keywiz said:

olb99 said:

When I heard/read that they were going to release one-off singles like the previous team, I immediately thought: how many did we actually get from them (say between 2016 and 2022)? Answer: not many. So my expectations went back to very low again..

"Purple Pick of the Week": that's one thing they could easily revive.

[Edited 6/20/25 7:11am]

Particularly since there is so much material that is unreleasable on physical format. I mean for example they couldn't even stuff all the Cream and Gett Off remixes, the radio broadcast edit of Glam Slam '91 or the extended final version of Insatiable on the D&P SDE, and we know there's a gazillion different mixes/edits of pretty much every song in the vault. Most are only of interest to hardcore fans, so not necessarily stuff they want to put on YT and Spotify, but drop 'em on Bandcamp and there's a bunch of us who'll buy 'em for sure.

databank said:

Particularly since there is so much material that is unreleasable on physical format. I mean for example they couldn't even stuff all the Cream and Gett Off remixes, the radio broadcast edit of Glam Slam '91 or the extended final version of Insatiable on the D&P SDE

.

Because of their stupid vinyl obsession.

bizzie said:

databank said:

Particularly since there is so much material that is unreleasable on physical format. I mean for example they couldn't even stuff all the Cream and Gett Off remixes, the radio broadcast edit of Glam Slam '91 or the extended final version of Insatiable on the D&P SDE

.

Because of their stupid vinyl obsession.

I'm not sure it's just that. I think even if we were still in the CD-only days, adding an additional CD for redundant remixes may have been considered excessive. Even then, remasters/reissues with bonus tracks were rarely exhaustive, particularly when multiple versions of the same songs required an additional CD.

databank said:

bizzie said:

.

Because of their stupid vinyl obsession.

I'm not sure it's just that.

.

It was obviously so in this case: they wanted it to fit on a 2LP.

.

I think even if we were still in the CD-only days, adding an additional CD for redundant remixes may have been considered excessive. Even then, remasters/reissues with bonus tracks were rarely exhaustive, particularly when multiple versions of the same songs required an additional CD.

.

Adding an extra CD (or even two) is a minimal cost. IMHO they should have even included promo-only mixes and unreleased mixes. Just be comprehensive.

.

On SuperDeluxeEdition.com over and over the same complaints pop up with box sets: "why doesn't this include X, Y and Z?" And with good reason: these box sets are most likely the last chance to get properly and consistently mastered verions of those songs.

.

There's never going to be another expanded edition of D&P with all those remixes etc., so now we're screwed because a lot of them are not available in remastered form, not even digital-only. Do I "need" 50 remixes of "Gett Off"? No. But when I'm paying a lot of money for a box set, I do want that box set to be comprehensive, and I really dislike it when some unrelated technical limitation prevents that. The limits of vinyl should not have been a limit on what the CD set can contain.

.

I think there are still tracks Prince released in the 1980s that are vinyl only. Plenty of Prince's Warners era releases still haven't gotten proper and consistent remasters. IMHO that should have been the easy part, and yet it still hasn't been done.

bizzie said:

keywiz said:

Ndorphinmachina said:

I think the numbers favour Prince. Assuming 1 song per week over 30 years = 1560 songs. 2 songs per week over the same period = 3120 3 songs per week = 4680 Even 3 songs per week is likely conservative, as is 30 years.

.

Let's take 1986, a year known to be among his most prolific in his prime.

.

https://princevault.com/i...orded_1986

.

102 entries, and four of those are for videos. So not even two per week.

.

Because the reality is that there are practical issues: touring, making videos (note how in An Evening With Kevin Smith he mentions how Prince's assistant said she's produced twenty or so unreleased videos for him; those things take time), etc.

.

There are documented cases of him working multiple days on a single song (e.g. "Purple Rain").

.

Are there unreleased songs that are unknown to us? Sure. Are there tons of them? I don't know. Look at W2A: most of that album was known. Isn't it odd that they went through all of that unreleased music and all they could find is an abandoned album where we already knew most of the songs? You'd think it would be more interesting to release something brand new.

