Mikey Campbell
After Prince abruptly pulled his music from all streaming services save for Tidal in 2015, the Purple One's Warner Brothers catalog, which contains a majority of his biggest hits, has returned.
As rumored last month, Tidal's exclusivity officially ended on Sunday after Warner Brothers made its collection of Prince tunes available to all streaming platforms, including big players Apple Music and Spotify. The release coincides with tonight's Grammy Awards, where industry stars are expected to pay tribute to the late musician onstage.
Apple Music is already advertising availability, sending out promotional emails linking subscribers to the new catalog.
Experience Prince's classic albums and brilliant, genre-pushing excursions. Also, check out handpicked playlists dedicated to one of pop music's most visionary artists.
The Warner Bros. Records catalog contains a number of Prince's greatest hits, including "Let's Go Crazy," "Purple Rain" and "When Doves Cry," but lacks deeper cuts and rare recordings held in the artist's Paisley Park vault.
Prince's track list has been a Tidal exclusive for nearly two years. About nine months before his death in 2016, Prince issued a takedown request to all streaming music providers save for Jay-Z's platform, leaving it the exclusive rights holder for 19 months.
Warner Bros. Records has since been working to return the artist's catalog to popular streaming products. In a statement issued on Sunday, the record label's Chairman and CEO Cameron Strang thanked Prince's estate for helping navigate the deal, The Associated Press reports.
"Prince recorded his most influential and popular music during his time with Warner Bros. and we are deeply aware of our responsibility to safeguard and nurture his incredible legacy," Strang said. "Warner Bros. is thrilled to be able to bring Prince's music to his millions of fans around the world via streaming services, fittingly on music's biggest night."
Along with today's streaming release, Warner Bros. Records on Sunday announced plans to remaster Purple Rain, two albums of previously unreleased music and two concert films from Prince's vault. The new and restored content is expected for release on June 9.
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6 Comments
Fantastic artist.
He had to die to let it happen.
It was said Prince didn't leave a will, so I suppose Warner can't be stopped from doing whatever it wants with his music. Who's in charge of Prince's estate? Some entity who can make money by saying "Prince would have wanted it to happen this way."