Prince's Vault Being Shopped for $35 Million: Report

Prince
Prince is seen on stage at the 36th NAACP Image Awards in Los Angeles, March 19, 2005. The singer's vault could soon be made public. Kevin Winter/Getty

Prince's secretive vault of unreleased material could soon be made public as his estate is reportedly shopping the collection for as much as $35 million (£28.7m).

According to Billboard, all three major U.S. record labels—Sony, Universal and Warner Bros.—are in talks to acquire the contents of the vault in a deal brokered by the late singer's estate advisers L. Londell McMillan, his longtime attorney, and Charles Koppelman, a veteran music industry executive.

A deluxe edition re-release of Prince's seminal 1984 album Purple Rain, first announced in 2014, could also be released "as soon as early 2017," said Billboard.

McMillan and Koppelman were named advisers to Bremer Trust, the wealth management firm acting as temporary executors of Prince's estate, in June. They were appointed to guide Bremer on how best to maintain and monetize the Purple One's extensive music catalog in the wake of his death in April.

The contents of Prince's vault, located in his Paisley Park estate in Chanhassen, Minnesota, have been much-mooted over the years. The star notoriously kept many unreleased recordings, as well as videos of rare live performances and other keepsakes from his career, locked away.

According to Prince biographer Matt Thorne, the singer would have approved of his vault one day being made public.

"He made two contradictory statements," Thorne told Newsweek in April. "He said that one day he might burn everything in the vault, but I don't think that was a serious intention. And more recently he also said that one day everything in the vault will come out, that it will be released. I think that's what we've got take on board—that is what he would have wanted."

Prince's Paisley Park estate reopened for the first time since his death as a museum on October 6. The star's ashes are displayed in a special urn in the shape of the famous property.

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