his classic albums.

bizzie said:

FJODOR said:

apart from the tracks that we have been able to collect and cherish over the past 35/40 years
there are at least 250 tracks that I know in name only.

quite a chunck of those came to light only from the police photos of paisley park in 2016 from
their titles being visible on boxes of tapes.

i'd say there were about 30/40 tracks that I'd never even heard of on those photo's, most of
them dating from between 2003/2010.

so if you take that as a rough guide, i'd say there have to be at least 8 songs per year that are
as of yet completely unknown to us from about 1996-2016.

which would make about 160 songs ate a conservative estimate.

add to that the aprox 240 ish tracks that we know titles for but which are not circulatig to any
of the 'casual' fanatics.

that would mean that, once again, conservatively, we're looking at 400+ songs.

but there were a few surprises on each SDE until now so that means there must also be some
songs from pre-95 that are as yet unknown (to most of us).

put to that all of the tracks we know about and already have as bootlegs, i'm still anticipating
-with a lot of excitement despite slow proceedings lately- about 600+ songs that I would love

love love love LOOOOOOOOVE to have at my fingertips to enjoy to the end of my days.

[Edited 6/3/25 14:27pm]

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Please have a look at the link in my signature, to see my guestimates about the size of the vault and the possible number of tapes.
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As I've explained there: what we can see and identify from the photos is just the tip of the iceberg, ONLY ABOUT 6% OF THE TAPES – and we have absolutely no idea how much more stuff the hard drives contain!.

databank said:

bizzie said:

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Nobody would buy such a book, even not if it revealed incredibly sensitive info about the sources and the people who made the bootlegs.

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[Edited 6/3/25 12:08pm]

Not everything in life is about commercialism.

I'd definitely be interested in such a book - but at this point it will have to be an encyclopedia, documenting every unauthorized release.

psyche2 said:

databank said:

bizzie said: Not everything in life is about commercialism.

I'd definitely be interested in such a book - but at this point it will have to be an encyclopedia, documenting every unauthorized release.

To be perfectly clear I don't think such a book will ever be written, but if there's a parallel universe where it was, I'd love to travel there and read it. I was not thinking of an encyclopedia, more of the stories behind the leaks (which would often be complicated without incriminating people) and all those crazy stories we've heard over the years, like fans stealing tapes from another, dying fan on his deathbed, another fan pretending to have a lethal disease in order to obtain tapes before he'd "die", this guy who used uncirculating material to lure girls home, then into bed (there were probably more than one person doing this...), fans purposedly degrading songs' sound quality before selling tapes to bootleggers, etc.

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And there were the stories of the fans discovering the outtakes (particularly in the early days), the hunt for bootlegs in record stores and how they shaped their relationship to Prince's music. I don't think there's any other artist whose fans' perception of their music was that much shaped by bootlegs.

Came a point when Prince was in a competion with himself, not only himself in the past as he says in Don't Play Me, but his own vault. Take ONA for example: at the time of release, many fans complained, quite absurdly yet quite vividly, that he should have released Intimate Moments instead (without realizing, it appears, that they were talking about informal practice sessions recorded straight to cassette, not proper studio sessions). Quite a few other songs, like Old Friends 4 Sale, would probably have been very well received at the time of release... had another version, deemed superior, not leaked earlier. It also happened with live releases being compared to live bootlegs...

It's funny: I'm currently listening to the latest episode of the Violet podcast. It's an interview with Ersin Leibowitch, who wrote a book in French about Prince ("Prince Xperience. Dans la tête du génie"). One listener asked him whether he would be interested in writing a book specifically about bootlegs. His answer was basically that bootlegs are an integral part of the story, that you cannot really understand Prince, or why fans are so obsessed with him, etc., without considering bootlegs (and live recordings in particular). So you have to talk about them in the context of the bigger picture. At least that's his perspective as a writer. And that's what he did when needed, apparently, but I haven't read his book.

He also mentioned at some point that books and especially books about music don't sell. So, yeah, you don't write those kinds of books for the money. You write them because you care. And it should be the same with releases, but I don't expect lawyers to understand that spirit. I guess we'll see in a few days...

