databank said:

freohrrr said:

themanfromneptune said:

freohrrr said:

I also had been sent this set and was told to not share it anywhere (at least not widely), and to answer your question, the main reason was that so it didn't end up in the hands of bootleg labels such as Eye Records. This set of tracks has been sent around for over a year at this point, you just had to know where to look and/or who to ask (as well as just being trustworthy).

.

TBH this seems bullshit to me.

I don't know what to tell you then...

ShellyMcG said:

freohrrr said:

I also had been sent this set and was told to not share it anywhere (at least not widely), and to answer your question, the main reason was that so it didn't end up in the hands of bootleg labels such as Eye Records. This set of tracks has been sent around for over a year at this point, you just had to know where to look and/or who to ask (as well as just being trustworthy).

But that doesn't make sense either. If it's available for free due to Prince fans sharing it freely with each other then Eye Records or whoever have nothing to sell.

I've seen people getting upset that Eye Records or whomever puts material like this onto discs
and sells it for pretty high prices.

But that is something that will always happen, heck they even printed copies of the npgmc only
stuff like Cnote and Xpecation etc for a while.

I don't see a way around that happening and if it is the reason for keeping material under wraps
or demanding it only be shared in very small circles to keep it out of the hands of bootleggers,
the logical conclusion is that you could never leak/circulate anything anymore because people
who want to make money off it will always be there, waiting to pick up the crumbs and run with
them.

Which is yet another reason why the actual estate should be releasing this material, in the very
best possible quality and going hard after anyone who then bootlegs that material.

ShellyMcG said:

freohrrr said:

I also had been sent this set and was told to not share it anywhere (at least not widely), and to answer your question, the main reason was that so it didn't end up in the hands of bootleg labels such as Eye Records. This set of tracks has been sent around for over a year at this point, you just had to know where to look and/or who to ask (as well as just being trustworthy).

But that doesn't make sense either. If it's available for free due to Prince fans sharing it freely with each other then Eye Records or whoever have nothing to sell.

Even if it's available for free, Eye Records will still press copies of it on CD and vinyl and 8 track tape and Edison Phonograph or whatever. There's still a market of (albeit somewhat stupid) Prince fans who will eat up whatever bullshit that Eye and other labels put out.

as for protecting the identity of people who started to circulate the source material,
i guess that only applies to whatever was compiled and reviewed by an in-crowd at
some point after spring 2016.

because everything that leaked before that, I can see how it would have been very
prudent to keep some things in close circles due to prince probably being able to
pinpoint exactly or very closely who shared something beyond the inner circle.

and yet, prince post 2000 kept on working with at least one individual whom he had
to have known pretty much 100% for sure had been the reason for a lot of songs of
his ending up on the traders market.

he cared whenever he wanted to care, it seems. and at other times he hardly cared
at all.

freohrrr said:

ShellyMcG said:

freohrrr said: But that doesn't make sense either. If it's available for free due to Prince fans sharing it freely with each other then Eye Records or whoever have nothing to sell.

Even if it's available for free, Eye Records will still press copies of it on CD and vinyl and 8 track tape and Edison Phonograph or whatever. There's still a market of (albeit somewhat stupid) Prince fans who will eat up whatever bullshit that Eye and other labels put out.

the only thing that can dry up the bootleggers source of income is if prince has an official
website and store front where everything is available. everything.

starting with official and already released material. protege acts, songs written for etc,
all his own albums, singles, mixes.

beyond that, feed that site with new material, live and studio and video, constantly.

prince could have, should have started that up when he was still alive. he was 1st on the

internet and if he'd remained in one easily visible and accessible place without bullshit or
stuff disappearing at will, he could have built something truly amazing.

the estate could still do it, but they seem unwilling or at least very reluctant.

So without naming names, who/what would be the source of these tracks?

Gooddoctor23 said:

So without naming names, who/what would be the source of these tracks?

If you're asking about who created the files, they were sourced from .wavs from The Estate and Neversin's personal collection, and then watered down/converted to 128kbps .mp3s by someone named Frank Taylor.

(a short review I wrote on Facebook after listening a few times)

[Diamonds & Love: the leftovers]

Whoever decided to share the tracks from the twenty-nine unreleased Prince songs that the previous management of his musical estate had prepared for a project—later dismantled, revised, and mostly shelved or even destroyed by the current Estate—has all my love.

