🎸 Prince's 1992 Warner deal: a reported $100M

A Dublin judge ordered $2.95M over a dropped concert; Rolling Stone named him 2004's top earner. Where the money went after his 2016 death is unclear. ⏳

By , money desk · Desk editor Laima Ērkšķe-Kreicberga · · 2 min read

Prince (musician)SIGNEDPhoto: Unknown authorUnknown author, based on File:Prince promo picture (1988; cropped).png · Public domain

Photo: Unknown authorUnknown author, based on File:Prince promo picture (1988; cropped).png, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. Desaturated and cropped by MrScandal.

What we know

  • Prince renewed his contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1992, agreeing to what was reportedly a $100 million deal covering six more albums.
  • Rolling Stone named him the world's highest-earning musician in 2004, crediting him with an annual income of $56.5 million.
  • Dublin promoter MCD Productions sued Prince over a canceled 2008 concert; he settled out of court in February 2010 on undisclosed terms, and a Dublin judge ordered him to pay $2.95 million the following month.
  • Prince died at his Paisley Park home and recording studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota, on April 21, 2016, age 57, after accidentally overdosing on fentanyl, which authorities say was laced into counterfeit pills made to look like a generic version of the painkiller Vicodin.

Prince Rogers Nelson turned a tight grip on his own publishing into some of the biggest contract numbers in music. He died at 57 on April 21, 2016, at his Paisley Park home and recording studio in Chanhassen, Minnesota, after accidentally overdosing on fentanyl, which authorities say was laced into counterfeit pills made to look like a generic version of the painkiller Vicodin. What follows is the money history he built while he was alive.

The money record

01

A reported $100 million, six albums

Prince renewed his contract with Warner Bros. Records in 1992, agreeing to what was reportedly a $100 million deal covering six more albums - described at the time as the largest recording and music publishing contract in history. He kept complete publishing control over his Controversy Music catalogue, with Warner given only administrative rights to distribute it.

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02

$56.5 million, the highest-earning musician alive

Rolling Stone named Prince the world's highest-earning musician in 2004, crediting him with an annual income of $56.5 million. His 2004 tour took $90.3 million in ticket sales and he sold 1.9 million copies of the album Musicology, the magazine reported.

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By the numbers

  • 6 yrsfrom first to latest entry on record2004 to Feb 2010, 3 dated entries in the file
  • 8receipts behind this story8 news reports, 1992 to 2021

Counted by MrScandal from the receipts, the Files and our rankings.

03

$2.95 million to end a Dublin lawsuit

Prince canceled a planned June 2008 concert at Dublin's Croke Park about ten days beforehand. Promoter MCD Productions sued him for €1.7 million after refunding more than 55,000 tickets, and the hearing surfaced testimony from his agent that he had been offered $22 million to play Dublin and six other European venues. He settled out of court in February 2010 on undisclosed terms; the following month Dublin High Court Justice Peter Kelly ordered him to pay $2.95 million, making the figure public because Prince had not yet paid.

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04

$5 million for one Coachella set

Prince was reportedly paid upwards of $5 million for headlining the 2008 Coachella festival, according to Reuters.

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What isn't on the record here

None of that explains what happened to the catalog, the publishing, or the Paisley Park vault after 2016 - vault material valuable enough that a surviving copy of his shelved 1987 Black Album sold for $27,500 in 2018, a record for the Discogs marketplace. MissFortune would love to name the will, the heirs and the court file; none of them turn up in what's documented here. So the estate fight stays out of this story rather than getting guessed at.

The Prince file

Last entry Feb 2010
  1. Reported

    2010-02 Prince settled MCD Productions' lawsuit over his canceled 2008 Dublin concert out of court on undisclosed terms; a Dublin judge ordered him to pay $2.95 This story

  2. Reported

    2008 [reported] Reuters reported Prince was reportedly paid upwards of $5 million for headlining the 2008 Coachella festival. This story

  3. Reported

    2004 [reported] Rolling Stone named Prince the top-earning music act of 2004, citing $56.5 million in earnings. This story

On file: The Prince file

The Ledger

On the record

  • Prince's 1992 Warner Bros. deal was reportedly worth $100 million for six albums.
  • Rolling Stone ranked him the world's highest-earning musician in 2004, at $56.5 million a year.
  • He settled MCD Productions' Dublin lawsuit out of court in February 2010 on undisclosed terms; a Dublin judge ordered him to pay $2.95 million the following month.

Still rumour

    That's the record. The rest is rumour. - MissFortune

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