any other artist's music?

Does he own any music rights catalogues?

Does he own the masters from other artists who recorded on his NPG imprint?

Wow, is this thing on?

slm4m said:

There's no evidence of which I am aware that suggests Prince has acquired rights over other people's writing or recordings.

Where other artists have recorded Prince's songs, then he will still retain authorship rights.

But in past cases, it's usually been assumed that rights over master recordings vested with Warner Brothers (regardless of whether it was Prince, The Time, Jill Jones, Mavis Staples etc..) under previous contractual arrangements and then ultimately reverted to the recording artist according to whatever time provision existed in the contract. After all, why would Warners offer associated artists less stringent terms than those extended to their 'mentor'?

In more recent times, it's unclear what the precise arrangements have been for artists (Larry Graham, Chaka Khan) when recordings have been released under the NPG label. However, Prince has intimated in interview that arrangements that existed with WB have not prevailed.

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does warners own the masters forever? or do they have to forfiet in 50 years or something?

monte said:

They don't 'own' the master recordings. WB have rights over use of those master recordings. and those rights revert back to Prince after a period of time stipulated in the relevant contract. Based on what has been said in the past, I think the contractual period is 30 years (i.e. rights for use of the master recording of 'For You' would revert to Prince in 2009).
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If I am not mistaken, back in the golden days of music recording the music company owned the masters forever. I think the government got involved at some point recently and now masters are given back to the creator of the work after 30 years or so. this isn't written in a contract. the only reason to stipulate the return of ownership of masters in a contract would be if the publisher and artist agreed upon a lesser length of time.