Prince fans will soon have a chance to hear new music from the late artist, Variety reports. Troy Carter, a Spotify executive and adviser to Prince's estate, announced the news this week.
“I heard some music the other night that was pretty mindblowing, and we’re getting some stuff mixed right now. We’ve got great projects in the works that I’m excited to talk about,” Carter said. “So the answer is yes, there will be unreleased Prince music coming soon.”
There is no word on which label will be releasing the music. After a feud with former label Warner Brothers in the 1990s, Prince became very protective of his music and its rights. Every album released after 1996 was distributed by a different label.
The “Purple Rain” singer was also suspicious of releasing his music through digital mediums. If someone posted a Prince song on YouTube, it wouldn’t be long before it was snatched, and very little of his material was available via streaming services before he passed.
“The industry changed,” Prince told The Guardian in 2011. “We made money [online] before piracy was real crazy. Nobody’s making money now except phone companies, Apple and Google. I’m supposed to go to the White House to talk about copyright protection. It’s like the gold rush out there. Or a carjacking. There’s no boundaries.”
Prince released his last album, Hit n Run Phase Two in 2015. A remastered and expanded edition of Purple Rain was released in June 2017.
Ian Boxhill, a sound engineer and one of the Purple One’s former collaborators, teased an EP, Deliverance, last spring, but that effort was halted by the estate. A track by the same name is available for download.