It might have at least made a decent b-side to 4the tears in your eyes...

^thats good news! We might see the rest of the songs at some point.

So it looks like the message that came with the leak of ATKH was not bluff

Great news, many thanks 2 whom it may concern for this sweat little candy from the Vault and for showing the Estate that old fans still matter

Nice to hear him noodling about with it on acoustic guitar, and good to have this raw version, just vocal and guitar - no doubt before official release he would have chucked a bunch of unnecessary overdubs on it like he did with The Truth. I'd love to hear The Truth in its raw recorded state as Hans-Martin Buff described it, pre-overdubs.

Cheers to the fans willing to share since the estate has no interest in doing so

fishwillbite said:

Nice to hear him noodling about with it on acoustic guitar, and good to have this raw version, just vocal and guitar - no doubt before official release he would have chucked a bunch of unnecessary overdubs on it like he did with The Truth. I'd love to hear The Truth in its raw recorded state as Hans-Martin Buff described it, pre-overdubs.

Just to be clear, this version is from 2008.

Indeed.

Apart from "Free" & "Girl", "I Will", "Still Waiting" & "Seven" are known to be on the same CDR.

The number of volumes of these 2008 acoustic session remains unknown at this stage.

[Edited 2/17/26 16:12pm]

TrivialPursuit said:

fishwillbite said:

Nice to hear him noodling about with it on acoustic guitar, and good to have this raw version, just vocal and guitar - no doubt before official release he would have chucked a bunch of unnecessary overdubs on it like he did with The Truth. I'd love to hear The Truth in its raw recorded state as Hans-Martin Buff described it, pre-overdubs.

Just to be clear, this version is from 2008.

Yeah I know, just using the truth as an example of Prince's bad habits with overdubbing to make things less raw/personal

fredmagnus said:

Apart from "Free" & "Girl", "I Will", "Still Waiting" & "Seven" are known to be on the same CDR.

Come to think of it, the Estate had a useable recording that could easily have been dropped to streaming platforms at very little cost. It wouldn't have made history, but a whole EP, released exactly as Prince left it, would have given the fans (and the music press) a bone to chew.

Yet, they chose to release only one song (and, on top of everything... to send a message that so far, hasn't proven true about the vault being "free").

IDK, someone got up one morning and decided that it was a good idea to proceed this way, or it was decided at some meeting, IDK. Either way, it's a strange strategy. What good reason could there possibly have been for them to sit on the other songs?

And now they're starting to leak, so it's Diamonds & Love all over again... At this rate, they should just leak the material themselves

The estate doesn't live in a world where they can just "drop something" because they are both complete knuckle draggers and all the label/primary wave whatever people are also complete knuckle dragger boneheads so if they're going to release something they have deluded themselves into thinking there has to be a rollout, and vinyl, and endless social media promotions, and interviews, and wall to wall coverage.

they refuse to take small wins, they refuse to create any good will. it's just wall to wall bullshit because they do not care.

databank said:

databank said:

fredmagnus said:

Apart from "Free" & "Girl", "I Will", "Still Waiting" & "Seven" are known to be on the same CDR.

Come to think of it, the Estate had a useable recording that could easily have been dropped to streaming platforms at very little cost. It wouldn't have made history, but a whole EP, released exactly as Prince left it, would have given the fans (and the music press) a bone to chew.

Yet, they chose to release only one song (and, on top of everything... to send a message that so far, hasn't proven true about the vault being "free").

IDK, someone got up one morning and decided that it was a good idea to proceed this way, or it was decided at some meeting, IDK. Either way, it's a strange strategy. What good reason could there possibly have been for them to sit on the other songs?

I can only guess but it's possible that Free is/was part of some kind of Vault compilation, maybe among other Celebration tracks, while the other tracks from this acoustic set have not been selected.

Either way, in the end we've never seen/heard anything from it either. Probably another project that went back on a shelf.

[Edited 2/18/26 10:42am]

MIRvmn1 said:

databank said:

Come to think of it, the Estate had a useable recording that could easily have been dropped to streaming platforms at very little cost. It wouldn't have made history, but a whole EP, released exactly as Prince left it, would have given the fans (and the music press) a bone to chew.

Yet, they chose to release only one song (and, on top of everything... to send a message that so far, hasn't proven true about the vault being "free").

IDK, someone got up one morning and decided that it was a good idea to proceed this way, or it was decided at some meeting, IDK. Either way, it's a strange strategy. What good reason could there possibly have been for them to sit on the other songs?

And now they're starting to leak, so it's Diamonds & Love all over again... At this rate, they should just leak the material themselves

Their strategies are so bizarre that it’s hilarious

.
What strategies? I see no strategy at all. That's what is most frustrating.
The idea of dropping surprise releases (that don't fit any bigger project) every now and again is fine, but I always emphasise the imortance of a well-thought out release program with consistent formats and numbered editions.
So what I'd do is to allow online-only, surprise releases, but occasionally they should be made available as compilation CDs that fit nicely into the official catalog releases, with consistent packaging formats and numbering, so the entire concept encourages people to collect every official release.
This is one of my suggestions regarding the release program described in the white paper for my petition.

[Edited 2/18/26 10:59am]

databank said:

fredmagnus said:

Apart from "Free" & "Girl", "I Will", "Still Waiting" & "Seven" are known to be on the same CDR.

Come to think of it, the Estate had a useable recording that could easily have been dropped to streaming platforms at very little cost. It wouldn't have made history, but a whole EP, released exactly as Prince left it, would have given the fans (and the music press) a bone to chew.

Yet, they chose to release only one song (and, on top of everything... to send a message that so far, hasn't proven true about the vault being "free").

IDK, someone got up one morning and decided that it was a good idea to proceed this way, or it was decided at some meeting, IDK. Either way, it's a strange strategy. What good reason could there possibly have been for them to sit on the other songs?

And now they're starting to leak, so it's Diamonds & Love all over again... At this rate, they should just leak the material themselves

.

It's like that release of SOTT Live? Sure, it was nice. But why just one song? Why not release a whole concert recording? Or even the complete set of recordings used in the movie? Did they really mix just one track in stereo as well as Dolby Atmos?

Kares said:

So what I'd do is to allow online-only, surprise releases, but occasionally they should be made available as compilation CDs that fit nicely into the official catalog releases, with consistent packaging formats and numbering, so the entire concept encourages people to collect every official release.

.

That's a pretty good idea, yeah.

.

Expand the SDEs with more concert recordings, for instance. Of course this is something that bootleggers already did ages ago, and some even released empty boxes to collect all related releases e.g. every release by a bootleg label from the Purple Rain Tour.

bizzie said:

databank said:

Come to think of it, the Estate had a useable recording that could easily have been dropped to streaming platforms at very little cost. It wouldn't have made history, but a whole EP, released exactly as Prince left it, would have given the fans (and the music press) a bone to chew.

Yet, they chose to release only one song (and, on top of everything... to send a message that so far, hasn't proven true about the vault being "free").

IDK, someone got up one morning and decided that it was a good idea to proceed this way, or it was decided at some meeting, IDK. Either way, it's a strange strategy. What good reason could there possibly have been for them to sit on the other songs?

And now they're starting to leak, so it's Diamonds & Love all over again... At this rate, they should just leak the material themselves

.

It's like that release of SOTT Live? Sure, it was nice. But why just one song? Why not release a whole concert recording? Or even the complete set of recordings used in the movie? Did they really mix just one track in stereo as well as Dolby Atmos?

Fair enough. IDK about that one. I guess the acoustic set may heve been easier because I suppose no mixing whatsoever was needed. It may even already have been mastered.