Jay Z Reportedly Seeking to Purchase Prince's Unreleased Music

Is Jay Z trying to buy all of Prince's unreleased music for Tidal?

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Complex Original

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Jay Z may be making a major play for unreleased Prince music. According to a report from TMZ, Jay Z flew Prince's sister Tyka and her husband Maurice Phillips to New York City a few weeks ago to meet with him about potentially purchasing the rights to Prince's vast catalog of unreleased music. Jay reportedly offered them a sum of roughly $40 million for the music.

Although it's a huge sum of money, the deal is far from finalized. Any transaction of that sort would have to be approved by all of Prince's heirs; by last count, there were six full and half-siblings with rights to his estate. Since Prince died without a will, all his assets are being managed and divided up by a trust, which would also be involved in the deal-making process.

Aside from that, Jay is likely to be facing competition from several other music outlets. Although no other companies have publicly expressed interest, it seems like Tidal's main competitors Spotify and Apple would also be interested in gaining the rights to what is rumored to be an extremely extensive catalog of unreleased music. An ABC report from April claimed that Prince's vault contained enough unreleased music to drop a new Prince album annually for roughly the next 100 years. For an artist as iconic as Prince, that music is sure to be extremely valuable.

Until things get finalized with the estate, all rumors are likely to remain just that, but a potential deal surrounding all of his unreleased music is definitely something to keep an eye out for. 

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