Posted on 01/26/2018 11:11:21 AM PST by Red Badger
‘Previously unreleased Prince music is “coming soon,” estate adviser Troy Carter tells Variety, although he declined to specify any further details about the recordings.
“He was a guy who practically lived in a recording studio, and once we started going through [the unreleased material] we really started finding some gems,” Carter, who is also Spotify’s global head of creative services, said earlier this month. “I heard some music the other night that was pretty mind-blowing and we’re getting some stuff mixed right now. We’ve got great projects in the works that I’m excited to talk about.
“So the answer is yes, there will be unreleased Prince music coming soon,” he said, although he declined to say which label might release the recordings.
A lack of clarity over the terms of Prince’s contract with Warner Bros. Records, the label to which he was signed for nearly the first 20 years of his career, caused a $31 million recorded-music deal the estate’s former advisers had negotiated with Universal Music to be nullified last year, leaving a huge number of the artist’s recordings in a state of legal limbo. Three of Prince’s six legal heirs have sparred with the estate over a number of matters in recent months; heavily redacted legal documents reference a deal negotiation to which those heirs have made several objections, although it’s unclear from the public versions of the documents what exactly is being negotiated.
The contents of Prince’s vast “vault” of unreleased music were moved to a climate-controlled Los Angeles storage facility from his Paisley Park compound outside Minneapolis last year, after some of the tapes were found to have deteriorated.
Prince fought fiercely to own the rights to his recordings, and nearly every album he released after initially parting ways with Warner in 1996 was distributed by a different label than the one that came before it; however sources say nearly all of the post-1996 material is owned by the estate and is presumably available for licensing, although the Universal lawsuit has made many potential suitors gun-shy. Unless a new deal is on the horizon, it seems possible that the material Carter is talking about comes from Prince’s Warner Bros. era.
Warner Bros. released a long-delayed expanded edition of Prince’s most successful album, “Purple Rain,” last June that included a full album of previously unreleased material as well as a long out-of-print 1985 concert video, although that package was finalized before the artist’s death in April 2016.
It would be mind-blowing if it was actually newly produced music, as opposed to simply being previously unreleased music.
Whatever his other failings as a person, he was a smart businessman.
I never did care for a thing this guy did. So, I’m filing this in my GIVAZHIT file.
By some accounts there are literally hundreds of songs fully produced, mixed and ready to go that Prince chose not to release. Some of them are described to be, by people who worked on them really good songs. I’m not a big Prince fan, it I am curious to see what’s in the vault.
CC
I’ve been underwhelmed, to say the least, by every posthumously released album (save records like Sublime’s that were already produced to be released when the artist died), but I’ll reserve judgment. Wasn’t a huge fan of his style, but he was definitely an icon.
Previously unreleased = not good enough for a previous album.
I have a feeling Prince will have a larger influence now, than when he was alive.
He was sort of a modern Mozart, where music flowed from his brain, almost uncontrollably.
He got hung up on commercial issues and drugs, whilst still creating.
An artist’s life.
Allegedly there are thousands of completed recordings.
But they aren’t necessarily radio friendly (regardless of lyrics). Too long, too different from what else is in the marketplace, too different from his ‘hits’.
Any label is going to want to find a single to promote.
Not necessarily.
There was a legal battle with Warner Brothers Records he may have wanted to hide this from.................
It’s being re-mixed with modern equipment and technology that was not available pre-1996.................
If they monkey around with it too much then it will be difficult to claim it is music by Prince.
There’s always a reason that stuff wasn’t released in the first place.
Yes, but not necessarily an artistic reason.
This may have been legal problems reason................
They said some of the stuff had deteriorated, meaning the mag tapes were losing it.
So it was old, really old.................
“I never did care for a thing this guy did. So, I’m filing this in my GIVAZHIT file.”
Thanks, that’s important to know.
A buddy of mine did most of all his car stereo work since the late 70s he was also very generous
Yes, you could ask Paul McCartney about that. Or the owner of Paul's music if he were still alive.
From what I have heard of Prince music, he will be ‘singing’ an octave higher then most women.
Prince stopped blowing my mind when he broke up the Revolution
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