Shawn Jay-Z Carter has always been about his business and any good business person knows how to pounce on an opportunity when they see one, to try to get the most bang for their buck. That is what reportedly appears to be happening with Jay-Z’s alleged offer to Prince’s family for the acquisition of Prince’s many unreleased songs from his Paisley Park music vault.
Here are the details via TMZ:
Jay Z tried to snap up all the unreleased Prince music that was unearthed at Paisley Park after the singer’s death … We’ve learned Jay met with Prince’s sister, Tyka, and her husband, Maurice Phillips, several weeks ago. The mogul flew Tyka and Maurice to NYC to meet with him. Sources close to Prince’s family tell us … Jay made an offer of around $40 million. We were unable to confirm the figure from Jay’s camp.
But there was a rub. Tyka may be Prince’s only full sibling, but she has to get sign-off from all the brothers and sisters, in addition to the trust that is managing the estate. Word is that JZ is still in the running to get the overall deal for streaming rights … but it will be very expensive and there are some major players in the game.
If Jay-Z does acquire all of Prince’s unreleased music, there’s a high possibility he’ll release it on his and Beyonce’s Tidal streaming service, which is cool, with the exception of one thing- Tidal hasn’t been doing so great in the subscription department, so I’m not sure if too many people will actually hear Prince’s music even if it is released on Tidal.
Jay, along with the rest of the Tidal owners, probably cashed in a little- especially when Prince’s music sales spike after he passed away- because Prince exclusively released his last two albums, “HitNRun,” on Tidal in 2015, simply because he liked Jay-Z and Beyonce.’ Here’s what Prince told Ebony magazine in December 2015 about why he chose to release his music on Tidal:
Prince: “HITNRUN sounds like today. Tidal is sinking money into it and they need it. And my heart is always on because I want them to do well. [Beyoncé and Jay Z] have taken a lot of abuse, their family has. A historic amount of abuse between the two of ‘em. And when we win on this, none of us’ll gloat. He’s not the gloating type anyway. He’s slick with his. He says to brush the dirt off your shoulder. “Y’all just need to stop. Just calm down! Everybody calm down! There ya go.”
Prince: “[Tidal has] a million-plus subscribers. Spotify has 10. So if you imagine a million people in front of you? That’s a lot of people. So you gotta talk to them and you getting ready to drop something and all of ‘em are gonna get it. What do you wanna say? How are you gonna move all of ‘em? Oh, now it gets interesting. It’s always going to be the peanut gallery and that’s all right.”
Prince: “My thing is this. The catalog has to be protected. And some of our fans were actually disingenuous. Taking the time to get their playlists together and yeah, it’s gone. Now you got to actually go subscribe to get the music that you lost on Spotify. Spotify wasn’t paying, so you gotta shut it down.”
Not sure what everything Prince stated in that Ebony interview meant, but a few things are clear: He liked Jay-Z’s and Beyonce’s reserved personalities, he wanted to protect his catalog, and he wanted his music to still be heard by the masses.
According to what one an investigative reported/Prince music vault documentarian, Mobeen Azhar, told NYDailyNews: “There is enough unreleased studio material for him to put out an album a year for the next 100 years.”
So hopefully the family gets the money they deserve for it and the world gets to hear through the best platforms possible.
FACTS ABOUT TIDAL:
Jay-Z acquired Tidal streaming service in 2015 from a Swedish company and he brought on 16 music artists stakeholders for Tidal. So each of these artists will get a percentage of profits from all music streamed on TidalL: Alicia Keys, Madonna, Nicki Minaj, Kanye West, Beyonce, Daft Punk, Arcade Fire (Win Butler and Regine Chassagne), Calvin Harris, Chris Martin, Deadmau5, Jack White, Jason Aldean, J. Cole, Rihanna, Shawn “JAY Z” Carter and Usher.
