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 Prince, 57, who died on Thursday at his home and studio
compound in Minnesota, is one of relatively few recording
artists believed to have possessed ownership of his master
recordings and much of his own music publishing.
"Ownership of his catalog will follow his estate," veteran Los
Angeles-based entertainment lawyer Jay Cooper said on Thursday.
"Ownership of the masters will go to whoever inherits it from
his estate."
At stake is music featured on more than 30 albums that have sold
over 36 million copies in the United State alone since 1978,
plus hundreds of songs that are reported to remain unreleased in
his vaults.
The key unanswered question about the fate of Prince's
intellectual property is whether the recording artist had a
valid will or estate plan in place at the time of his death,
lawyers said.
Twice divorced with no surviving children, he apparently lacked
any immediately identifiable heirs.
"I hope for his sake that he had an estate plan, especially with
no heirs," attorney Lee Phillips, who represented Prince during
the singer's 20s when he made his first blockbuster album,
"Purple Rain," was quoted as telling The Hollywood Reporter.
Through instructions in a will to a trustee, the artist could
posthumously restrict the granting of commercial licenses to his
music, and thus "continue, in effect, from the grave to control
the usage of his songs," Phillips said.
But, he added: "Who knows if he even has a will? He was a unique
person."
Absent a will, inheritance would be determined by a probate
court, subject to the laws of succession in Prince's home state
of Minnesota, Cooper said.
CREATIVE CONTROL
Prince was almost as well known for an unyielding defense of his
artistic rights as he was for his music.
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So assertive was he in maintaining creative control that during a
bitter contract battle with Warner Bros. in the 1990s, he famously
changed his name to an unpronounceable symbol and scrawled the word
"slave" on his forehead in performances.
The dispute centered at least in part on Prince's desire to release
his music more frequently than the label was willing.
Prince found it "abhorrent" that he would "use that type of
intellectual creativity and pour everything into it and give to
people only to have somebody else own it at the end of the day,"
said Owen Husney, the star's first manager, told Reuters TV in an
interview.
Prince ultimately made peace with Warner, reaching a deal in 2014 to
regain ownership of his master recordings in return for allowing the
label to digitally remaster and reissue his back catalog, according
to trade publication Variety and other media accounts.
The artist had been similarly unstinting in limiting the use of his
material on YouTube and digital music streaming platforms such as
Spotify and Rhapsody, although he made his catalog available on the
artist-owned, premium subscription streaming service Tidal, launched
by rapper Jay Z.
Still, news of his death sparked an immediate bump in online sales
of his music, with nine of the top 10-selling albums on iTunes
belonging to Prince, led by 2001's compilation "The Very Best of
Prince." Eight of the top-selling singles on iTunes were Prince
tracks, led by "Purple Rain."
(Additional reporting by Piya Sinha-Roy and Ross Rollo in Los
Angeles; Editing by Peter Cooney)
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