And, yes, we've all heard stories about how recordings leaked and I like them as much as anybody else, but almost nobody will want to talk about those things openly, for obvious reasons.

[Edited 6/4/25 11:56am]

I was actually thinking more of something like the good old Uptown magazine numbers devoted to bootlegs. Obviously such an equivalent these days have to be a real massive book or more likely a series of books. I reckon I love the shabby and ugly artwork, mispelled song titles or info, even to a ceratin degree the lo-fi sound quality (Black Album anyone?). And overtime in the late 90's and 2000's, bootlegs became in some cases arguably superior to the real official product. It's a tricky subject that for obvious reasons can't be discussed openly, but to me it's an integral part of the Prince fandom.

Discogs already has 1,255 entries for unofficial releases:

https://www.discogs.com/a...Unofficial

I don't remember how many entries those Uptown issues had.

[Edited 6/4/25 14:09pm]

psyche2 said:

databank said:

bizzie said: Not everything in life is about commercialism.

I'd definitely be interested in such a book - but at this point it will have to be an encyclopedia, documenting every unauthorized release.

.
It'd be impossible to document EVERY unauthorised release. Most stuff is rereleased on countless of bootleg labels and fan CDRs that are impossible to keep track of, and there's also a ton of grey-area live recordings out there. Frankly I would't even see a point in trying to list every boot as there are so many repetitions of material.

olb99 said:

Discogs already has 1,255 entries for unofficial releases:

https://www.discogs.com/a...Unofficial

I don't remember how many entries those Uptown issues had.

[Edited 6/4/25 14:09pm]

Definitely not that many keeping in mind the magazine stopped at the beginning of the century (?). But the info they covered was pure gold at the time.

Here's a top-level approach: Let's assume Prince recorded a song every 3 days on avarage, at least in his prolific phase. Let's say that phase lasted a good 20 years... So that would make it about 2.400 songs give or take, and probably some more afterwards.

So yes, I beleive there is plenty of stuff no-one knows about, somewhere hidden in the Vault

But of course I could be absolutely wrong in my assumptions

psyche2 said:

olb99 said:

Discogs already has 1,255 entries for unofficial releases:

https://www.discogs.com/a...Unofficial

I don't remember how many entries those Uptown issues had.

[Edited 6/4/25 14:09pm]

Definitely not that many keeping in mind the magazine stopped at the beginning of the century (?). But the info they covered was pure gold at the time.

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Uptown only reported on bootlegs early on, plus there's the infamous "issue 4". And the lists of bootlegs in Per Nilsen's A Documentary books.

lurker316 said:

Several people have commented in this thread that bootleggers would be reluctant to tell their stories because they typically acquired their tapes through unethical or even illegal means. That’s true, but don’t you think at this point, almost a decade after Prince’s passing, they might be willing to share those stories? From a criminal standpoint, the statute of limitations has likely long since passed. And from a practical standpoint, they don’t have to worry about pissing off Prince. Even if they piss off their original source, so what? They’re not leaking anymore, so it’s no big deal to burn that bridge. Bottom line, at this point most of people involved having nothing to lose by telling their stories. The secrecy is just something that makes them feel important.

Or they don't feel like telling us anything because they think it's not of our concern according to some of them (not my opinion because I like to know EWVERYTHING!) I have heard that far too manuy times over the last 40 years

Prince being alive or dead is not the problem. People just don't want to admit publicly that they did unethical or even illegal things in the past. Even if it was 40 years ago. It's simple as that. Some of those people still have jobs. And even if they're retired, maybe they care about their reputation.

I'm perfectly fine telling my friends that I sometimes drive well above the speed limit (to use a harmless example ), but I don't want this to be quoted in a book or something. On the Org, yes, but not in a book.

bizzie said:

databank said:

And most of the circulating leaks have not come out "on sites like YouTube" nor "over the pasr few years". There's a whole, 40 years old, parallel history of Prince bootlegs that is probably vastly unknown to younger fans and that would deserve a whole book to be written about.

.

Nobody would buy such a book, even not if it revealed incredibly sensitive info about the sources and the people who made the bootlegs.

.

[Edited 6/3/25 12:08pm]

Call me "nobody" because I would pre-order such a tome!