The story, for those unfamiliar, is that of the *Diamond & Love SDE*, a mega box set that was supposed to include remastered versions of *Diamonds & Pearls* and *O)+>* (the album with no name but a symbol, commonly referred to as *Love Symbol*), along with a wealth of unreleased material—about fifty “minor” tracks from the 1990–91 period, more or less.I have to say, the idea wasn’t the brightest—especially with the obsession of releasing everything on vinyl, producing tons of material that, between singles and photo books with our man’s doe-eyed stare, end up costing absurd amounts of money.

Meanwhile, there was a change of management within the Estate—I'll spare you the details.The new team made a series of, shall we say, questionable choices, such as blocking a completed Netflix documentary on Prince, reducing the release of unreleased material, and limiting themselves to re-packaging what the previous management had already prepared.*Diamonds & Love* was therefore split into two separate packages; some unreleased tracks were cut from the lineup, and—two years ago—the *Diamonds & Pearls SDE* set was released, containing about half of the unreleased tracks from the original project.

Some time later, stolen photos from the production of *Love Symbol DE* surfaced online, along with a list of the remaining unreleased songs that had yet to see the light of day.A mysterious copy of *Love Symbol DE* even appeared on eBay, and so, among us Prince addicts, we started thinking—this is it! The second batch is coming. The other 29 unreleased tracks.But nothing happened.

I have no idea what became of the printed copies of *Love Symbol DE*. I’m not even sure a *Love Symbol SDE* truly exists.And even if it did, some of the unreleased tracks that the new management cut from the *Diamonds & Pearls* project wouldn’t have been part of it anyway—they belonged to material from the previous album.

If you haven’t followed much of what I’ve written, here’s the short version:29 unreleased Prince tracks—already mastered, and partially even pressed on vinyl and CD—were locked back in the vault, while the remastered and “expanded” *Love Symbol* copies are gathering dust somewhere, will likely never be released, and may already have been destroyed.

Why? I have no idea. I have my theories, but I’ll keep them to myself—along with a few voodoo dolls stuck with pins that I keep in my desk drawer.

Anyway, someone who had access to the unreleased *Diamonds & Love* material wisely made a digital copy, shared it with a small secret circle of friends, and yesterday one of them kindly uploaded everything online—a complete leak of all 29 tracks that the Estate had buried in the depths of its own incompetence and inadequacy.
Thank you, unknown thief—and a big screw-you to the entire Estate.

How are these 29 tracks?

Honestly—not exceptional, but very interesting. Listening to them today feels like going back to the bootlegs of the nineties: a mix of everything—demos, songs written for others, experiments, alternate versions, unlistenable stuff, and little gems.

For those only interested in the gems, *I Hear Ur Voice* and *Face 2 Face* are certainly among them.But it would be unfair to single out the “good” songs, because this collection isn’t about hits—it’s about the sheer variety of ideas, the care in arranging even small and unexpected things.For example, in the demo of *Dreams*, halfway through Prince starts doing some vocal improvisations that froze me in my tracks the first time I heard them. Ethereal.*There* has gorgeous overlapping Prince harmonies.*Rave Church Style* is a torrent of rhythm.Other tracks are just electronic beats over which Prince throws sounds and voices, shifting from hip-hop to rap to funk, and then drifting away into a new song altogether.*Goodbye* feels like at least three different songs changing every two and a half minutes.

The fact that there are no “great” songs makes this collection moving—much like the *Diamonds & Pearls* set released two years ago. You can feel Prince’s curiosity, his chameleon-like nature, his chase after the mainstream and his simultaneous escape into his own territories—gospel, soul.

What remains is the regret that this collection doesn’t—and will never—really exist.It’s just a batch of stolen MP3s, yet it’s the most interesting thing to come out from Prince in the last two years.

bizzie said:

MIRvmn1 said:

I remember 8 songs leaking a few months before Diamonds and Pearls SDE was released. I hope this new leak means we might get an official release next year

.

Why do you lot keep thinking that random events are signs for something? Over and over again, despite there never being a pay-off later on because the random event wasn't a sign and merely a random event.

.

READ THE THREAD. There tracks have been circulating for at least a year, likely even longer. They just now happened to get in the hands of someone who simply leaked them. To see this as an omen of the estate releasing them is ridiculous.

Exactly.

One has absolutely nothing to do with the other.

olb99 said:

Vannormal said:

...who knows, maybe we get the Parade SDE compiled then at some point in the future.

Never say never.

My Magic 8 Ball says: "My sources say no".

XD

Vannormal said:

Everyone should hear them.

But it's the weakest collection of outtakes i heard so far.

100%

But extremely glad 2 have them.