.

And sure, we don't know how much of the vault has been indexed, but you'd expect them to focus on a) the oldest and most vulnerable material and b) releasable unreleased albums. Even if that index is based on the existing documentation (and thus likely incomplete), you'd think they could easily find multiple unreleased albums from the last decade or so. If I were the estate, I'd use those for vinyl RSD releases, and then release expanded editions of those albums on CD etc. later on.

.

Look at the D&P SDE: that is an era where we have less documentation, and yet most of the outtakes were already known, at least by title.

bizzie said:

Ndorphinmachina said:

I think the numbers favour Prince. Assuming 1 song per week over 30 years = 1560 songs. 2 songs per week over the same period = 3120 3 songs per week = 4680 Even 3 songs per week is likely conservative, as is 30 years.

.

Let's take 1986, a year known to be among his most prolific in his prime.

.

https://princevault.com/i...orded_1986

.

102 entries, and four of those are for videos. So not even two per week.

.

Because the reality is that there are practical issues: touring, making videos (note how in An Evening With Kevin Smith he mentions how Prince's assistant said she's produced twenty or so unreleased videos for him; those things take time), etc.

.

There are documented cases of him working multiple days on a single song (e.g. "Purple Rain").

.

Are there unreleased songs that are unknown to us? Sure. Are there tons of them? I don't know. Look at W2A: most of that album was known. Isn't it odd that they went through all of that unreleased music and all they could find is an abandoned album where we already knew most of the songs? You'd think it would be more interesting to release something brand new.

.

And sure, we don't know how much of the vault has been indexed, but you'd expect them to focus on a) the oldest and most vulnerable material and b) releasable unreleased albums. Even if that index is based on the existing documentation (and thus likely incomplete), you'd think they could easily find multiple unreleased albums from the last decade or so. If I were the estate, I'd use those for vinyl RSD releases, and then release expanded editions of those albums on CD etc. later on.

.

Look at the D&P SDE: that is an era where we have less documentation, and yet most of the outtakes were already known, at least by title.

.
Let's take a look at this from another angle:

.

I calculated (based on the police photos of PP) that there were 68 shelving units inside the original vault room, each having 5 shelves, so that's 340 shelves in total. These 340 shelves have the capacity to hold 4080 reels of 2" multitrack tapes, or roughly 10,000 reels of 1/2" tapes, or maybe around 13,000 reels of 1/4" tapes. As the shelves contained a mixture of 2" analog multitracks, 1/2" digital multitracks, 1/2" analog mixdown and 1/4" analog mixdown tapes, and some shelves didn't have any tapes, I'm guessing that there could've been maybe 7-7500 tapes inside the Vault, with perhaps 2000 reels of 2" multitracks.
In addition to these 2000 multitrack tapes, I'm guessing (based on the photos we've seen) that there could've been perhaps another 500 or so 2" multitrack tapes scattered in other rooms (there were some in the video vault, some on the floor in the trophy room and some on shelves in the garage storage area).
.
So my estimate is that P left behind ~2500 reels of original multitracks, and if they only contain 2 songs each on average, that's ~5000 songs. (Some of them can be different recordings of the same song, of course, and there are also some multitracks of concerts.) How many of those do we know?
.
And let's not even start guessing how many live (and rehearsal, soundcheck etc) recordings all those stacks of hard drives contain...
.

[Edited 6/27/25 11:36am]

Kares said:

bizzie said:

.

Let's take 1986, a year known to be among his most prolific in his prime.

.

https://princevault.com/i...orded_1986

.

102 entries, and four of those are for videos. So not even two per week.

.

Because the reality is that there are practical issues: touring, making videos (note how in An Evening With Kevin Smith he mentions how Prince's assistant said she's produced twenty or so unreleased videos for him; those things take time), etc.

.

