Purple Reign

Prince has reportedly resigned a new deal with Warner Bros records, taking ownership of the recordings of some of his biggest hits in the process. The new deal includes an exclusive global licensing partnership with Warners, with the master recordings of every Prince album released from 1978 to the 1990s.

This essentially means that Prince owns both master and publishing rights to more or less all of the hits including the huge selling album and film Purple Rain– released in 1984 and clearly ripe for a 30 year digitally remastered re-issue with all of the trimmings?

In fact, Warners have said that a deluxe re-release of the record is due, in addition to further reissues and a new studio album.

Chairman and CEO of Warner Bros. Records Cameron Strang said: “Everyone at Warner Bros Records is delighted to be working with Prince once again: he is one of the world’s biggest stars and a truly unique talent”.

Strang added: “We are also very excited about the release of new and re-mastered music from one of his greatest masterpieces.”

Prince added: “A brand-new studio album is on the way and both Warner Bros Records and Eye are quite pleased with the results of the negotiations and look forward to a fruitful working relationship.”

If “quite pleased” sounds like damning with faint praise then remember that The Purple One is notorious for occasionally spurning record labels altogether in favour of lucrative newspaper covermounts. Prince always seems to stay in the headlines- whether reviving the decaying carcass of the guerilla gig in the UK earlier this year or declaring ”The Internet is over”.