Here a question for you guys ... who actually owns the stuff in the "vault"? He has made it very well known that he, like many other artists, does not own his masters. Would that include things in the vault (of course not stuff from his home studio, but things recorded during album sessions, etc.)? If it does, perhaps the record company would release some of these without his consent?

Giovanni777 said:

On top of that, let us not forget musicians that have been in his employ; apparently even some of them have the occasional copy of unreleased (and obviously uncirculated) songs they work(ed) on here and there, but for them (as working musicians) they don't see those tracks the way the general public sees them; their attitude towards possessing some of this stuff is waaaay more casual than what we would expect, because for them, it's just another day's work that was recorded for reference purposes only. I think that if anyone really wonders about there being a vault, if I had to put money on it I'd say "You bet your sweet ass...".

I think there's no chance in hell that EVERYTHING he's composed has been circulated, though; anyone who's been close to or involved with music making processes in general can understand this, I think. I don't really know how to explain it: it's just that musicians are so "fluid" and have so many stages to their creative process; I mean, they have the ability to just wake up with a seed of an idea for a composition and start laying parts down, then they add and subtract all sorts of layers that can evolve into other ideas that may eventually lose their interest and then the composition never sees the light of day. This is quite common amongst musicians, I've found, and a more prolific musician can do this on the regular, almost every few days if he has the luxury of time and the right gear. And living in the technological age that we are, I can tell you that artists pretty much record EVERYTHING from step one, day one- even if they drop the idea one week later (or even ONE DAY later!)...but it ends up sitting around somewhere in a pile and the rest of us will no idea that such a song even exists. Having witnessed this kind of behavior firsthand with other artists, I would have no doubt whatsoever that after 25 years of making music, day in and day out, the amount of songs we've NEVER heard from an artist like Prince would be rather staggering.

suedehead said:

No, he owns them.

paisleypark4 said:

Exactly...that's why I have a really crappy copy of little girl wendy's parade.And several weird versions of alphabet st. I think he keeps almost everything he has records. I think that's why we have seen crazy stuff like rehersals and stuff like that. And TONS of live recordings.