Prince’s ‘lack of will’ could muddy waters for trove of unreleased songs

Prince died ‘without a will’, leaving questions over the trove of unreleased songs known as “the vault”.

Music fans visit a memorial created outside Paisley Park. Picture: AFP

Prince died without a will, his younger sister said in a court filing, further muddying the fate of his vast musical catalogue, particularly the trove of unreleased songs known as “the vault”.

Calling the situation “an emergency,” Tyka Nelson asked a Minnesota probate court to grant temporary oversight of her brother’s affairs to Bremer Bank, which she said had worked closely with him “for a number of years”.

Prince’s death remains under investigation since he was found unresponsive last Thursday at the Minneapolis compound where he lived and recorded.

In the days since Prince’s death, his music began selling briskly and reappearing on YouTube, where it had long been elusive — thanks to the singer’s famously aggressive approach to protecting his music from being used in unauthorised ways.

Deciding whether to maintain or alter Prince’s approach to such matters is just one of many challenges that will face whoever ends up in control of his empire.

He wrote and recorded music compulsively, according to associates, and may have released only a fraction of it publicly during his lifetime. Sorting through the unreleased material and deciding what should be released, when and in what form could be a gargantuan task.

If his affairs end up in the hands of several people, it could be even more complex. Ms Nelson’s filing described herself as the singer’s only full sibling, but also listed six half-siblings, five of them still living, whom she called “interested persons” in the late singer’s affairs.

In the absence of living parents, grandparents or children, under Minnesota law, Prince’s estate would go to his siblings if he indeed did not leave a will. Full or half siblings would receive equal shares of his estate.

When Doves Cry: Prince in pictures

VIEW GALLERY

One exception: any properties the singer jointly owned with someone else would be excluded from the process. It’s unusual for an artist of Prince’s age — 57 — and stature not to have a will to organise his affairs, said Ken Abdo, an entertainment lawyer, whose firm Lommen Abdo did legal work for the star in the late 1980s and early 90s and 2000s.

Artists often use trusts to govern the maintenance and release of unreleased recordings, he added. It remains possible that Prince did have a will that has not been located, Mr. Abdo said.

Prince has worked with a large cast of legal and business advisers through the years, and it was unclear if his effects had been thoroughly searched.

Prince’s music dominated the sales charts in the days since his death, with eight of the 10 best-selling physical albums on Amazon.com and six of the top 10 album downloads on Apple’s iTunes Store.

Prince’s vault is “unprecedented in pop music,” said Mr Abdo. If that is true, Prince’s vault will pose a considerable legal challenge. The matter of who controls rights to which recordings is one thing: Warner Music Group co-owns rights to unreleased music in Prince’s vault recorded between 1978 and 1996; any release requires permission from both Warner and the singer’s estate.

But there is also the complicated task of sorting out matters related to any collaborators who wrote or recorded with Prince in the studio, Mr Abdo said.

Prince’s relationship with Ms Nelson fluctuated as she moved in and out of his orbit. Publicly, they seemed to keep each other at arm’s length when she attempted to launch her own career in music. In 1988 — four years after Prince released his landmark album Purple Rain — Ms Nelson put out her own debut album, Royal Blue.

It was her first and last release for Chrysalis, a major label, and attracted curiosity but scant sales. Five years later, the National Enquirer published an interview with Ms Nelson in which she described episodes of drug use and prostitution.

Though they occasionally talked on the phone, she said, she had rarely seen her older brother in person for about six years, since the death of their mother, Mattie, in 2002.

The Wall Street Journal