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Today, Prince’s Warner Bros. albums start streaming. His estate may make an extra $25 million this year from a deluxe Purple Rain with two albums of previously unreleased recordings, two complete concert films and more.
Warner Bros. Records confirmed that Prince’s catalogue with the company will be available to stream across all digital services by the time the Grammy Awards begin today at 5 p.m. PT. The first hits will start to appear on services at 9 a.m. PT.
Prince was the ninth-most successful recording artist in 2016, even with his most famous songs being withheld from most services. While material was on Tidal, all other sites were excluded such as Spotify,
The $25 million figure is an estimate from industry analysts who say that the move could see the late star double his earnings in 2016. Prince had long taken action against clips of his music on YouTube. It is known that he has some 2,000 unreleased songs in his vault, which has now been drilled open, with a huge appetite from fans for some of these tracks.
While streaming does not have the income per track of downloads or physical sales, a significant number of streams will add to revenue. Prince sold more than 100 million albums in his own lifetime.
Prince, who first signed with Warner Bros. 40 years ago, recorded most of his most influential and popular albums for the label, including Prince, Dirty Mind, Controversy, 1999, Purple Rain, Around the World in a Day, Parade, Sign O’ The Times, Batman and Diamonds and Pearls.
Prince’s estate, Universal Music Publishing, the Grammy Awards and all of the streaming services made “this landmark event possible,” Cameron Strang, Chairman & CEO, Warner Bros. Records said in an e-mailed statement.
In November, NPG and Warner Bros. Records released PRINCE 4Ever, which brings together 40 of Prince’s best-loved songs plus the previously unreleased track “Moonbeam Levels.”
In October 2016, FORBES reported that Prince earned $25 million pretax over the past year, landing him the No. 5 spot in the list of highest-paid dead celebrities. Prince died last April at the age of 57. A medical report said the cause of death was self-administered fentanyl, a painkiller.
His Paisley Park complex in Minnesota is now open to the public, giving him a new, Graceland-esque income stream in the afterlife.
The streaming announcement has been widely anticipated, with fans also long speculating on the Purple Rain set, which was originally due in 2014 as a 30th-anniversary box and then shelved. The June 9 set is likely to include unreleased songs from the period as well as concert footage. The agreement does not cover some of the Prince material covered in a different contact.
The Grammys will pay honor to Prince tonight with a special musical show.