[Edited 10/22/25 19:13pm]

ShellyMcG said:

databank said:

People often ask those questions and they've been answered countless times. You're usually not specifically told why you shouldn't leak it when someone entrusts you with something, but it kind of goes without saying: it's usually about protecting the original source of the leak and/or keeping the material as an asset for trading. And while you may wish to share it with the world, you don't want to be an ass and betray a friend's trust, not to mention burning your bridges and the possible source for further uncirculating material (and since you never know whether the material is tagged, just leaking it anonymously out of kindness isn't very smart: you may still get caught).

Admitedly, it's a vicious circle: even if you don't care for having the material just for yourself —which I don't—, you know you won't get any more if you fuck up.

But if it can make you feel better, pretty much everything I was ever given over the years ended-up leaking sooner or later, so there's always someone to do it eventually (that, or the stuff remains into the hands of very, very small circles, and people like me and you never even get to hear it).

But if it's going to leak anyway, why keep it a secret? Its not like it can be traced back to you anyway. Either way, just to show there's no hard feelings, if I ever get anything, I'll share it with you. And there'll be no rules. You may share with whomever you wish

I don't know all the politics behind everything, but I assume those people who originally shared stuff with me never intended for it to leak, and I certainly never knew if and when something would leak before it happened. And like I said, you never know whether your copy was discreetely tagged, so it could lead back to you and then you're burnt and you'll never get anything else. Word goes fast in the community. To give you an example, I once realized my original copy of The Flesh had slight, almost unnoticeable, yet clearly intentional differences with what eventually leaked: the tampering was very likely tags, and I'll never know if it went back several generations or if those tags were intended for me personally.

.

Besides, I never knew who leaked what I had. I guess someone trusts someone who trusts someone who trusts someone and so on, until you get someone who decides to leak it or sell it. I know sometimes a few traders decided to leak stuff and didn't give a fuck who they'd upset, because they had enough uncirculating material to not depend on anyone giving them more, or they didn't care, but IDK if that was the case with anything I had. In some cases, I know for a fact that the stuff was sold to a bootleg label before it leaked, so the incentive was definitely money, but I never had a clue who did it. You usually don't know who has what, because everyone is so secretive about it. Sometimes you are even strictly instructed not to TELL anyone you have something, even if you wouldn't share it.

.

But at the end of the day it's really just a matter of being trustworthy or not, and not stabbing friends in the back. I hope you can understand.

freohrrr said:

Gooddoctor23 said:

So without naming names, who/what would be the source of these tracks?

If you're asking about who created the files, they were sourced from .wavs from The Estate and Neversin's personal collection, and then watered down/converted to 128kbps .mp3s by someone named Frank Taylor.

so what does that process then look like, that road toward compiling an sde?

the estate decides on an album, i guess.

they go into the vault and start pulling some things out and sorting stuff.

they also consult people who know pretty much everything and who already
have copies of many, many things.

together these people and the estate then come up with a bunch of files,
pulled either from tapes in the vault and/or digitized files contributed by the
people outside of the estate whom they consult?

after everyone sort of pools their resources, someone comes up with a few
mock up tracklists and we go from there, deciding on something more concrete
before tapes are pulled from the vault to be masterd or mixed down etc

however, that group of people must be pretty small. and then there is an even
smaller number who have full access to the complete set of files, one might
assume?

at least in these early stages of the process, that group must be tiny.

I can see smoke and mirrors being used to cloak a source for a leak once the
project gets to the printing stage, but at the stage of compiling the tracks for
possible track lists?

surely there is no question in the minds of the people in that group who is or
who are the ones sharing stuff with the outside world?

freohrrr said:

Gooddoctor23 said:

So without naming names, who/what would be the source of these tracks?

If you're asking about who created the files, they were sourced from .wavs from The Estate and Neversin's personal collection, and then watered down/converted to 128kbps .mp3s by someone named Frank Taylor.

I honestly don't know if this claim about the lineage is true, but it's pretty fucked up to publicly name people like this, particularly regarding a recent leak. You can get people in trouble by doing this, it's not cool

it's literally in the metadata of the mp3's that were distributed, someone went through great lengths to put it there in fact, which is strange to me, but it's what happened

ShellyMcG said:

databank said:

I was among the happy fews who already had been entrusted with this collection, but I wasn't allowed to share it. I'm glad it's finally out there: it's a really strong selection, much better than the D&P outtakes IMHO — and the people I knew who also had it seemed to share this opinion.