There are documented cases of him working multiple days on a single song (e.g. "Purple Rain").

.

Are there unreleased songs that are unknown to us? Sure. Are there tons of them? I don't know. Look at W2A: most of that album was known. Isn't it odd that they went through all of that unreleased music and all they could find is an abandoned album where we already knew most of the songs? You'd think it would be more interesting to release something brand new.

.

And sure, we don't know how much of the vault has been indexed, but you'd expect them to focus on a) the oldest and most vulnerable material and b) releasable unreleased albums. Even if that index is based on the existing documentation (and thus likely incomplete), you'd think they could easily find multiple unreleased albums from the last decade or so. If I were the estate, I'd use those for vinyl RSD releases, and then release expanded editions of those albums on CD etc. later on.

.

Look at the D&P SDE: that is an era where we have less documentation, and yet most of the outtakes were already known, at least by title.

.
Let's take a look at this from another angle:

.

I calculated (based on the police photos of PP) that there were 68 shelving units inside the original vault room, each having 5 shelves, so that's 340 shelves in total. These 340 shelves have the capacity to hold 4080 reels of 2" multitrack tapes, or roughly 10,000 reels of 1/2" tapes, or maybe around 13,000 reels of 1/4" tapes. As the shelves contained a mixture of 2" analog multitracks, 1/2" digital multitracks, 1/2" analog mixdown and 1/4" analog mixdown tapes, and some shelves didn't have any tapes, I'm guessing that there could've been maybe 7-7500 tapes inside the Vault, with perhaps 2000 reels of 2" multitracks.
In addition to these 2000 multitrack tapes, I'm guessing (based on the photos we've seen) that there could've been perhaps another 500 or so 2" multitrack tapes scattered in other rooms (there were some in the video vault, some on the floor in the trophy room and some on shelves in the garage storage area).
.
So my estimate is that P left behind ~2500 reels of original multitracks, and if they only contain 2 songs each on average, that's ~5000 songs. (Some of them can be different recordings of the same song, of course, and there are also some multitracks of concerts.) How many of those do we know?
.
And let's not even start guessing how many live (and rehearsal, soundcheck etc) recordings all those stacks of hard drives contain...
.

[Edited 6/27/25 11:36am]

There was more than one vault!!

rap said:

Kares said:

.
Let's take a look at this from another angle:

.

I calculated (based on the police photos of PP) that there were 68 shelving units inside the original vault room, each having 5 shelves, so that's 340 shelves in total. These 340 shelves have the capacity to hold 4080 reels of 2" multitrack tapes, or roughly 10,000 reels of 1/2" tapes, or maybe around 13,000 reels of 1/4" tapes. As the shelves contained a mixture of 2" analog multitracks, 1/2" digital multitracks, 1/2" analog mixdown and 1/4" analog mixdown tapes, and some shelves didn't have any tapes, I'm guessing that there could've been maybe 7-7500 tapes inside the Vault, with perhaps 2000 reels of 2" multitracks.
In addition to these 2000 multitrack tapes, I'm guessing (based on the photos we've seen) that there could've been perhaps another 500 or so 2" multitrack tapes scattered in other rooms (there were some in the video vault, some on the floor in the trophy room and some on shelves in the garage storage area).
.
So my estimate is that P left behind ~2500 reels of original multitracks, and if they only contain 2 songs each on average, that's ~5000 songs. (Some of them can be different recordings of the same song, of course, and there are also some multitracks of concerts.) How many of those do we know?
.
And let's not even start guessing how many live (and rehearsal, soundcheck etc) recordings all those stacks of hard drives contain...
.

[Edited 6/27/25 11:36am]

There was more than one vault!!

.
If you read my post you'll notice I talk about the original vault room plus other rooms used for audio tape storage, but I didn't talk about the film/video vault which was a separate vault.

Kares said:

rap said:

There was more than one vault!!

.
If you read my post you'll notice I talk about the original vault room plus other rooms used for audio tape storage, but I didn't talk about the film/video vault which was a separate vault.

I'm talking about outside of Paisley Park.

rap said:

Kares said:

.
If you read my post you'll notice I talk about the original vault room plus other rooms used for audio tape storage, but I didn't talk about the film/video vault which was a separate vault.

I'm talking about outside of Paisley Park.

.
I don't recall anyone ever confirming that any recording media would've been stored outside of PP. Anytime I read about other locations it was reckoned they were used for storing old gear and clothing and other stuff.

Ndorphinmachina said:

I'd also add that on the whole, Prince wasn't great at picking singles (especially later in his career). I'm not sure his taste in his own music was completely different when it came to album tracks.

I beg to disagree. Not necessarily on the choices of singles, but on him choosing to release subpar songs over great ones. If nothing else so far, bootlegs and posthumous releases showed us that Prince was great at curating his own work. And I find it particularly remarkable that when it comes to the DF/Camille/CB86/SOTT era sessions, arguably the era most consider the peak of his career, he seemed to know the value of what he had, thus managed to release most of the great songs that couldn't make it to the album in later years, leaving very little material of great caliber left for the posthumous 3 CD SDE (which would have been truly mindblowing had all those songs not found their way to other releases in his lifetime).

Of course he kept many very impressive gems in the vault, but for each All My Dreams, I'd say we have maybe 20 songs that are demoish or just fine, but not anywhere as mindblowing as what he released in his lifetime from any given similar era. I'm always happy to hear anything I haven't heard before, but I doubt there's a lot of material in the vault that would revolutionize our perception of his music.

databank said:

but I doubt there's a lot of material in the vault that would revolutionize our perception of his music.

U do realize that this makes ZERO sense.

What artist has ever had his/her vault material do this? I'll wait.

[Edited 7/2/25 0:28am]

Gooddoctor23 said:

databank said:

Gooddoctor23 said:

U do relaize that this makes ZERO sense.

What artist has ever had his/her vault material do this? I'll wait.

What I meant was material that would deeply surprise us either because we never thought Prince would go there or a whole album or set of sessions we'd find so incredibly brilliant that it'd challenge his best published work. Obviously I hope I'm wrong, but I'd be surprised. And that doesn't mean there isn't a lot we could totally enjoy. There's a lot of already circulating unreleased material that's truly enjoyable. But my reply was a reply to the notion that he didn't necessarily picked the best material to release. I just think that for the most part, he did.

I'd bet you $ Prince has quite of bit more Blues, Gospel, Shread Juice (Prince playing a purple Buckethead) and Punk junk in that vault, not 2 mention a ton of cover material which covers a bunch of bases. I really want that Gospel & Shread Juice myself. (if it exist)

I would be surprised if the best of Prince is still in the Vault, indeed. But it doesn't really matter. We're talking about Prince. Even his "average" stuff is exciting to me. And we know from bootlegs that there is still a lot of good material in the Vault. I could list a lof of studio outtakes, live recordings, etc. that we have in poor or average quality that we absolutely need to have in excellent/perfect quality.

databank said:

Ndorphinmachina said:

I'd take live studio versions of everything. Acoustic versions of everything. Did he ever follow through with his threat to rerecord everything? Is there a blues album? Was "The Undertaker" his heaviest guitar album or is there more? Will we ever get the stuff he recorded with Lenny Kravitz? The other Rita Ora song... Miles Davis? Just who and how many other artists did he work with? There's so many questions. [Edited 7/3/25 14:35pm]

And so few releases

I feel for You (demo)
Do me baby (demo)
Free (acoustic)


what they all have in common is that it's only prince, playing a song he wrote, alone.

so that is the easiest thing to release from a legal/rights perspective, I guess?

the exception to this is the only other stand alone release; the vault part 1.

all a share together now -which features cc and joshua dunham as well as some horns

but that has a weird history of release anyway. was it even planned to be released to
a wider public as just a single or was it part of a package that fell through etc etc. lot
of unknown variables there.

but what they willingly and confidently put on streaming are the 3 demos/acoustics.

