Prince to release two studio albums simultaneously

prince aint done a bad album since 3121 in fact I like most of the last 20 something releases apart from the rainbow children

Prince has quite a solid (albeit shrunken) fan-base: whether he releases one, two or three albums, they will be bought. Warner Brothers must know that.

Sad state of the music business if deluxe re-issues of old music (however much I like them) would take precedence over new music …

These covers are a damn site better looking than most of his NPG cover art. The Purple Rain vinyl background is a little puzzling, though.

My complaint would be that the 3rdeyegirl album doesn’t include the song ‘Screwdriver’. Unless, of course, it’s one of the unspecified MP3 singles that come with the album.

Prince, like many artists from the eighties has had to face the fact that you can’t live off album sales anymore, well not new product. Record companies don’t want to invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of studio time when they won’t get a return. So artists like Prince and REM don’t get away with hiding away in the studio and record companies won’t give them huge advances.

It is very much cheaper to mix old albums for new formats or put out archive stuff that you can pay an decent engineer to clean up a bit. A lot of demos and out takes we are paying good money for now are stuff we wouldn’t have touched with a barge pole back in the eighties.

Would I buy a deluxe Purple Rain? Probably, but personally I’m looking forward to the new albums more than any reissue of Purple Rain, which is a pretty damn perfect album as it stands.

er…sorry 24/44.1. But still….

For those who haven’t checked all specs, there are also wav-downloads available in 24!bit/48khz. That is a step forward on the tech side of things.

Huge fan of the little purple one but his stuff always gets messed up. Look no further than the last release of Sign O The Times on blu ray. Yet another marketing foul up. I’m trying to keep my expectations low for the reissues…..but I am excited.

Excellent stuff. Love what I’ve heard so far [‘Clouds’ & ‘Funknroll’], and Prince really is someone I want to see return to prominence, though I don’t expect the dizzying heights of the 1980’s.

Looking forward to the Deluxe Reissues too!

Why so quick to judge? Will these albums sink without trace? Without any fear of contradiction, yes. Will they be ‘craptastic’? I wouldn’t have thought so. The 3RDEYEGIRL tracks I’ve heard have been great, so there’s no reason to automatically assume they’ll be dogs! I’ve stuck with him all the way and agree with Gary, that his output may not have the spark it once had but each album has always held a few pearls. Two albums? Fine by me! I want the vaults opened, too, but that doesn’t mean I want him, or he has, to stop making new music.

At last …

I want Prince to so badly come back with a vengeance. But isn’t it always a total failure to do this double-album same release day concept? Even Springsteen got criticism for it. Awful album art. Stupid song titles. Sorry, but even being “back on Warner Brothers” i’m sadly no longer interested in Prince despite him being an incredible musician.

IMHO: Warners allowed him to do this now because he’d been bitching about it for weeks to local Minneapolis media. They know Prince will be bored with this record two weeks after it drops and doesn’t sell and none of the singles chart, and more importantly, they know he’ll stop bitching about not being allowed to release new music.

The Purple Rain reissue is scheduled for the holiday season, most likely early November. Releasing these two craptastic records now assures “the market” isn’t being confused by there being both a “new” album and an old one. These two records will quickly sink into obscurity, and come October/November there’ll be an avalanche of PR surrounding Purple rain Deluxe.

There is a vinyl option…but oddly appears to only be from Warners Australia!

Just checked both web sites and each album is only available as either CD or digital, no vinyl option.