I wish they had released a compilation with more recent songs as well. It seems as if there was no music past 1993. I'm looking forward to more unreleased material though. I love Work That Fat, Uh Huh, Dance with the Devil, Wonderful Ass, I Am the DJ, The Line, FUNK and others
Cool song choices FullLipsDotNose - Wonderful Ass, Dance with the Devil and FUNK.
We all wish they could release a greatest hits collection after 1993. But the trouble with that is being Prince changed his name legally to the symbol on June 7th 1993 and all subsequent albums released were under the Symbol or TAFKAP (The Artist formerly known as Prince). This included the last Warners Albums - Come, The Gold Experience, Chaos and Disorder and 1999's the Vault. And of course in 1994 he started NPG records and released music under that until his death. Starting in 1996 with Emancipation his albums were distributed by different companies for each album (Really silly), so collecting Copyright is hard. In this period Warners released the Very Best of Prince in 2001 which was the most basic tracklist ever, just hits and the Ultimate 2006 Prince, but with more songs and some great 12 inch mixes. Still these albums used pre 1993 Prince songs.
Now Prince has passed, nothing is stopping them or NPG records (Assuming it still exists) from releasing some collections of 1994 - 2015 material. Another reason being that Prince's career as a mainstream chart artist declined considerably and he was really a cult artist loed by his fans until his death, despite his albumsales of some 2000s material like Musicology and 3121. Prince also isolated his fanbase futher by putting out bizarre albums like The Rainbow Children and NPGMC albums like Slaughterhouse and C Note. A greatest hits collection of this later stuff would not really sell beyond the hardcore fanbase of maybe 100,000 individuals worldwide. Posthumous albums are not the sellers they used to be in the days of Elvis and even Tupac. The fact that an artist of Michael Jackson's stature can only sell moderate numbers of Post mortem clunkers like Icon, Michael and even the much better Xscape is proof there is little money in flogging the dead. Most Prince fans have the bootlegs of unreleased music on their hard drives now anyway.
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David Bowie's new albums and previous output have sold much better than a repackaged greatest hits collection this year and I do not see Sony getting ready to rush out a George Michael Retrospective, yet copies of Ladies and Gentleman, the very best of, a 1998 package have gone #1 on Itunes charts around the world, along with Classic songs like Careless Whisper and Faith.
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Bootlegs are so widespread with Prince, an artist so paranoid that Youtube videos were taken down and nearly all comment about his was suppressed and he could not go anyway without a phalanx of security goons, that even the Moonbeam levels that appears on 4ever is likely a bootleg mix.
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And besides record companies today, only care about todays hitmakers and finding more disposable crap they can make a ton off cheaply and dump. One hit wonder rap dance novelty acts, shit hoppers, boy band and trending hipster nonsense can bring quick windfalls, rather than milking dead cultartists who likely have the rarities you are about to push on to them. Despicable as it is, but if you want to make money, what would you do, release an untested album of unreleased items from Prince's or MJ's vault or press up 1 million copies of the latest viral rap dance song, making $5 million in sales and endorsements, while spending peanuts to make the song, a few grand to make a video and pay maybe $50k to the rapper and get him a bouncing car and some bling. Makes sense really.