[Edited 7/3/25 21:26pm]

FJODOR said:

I feel for You (demo)
Do me baby (demo)
Free (acoustic)


what they all have in common is that it's only prince, playing a song he wrote, alone.

so that is the easiest thing to release from a legal/rights perspective, I guess?

the exception to this is the only other stand alone release; the vault part 1.

all a share together now -which features cc and joshua dunham as well as some horns

but that has a weird history of release anyway. was it even planned to be released to
a wider public as just a single or was it part of a package that fell through etc etc. lot
of unknown variables there.

but what they willingly and confidently put on streaming are the 3 demos/acoustics.

[Edited 7/3/25 21:26pm]

I guess the acoustic demos, like APAAM83, were selected to give a more intimate access to Prince, stuff he wouldn't release, but IDK.

MIRvmn1 said:

I think most of the surprises from the vault will be post-1995 material. There are some things I really want to hear that could be amazing, like Madrid 2 Chicago (2002) and The Rainbow Children 2 (2004).

I used to have two holy grails: The Flesh and Madrid 2 Chicago.

Ever since I got the Flesh tapes (which, thanks to BigChick's kindness —RIP—, was a few years before they leaked), Madrid 2 Chicago —if it was ever properly completed— remains the one thing I want to see released before I die. Maybe I'll be disappointed if I am ever lucky enough to hear it, but I think probably not.

Ndorphinmachina said:

databank said:

I'm not sure subpar is the right word... But, TGE (great album), "We March" made the cut... Over some of those outtakes? Over Days? Acknowledge Me? Interactive?

I agree that We March was much weaker than other songs that didn't make the cut, and I'd add Ripopgodazippa and Hide The Bone to your list, on the other hand it was kind of an obvious new jack swing song and it had a political message abour race, a topic that seemed important to Prince at the time, so I think it explains why it ended-up on the record. We at least know he thought Interactive didn't work back to back with Endoprhinmachine, and I think everyone agrees he chose the better of the two songs. I mean obviously we all have personal preferences and they can't always be in line with Prince's or what he felt was right. As an artist, you often have to kill your darling for the sake of the bigger picture.

D&P - Thunder? Daddy Pop - he seemed to really think Daddy Pop was something special, it's not completely without merit, it's not Jughead, but it's nothing to write home about.

On the other hand, what else did surface from the D&P sessions that was cohesive with that album's sound and would have been significantly better on it than Daddy Pop or Jughead? Nothing IMHO.

It's debatable, but the original version of Come, (while it probably hasn't aged as well as the released version, was vastly superior.

I think you mean the second version (the one from the 10.000 Wallpaper)? It's debatable indeed, I love all last three versions equally, that one, the one from TBE, the album cut, but in the end I think he once again reasoned that 1/ the one he picked was more in line with the rest of the record and 2/ a 12 minutes extravaganza with the Hornheads on top of their game would make a stronger impression. Had that one been left in the vault, we'd probably be like "why the fuck did he keep this for himself?"

He obviously thought highly of "Rave un2 the joy" (the song). That guitar line shows up like an echo throughout his career.

Yeah, IDK about that one but yeah, he seemed to really dig it.

The song it's however is mid at best. To be absolutely clear, I'm not for a second saying "Prince couldn't curate Prince". If that was the case I wouldn't have fallen in love with so many of his albums. But I am saying that he often made quite puzzling choices in terms opting to include so-so songs and leaving some absolute bangers without a home.

I think it very much had to do with the notion of "having a home", i.e. it didn't fit on an album, but maybe he thought it would be sad to waste it as a b-side, so he kept it for future archive collections like CB98. On the one hand, you'd think Crystal Ball would have been a fantastic b-side on a SOTT single 12''. The music press would certainly have been amazed. On the other hand, it'd sound weird to waste such a masterpiece on a single, at a time when once out of print, singles weren't so easy to hear unlike today with streaming.

