I know this has been asked many times before, but the answer
has always remained a bit dubious or unclear.

So perhaps there's someone out here on the org who knows for
sure what's up with the re-releasing of older songs as it is
once again occuring on the NPGMC.

Prince can seemingly release older material as he pleases,
without WB having a say in it.

Last year [when we payed for it] and this year [when we all
gave a "donation"] we've been getting old songs on the site
and so I just wonder how come he can do that.

I remember him saying in a press-conference a few years ago
that he had compiled an album full of his ballads and that
there were too many problems with WB regarding this project
so they decided to let it go.

So, what, there aren't any problems with WB regarding him
offering these songs for sale [year 1] and now as stream
loads?? Or do they just not know about it since they don't
have anyone checking on Prince's every move and couldn't
care less what he does with the club unless he starts to
send out new compilations of old tunes on 'official' npg
cd's??

This whole thing is rather complicated and confusing.

My understanding is that Warners still retain the rights to the release of master recordings of material previously released whilst under contract to WB. Over a period of time, those rights will gradually return to Prince.

In the meantime, there seems to me to be three possibilities:

Possibility #1: Prince's contractual arrangements with WB permit him to make available at least some of his master recordings at least via the NPGMC, for download and / or streaming, in part or full.

Possibility #2. Prince has re-recorded or changed his material in some way significant enough to enable him to make available recordings of older songs for download or streaming without breaching the rights that WB retain over his master recordings. A re-recording, for example, (as was the case of '1999 - the new master') would result in the creation of an entirely different master recording of the song. WB's rights only extend to the original master recordings.

Possibility #3. Prince is operating in breach of his agreement with WB.

Whether or not there is a breach of the WB agreement (and to be honest we have no way of knowing unless the contractual details are made public)it has nothing to do with the publishing rights to these songs, which I believe were reassigned to Prince a few years ago, and since which time he struck a publishing deal with Universal (if memory serves correct).

And do not forget that the internet is rather uncharted territory, when it comes to legal issues.