Tidal, Prince Estate Agree to Release New Prince Album

Tidal and the Prince estate announced Friday that, after a lengthy legal battle, the streaming service will debut a new and unreleased Prince album. Due out in 2019, the album will feature a collection of previously unreleased music from Prince's legendary Vault.

Tidal will stream the album exclusively for 14 days as well as make the LP available for download a week after its debut. After that period, the Prince estate will handle the global physical release of the collection.

"Our only goal is to share Prince's music with his fans as he wanted," Tidal owner Jay-Z said. "After thoughtful and honest conversation with him, he chose TIDAL as his partner for HITnRUN Phase One and HITnRUN Phase Two, and we will continue to respect and honor Prince’s enduring legacy and wishes with this new collection."

The agreement between Tidal and the Prince estate was approved Wednesday. Troy Carter, the entertainment advisor for the Prince estate, added, "I'm very pleased this is resolved, and we get to honor the relationship between Prince and Tidal with this album. We look forward to fans hearing the new music and experiencing the genius of Prince."

The legal battle between Tidal and the Prince estate dates back to November 2016, when Jay-Z's music service took the estate to court over the streaming exclusivity of the late artist's catalog.

Under the terms of Tidal's initial deal with Prince, the service said they were promised streaming rights to Prince's next two LPs – Hit N Run: Phase One and Hit N Run: Phase Two – as well as an additional unreleased full-length studio album and streaming exclusivity to Prince's previously released catalog; in November 2015, Prince pulled his entire catalog from streaming services like Apple Music and Spotify.

However, the Prince estate questioned the validity of Prince's agreement with Tidal following the artist's death in April 2016. During the legal battle, Prince's catalog returned to all major streaming services.