Which gives me hope for what might still be in the vault... If "Emotional Crucifixion" ends up being a big nothing I might have to rethink that, but until then...

Of course he kept many very impressive gems in the vault, but for each All My Dreams, I'd say we have maybe 20 songs that are demoish or just fine, but not anywhere as mindblowing as what he released in his lifetime from any given similar era. I'm always happy to hear anything I haven't heard before, but I doubt there's a lot of material in the vault that would revolutionize our perception of his music.

I'd take live studio versions of everything. Acoustic versions of everything. Did he ever follow through with his threat to rerecord everything? Is there a blues album? Was "The Undertaker" his heaviest guitar album or is there more? Will we ever get the stuff he recorded with Lenny Kravitz? The other Rita Ora song... Miles Davis? Just who and how many other artists did he work with? There's so many questions. [Edited 7/3/25 14:35pm]

I'd take anything too. As long as they don't frankenstein it, the Estate never have and will never hear me complain about them releasing anything. I'd never go like some people complaining something else should have been released instead, or that the material isn't worthy of release. It doesn't really matter to me how much I enjoy it, I'm just glad to hear something new, if only as an object of study.

love2thenines2003 said:

keywiz said:

Don't think so, unfortunately.

But I think the Prince Vault is going to be like the JFK Assassination Files. No matter how much gets released, there will always be people who believe the really good stuff is still being held back.

You're wrong because U don't know... I saw lists of some trax they are new to me even if the real unknown outtakes must be the minority... however there are a lot of alternate takes and demos which must be stellars as I can guess on the paper and sure IMO they are in reality!

We know what we know.

And what we know is that of all the stuff released since his passing, there has been very little that was truly new. Virtually all of it has been bootlegged or, at the very least, we were aware of the titles.

The idea that there are all sorts of full, unreleased albums that have never leaked, or even super-monster tracks that were never released and never bootlegged is seeming more and more of a myth as time goes on.

I will be as thrilled as anyone if they find a cache of this stuff and start releasing it. But it is could very well be true that the answer to the question "why are they only releasing stuff we already know about? Why don't they release something TRULY rare and surprising?" could be that such material doesn't actually exist.

keywiz said:

love2thenines2003 said:

keywiz said: You're wrong because U don't know... I saw lists of some trax they are new to me even if the real unknown outtakes must be the minority... however there are a lot of alternate takes and demos which must be stellars as I can guess on the paper and sure IMO they are in reality!

We know what we know.

And what we know is that of all the stuff released since his passing, there has been very little that was truly new. Virtually all of it has been bootlegged or, at the very least, we were aware of the titles.

The idea that there are all sorts of full, unreleased albums that have never leaked, or even super-monster tracks that were never released and never bootlegged is seeming more and more of a myth as time goes on.

I will be as thrilled as anyone if they find a cache of this stuff and start releasing it. But it is could very well be true that the answer to the question "why are they only releasing stuff we already know about? Why don't they release something TRULY rare and surprising?" could be that such material doesn't actually exist.

lol.....this makes zero sense.

Gooddoctor23 said:

keywiz said:

We know what we know.

And what we know is that of all the stuff released since his passing, there has been very little that was truly new. Virtually all of it has been bootlegged or, at the very least, we were aware of the titles.

The idea that there are all sorts of full, unreleased albums that have never leaked, or even super-monster tracks that were never released and never bootlegged is seeming more and more of a myth as time goes on.

I will be as thrilled as anyone if they find a cache of this stuff and start releasing it. But it is could very well be true that the answer to the question "why are they only releasing stuff we already know about? Why don't they release something TRULY rare and surprising?" could be that such material doesn't actually exist.

lol.....this makes zero sense.

it makes perfect sense.

How many tracks that have been released on any of the deluxe editions were we unaware existed?

You really think it's just a coincidence that they only have released the already-bootlegged tracks?