Estate officials for Prince have reached an agreement with bosses at streaming service Tidal to release a posthumous new album by the singer.
Nine months before his death in April, 2016, the Purple Rain musician struck a deal with JAY-Z’s music service to stream what turned out to be his final two albums, while he also pulled his old tracks from Tidal’s competitors.
Estate officials subsequently took issue with the agreement and bosses at Warner Music, who manage much of the tragic icon’s back catalogue, ended up making his songs widely available on streaming apps including Apple, Spotify, Pandora, Google Play, and Deezer last year.
However, JAY-Z has now announced an album featuring Prince’s unreleased music from his vault will be released in 2019.
“Our only goal is to share Prince’s music with his fans as he wanted,” the 99 Problems hitmaker says. “After thoughtful and honest conversation with him, he chose TIDAL as his partner for HITnRUN Phase One and HITnRUN Phase Two, and we will continue to respect and honor Prince’s enduring legacy and wishes with this new collection.”
Troy Carter, entertainment advisor for the Prince estate, adds, “I’m very pleased this is resolved, and we get to honor the relationship between Prince and Tidal with this album. We look forward to fans hearing the new music and experiencing the genius of Prince.”
The album will be made available exclusively to Tidal users 14 days before its release in 2019, although a specific date has yet to be revealed. Estate officials will then take care of the global, physical release, according to Rolling Stone.