That said, what a lost opportunity for the Estate: they could have released it and cashed on it, even just digitally if they weren't going to put out a fancy SDE, and now it's out there without their involvement

Y'all enjoy, it really made my week when I first heard it

Out of interest, why were you not "allowed" to share it? Also, why would anyone want to prevent you from sharing it with the wider community? And why couldn't they have shared it themselves? I'll make you all a deal. If I ever get my grubby little mitts on anything that was previously unleaked, I'll share it with you all.

I co-sign.

-

Why databank is exposing himself here...

The so called non-sharing-self-titled-elite-traders read along imho.

databank said:

freohrrr said:

If you're asking about who created the files, they were sourced from .wavs from The Estate and Neversin's personal collection, and then watered down/converted to 128kbps .mp3s by someone named Frank Taylor.

I honestly don't know if this claim about the lineage is true, but it's pretty fucked up to publicly name people like this, particularly regarding a recent leak. You can get people in trouble by doing this, it's not cool

I kind of thought some pissant probably just tagged the files with Neversin's name
simply to be spiteful.

It seems highly unlikely that Neversin himself would leak this stuff, especially in this
way, with the files tagged like that.

If anything, files being tagged as or named as being leaked by Neversin make me
think they are definitely not shared by him at all.

lustmealways said:

it's literally in the metadata of the mp3's that were distributed, someone went through great lengths to put it there in fact, which is strange to me, but it's what happened

Weird.

I just checked and there was nothing of the sort in my files' metadata (either set, as I got them twice from 2 different people).

databank said:

lustmealways said:

it's literally in the metadata of the mp3's that were distributed, someone went through great lengths to put it there in fact, which is strange to me, but it's what happened

Weird.

I just checked and there was nothing of the sort in my files' metadata (either set, as I got them twice from 2 different people).

which sort of confirms to me that this leak going round right now has been tagged
by someone just out of spite.

because it's likely the same exact files you have had for a long time now, that are
being circulated to us, just having some of their audio and meta deta corrupted.

databank said:

lustmealways said:

it's literally in the metadata of the mp3's that were distributed, someone went through great lengths to put it there in fact, which is strange to me, but it's what happened

Weird.

I just checked and there was nothing of the sort in my files' metadata (either set, as I got them twice from 2 different people).

In the comments of the metadata of some of the songs, it says "128kbps from D&L 2022 made from WAVs from a guy called Neversin and The Prince Estate, some unmixed and unmastered. Frank Taylor 2022"

Vannormal said:

ShellyMcG said:

databank said: Out of interest, why were you not "allowed" to share it? Also, why would anyone want to prevent you from sharing it with the wider community? And why couldn't they have shared it themselves? I'll make you all a deal. If I ever get my grubby little mitts on anything that was previously unleaked, I'll share it with you all.

I co-sign.

-

Why databank is exposing himself here...

The so called non-sharing-self-titled-elite-traders read along imho.

I don't know that I'm exposing myself given that the material is out, so no one can ask me for it anymore, thus no one can suspect me of trading it or anything. I wouldn't have mentioned it earlier. Besides, many people have mentioned having some uncirculating stuff before, it's not like you become a live target because of it (or so I hope ).

I also don't understand the anger that is sometimes manifested towards people who have some uncirculating stuff: people have been explaining for years the mechanics of "I'd like to leak the stuff but I can't because I don't want to betray people's trust and I don't want to be blacklisted". I've seen other people having this conversation many times here on the Org, and it's like some people do not understand the meaning of the words, because they keep being like "you're a prick", but hey, seriously, it's been explained, why can't people understand it? Maybe they'd do it differently, it's OK, but they should be able to understand the arguments, because they're simple and sound.

IDK, there's way too much drama in this community sometimes

I saw two different links.

The first, from someone close to the 'Elite traders' (aka 'Prime Thieves'), and there was no comments in the meta data.

The second was from a known bootlegger, and that contained the meta data '128kbps from D&L 2022 made from WAVs from a guy called Neversin and The Prince Estate, some unmixed and unmastered. Frank Taylor 2022"

freohrrr said:

databank said:

Weird.

I just checked and there was nothing of the sort in my files' metadata (either set, as I got them twice from 2 different people).

In the comments of the metadata of some of the songs, it says "128kbps from D&L 2022 made from WAVs from a guy called Neversin and The Prince Estate, some unmixed and unmastered. Frank Taylor 2022"

I agree, it very much sounds like someone else did this on purpose

Sometimes I think a book about the history of leaks and bootlegs would be as fascinating as a book on Prince. I mean seriously, some of the stories you hear are plain crazy, and I bet there's more

databank said: