They are not wasting any time, hmmmmmm......
http://www.vibe.com/2016/04/prince-vault-drilled-open/
http://www.people.com/article/prince-vault-drilled
They are not wasting any time, hmmmmmm......
http://www.vibe.com/2016/04/prince-vault-drilled-open/
http://www.people.com/article/prince-vault-drilled
And so the vultures will begin to circle.....
I always thought Prince was excessive in his protection of his copyrights. There are ways to license your music to ensure your rights are protected but also making sure music is commercially available.
I'm excited to hear what's in the vault. His 11 minute original version of "The Dance Electric" has surfaced and it is fantastic. I think he wanted us to have the stuff in the vault. If not, he would have destroyed it rather than building a big vault to preserve it.
What interests me is the proper handling of his catalog, from the mixing, mastering, and the marketing. Sheila E. has reportedly offered her services free of charge. I hope that whoever gets ultimate control over the recordings chooses engineers more than capable of handling the massive undertaking of identifying, cataloging, and baking of the tapes, and hard drive restoration, if need be.
That's not entirely true. The reason Prince wanted ownership of his masters is because he knows the value of them. Your recordings are your worth. This means the multitracks and the mixdowns. Only an idiot would destroy recordings.
Last edited by soulster; 05-01-2016 at 01:27 PM.
I agree. I totally understand wanting to protect your art, but he became completely hellbent on anyone who even posted a picture of him. Frankly, if music isn't going to be shared, what's the point? I know it turned me off completely and I'm sure he alienated plenty of well-meaning fans as well, which is a real shame.
The recordings only have value if they are licensed for commercial use or made available for sale. Either way we would get them in some form or fashion. They are without worth sitting in a vault collecting dust or decomposing. If Prince did not want material that he created to be made available to the public he would have destroyed it rather than keep it around. It would not be 'idiotic' to destroy it if it is a considered decision made by an artist with high standards and an interest in shaping his musical legacy.
It has happened. Allegedly, Curtis Mayfield destroyed the recorded masters he did with the cast of the film "Sparkle" because he only wanted the Aretha recordings to survive.
Yes, if Prince didn't want these recordings to be released, ever - including after his death - he could have destroyed them to prevent it. But that doesn't logically imply that since he didn't destroy them, he must have wanted them to be released. There are reasons other than a future release to keep recordings.
One example - suppose he was unhappy with a song after recording it and thought it was not worthy of release. Why keep it? Well, perhaps he'd get an idea later [[even years later) as to how to improve that song, or maybe he'd incorporate part of it into a new song. The recording could serve as a way of refreshing his memory, a sort of "demo" for himself.
The more general point is, it costs little to keep the recordings, and they might prove useful in the future [[even in some way that you can't imagine at the time), so why not? By keeping them, you leave the possibilities open.
At the same time, putting a recording into the vault also doesn't mean that he never wanted it to be released.
It won't hurt Prince to release some of this music.
Last edited by calvin; 05-02-2016 at 09:51 AM.
Well, to be clear, I was only referring to 'commercial' value. I don't disagree that there are other types of value [[i.e. sentimental).
OK. But his catalog only has commercial value if the recordings have been, or are made, available for sale. If Prince regarded his unreleased catalog as a commercial asset he would necessarily have to contemplate its sale. His unreleased catalog is not currency, like gold, it is plastic, celluloid, digital or some other material that has little or no intrinsic value. It only has value if it can be sold or licensed for commercial use -- which is entirely foreseeable and highly likely because it's Prince. Again, I think he anticipated that the music would be released and he preserved it because he wanted us to have it in some form or fashion.
Well, Guy, this is the part where one of says that we'll agree to disagree.
The one thing I think we can somewhat agree on is that, even though I don't think he wanted us to hear what's in the vault, he knew that it was going to happen...after he's gone, but, not while he's alive. Case in point:
TOM TUCKER: We tried to talk him into archiving everything when he was still with Warners. We were going to buy a convection oven and bake all the analog tapes, and archive them to digital. But at the last minute he pulled the plug. He said he didn’t want anybody to hear all that music. Those old analog tapes are just gumming up down in his vault. And then what’s going to happen if it’s not in his will? What if it’s in his will to destroy that stuff? That would be like half the Beatles’ tunes being lost.
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