February 11, 2017 – The world according to Dan.

Prince’s Digital Catalog Returning to Streaming Music

Prince’s digital catalog is heading back to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music after over 18 months as an exclusive to Tidal, multiple sources have confirmed.

A majority of the musician’s catalog will be available on Sunday to coincide with the Grammys’ tribute to the singer, though it is unclear exactly when the catalog will be available.

Prince pulled his music from the major streaming services in June 2015. A month later, he aligned with Jay Z’s Tidal, offering the service his “Baltimore” and then-upcoming LP Hit n Run, as well as the exclusive streaming rights of his back catalog and other goodies from his legendary vaults. A surprise second new LP, Hit n Run Phase Two, arrived in December 2015.

“After one meeting, it was obvious that Jay Z and the team he has assembled at Tidal recognize and applaud the effort that real musicians put in2 their craft 2 achieve the very best they can at this pivotal time in the music industry,” Prince said of his Tidal deal.

However, four months after Hit N Run Phase Two landed, Prince died unexpectedly at his Paisley Park compound, leaving his estate without specified heirs or an appointed executor. Placed under the administration of a Minnesota bank as well as Prince’s siblings, the estate would later establish a publishing deal with Universal Music for Prince’s catalog, a pact that threatened Prince’s Tidal agreement.

The fissure in the relationship between the Prince estate and Jay Z’s Tidal and parent company Roc Nation was further exposed in November, when the two sides went to court to determine whether Tidal held the exclusive rights to Prince’s digital catalog following the late icon’s death; in a separate action, the Prince estate sued Tidal for streaming 15 Prince albums without permission.

The estate also argued that Tidal never had an exclusivity deal with Prince in writing, and that the streaming service didn’t make good on a $750,000 advance owed to the singer. In Tidal’s suit, the service accused the Prince estate of secretly negotiating with other streaming services.

While the lawsuits continue to play out in court, a judge subsequently ruled on January 30th that Tidal and Roc Nation did in fact pay $3 million to Prince as part of his initial deal with the streaming service, including the $750,000 that the estate called into question.

Following Universal’s acquisition of Prince’s publishing rights, the estate reopened dialogue with services like Spotify and Apple Music, with a target of reintroducing the catalog in time for the Grammys. Amazon Music and IHeartRadio also confirmed that music from Prince’s catalog will be available on their services, with the latter offering the catalog on new subscription services iHeartRadio Plus and iHeartRadio All Access.

Before any deals between the streaming services and the estate were officially announced, Spotify not-so-subtly began trumpeting the arrival of Prince’s catalog in late January with a series of purple billboards in New York’s Union Square subway station.

Last October, Warner Bros. and NPG Records announced the releases of a remastered version of Purple Rain and the greatest hits collection Prince 4Ever. The latter, released last November, included “Moonbeam Levels,” a previously unreleased song recorded in 1982 during the 1999 sessions.

On Thursday, the singer’s estate announced an agreement with Universal Music Group to release his music recorded after 1995 alongside music from his vault, including outtakes, demos and live recordings.

Mike Ilitch, owner of Red Wings, Tigers, dead at 87

Mike Ilitch, founder of the Little Caesars Pizza empire and owner of the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers, has died. He was 87.

Ilitch, who was praised for keeping his professional hockey and baseball teams in Detroit as other urban sports franchises relocated to new suburban stadiums, died Friday at a hospital in Detroit, according to family spokesman Doug Kuiper.

“He made such a positive impact in the world of sports, in business and in the community, and we will remember him for his unwavering commitment to his employees, his passion for Detroit, his generosity to others and his devotion to his family and friends,” his son Christopher Ilitch said in the statement Friday night.

Ilitch and his wife, Marian, founded Little Caesars in suburban Detroit in 1959, and eventually grew the business into the world’s largest carry-out pizza chain with several spin-off companies. Under his ownership and open checkbook, the Red Wings soared back to stability and won four Stanley Cup championships, and the Tigers — who’d scouted a young Ilitch in the 1940s — made it to the World Series.

He was as much a fan of the often-struggling Detroit as he was of sports. When approached in 2009 by organizers of the Motor City Bowl in Detroit, Ilitch agreed to sponsor the annual college football bowl game despite a poor local economy. The game was renamed the Little Caesars Pizza Bowl.

“It’s a sporting event, and we need sporting events,” Ilitch said at the time. “It picks our community up to no end, with all the great colleges we have in this state and the professional teams that we have. Thank God for `em, especially at times that are rough right now.”

The son of Macedonian immigrants, Ilitch was born on July 20, 1929. He played baseball at Detroit’s Cooley High School and was signed by his hometown Tigers after his four-year stint in the U.S. Marines, spending three years in the team’s farm system before a knee injury ended his playing career.

But he found his niche in business. His family’s companies had combined revenues of $2.4 billion in 2011.

It started with that first Little Caesars restaurant in Garden City, a working-class suburb west of Detroit. A food service distribution company soon followed to supply ingredients and other products for the growing number of restaurants. Blue Line Foodservice grew into one of the largest program account food service distribution companies in the U.S.

Ilitch Holdings Inc. was established in 1999 to manage the family’s interests in food, sports and entertainment, and the company remained family focused. His son, Christopher, was president and CEO, while his wife, Marian, was vice chairwoman as well as sole owner of MotorCity Casino, one of Detroit’s three casinos.

Ilitch broke into sports ownership in 1982, when he paid a reported $8 million for the struggling Red Wings. Once a National Hockey League powerhouse, the team had bottomed out to mediocrity, but it began winning again under Ilitch. The Red Wings took home the Stanley Cup in 1997, 1998, 2002 and 2008.

Ilitch was inducted into the NHL Hockey Hall of Fame in 2003, and into the U.S. Hockey Hall of Fame and Michigan Sports Hall of Fame a year later.

“Mr. and Mrs. Ilitch are incredibly passionate about Detroit and their teams,” Red Wings general manager Ken Holland told The Associated Press in a 2010 interview. “They create a family atmosphere with stability, loyalty and a personal touch. But we all understand we have to produce to be around for a long time.”

As part of his long-term plan to build a Detroit-based business empire, Ilitch also bought Olympia Entertainment, which manages several restaurants, sports and entertainment venues, in 1982.

Husband and wife bought the downtown Fox Theatre five years later and started a massive, $12 million restoration. It reopened a year later and became a lucrative venue for musicals, plays and other productions. The Little Caesars world headquarters also was moved downtown.

Then, in 1992, the man who once dreamed of playing for the Detroit Tigers bought the team for $85 million. He moved it in 2000 from the storied but fading Tiger Stadium to Comerica Park, across from the Fox Theatre.

Unlike previous owners of both sports franchises, Ilitch opened his checkbook to sign top players — finding solid success in hockey, and a rollercoaster in baseball.

The Tigers lost an American League record 119 games in 2003, but advanced to the World Series three years later, losing in five games to the St. Louis Cardinals. Near the end of a disappointing 2008 season, Ilitch said he and the team would review everything done to put the roster together but focusing on the $138 million payroll wasn’t the priority.

“I’m not afraid to go out and spend money,” he said. “It’s been very costly, but I’m not going to change my ways.”

The Tigers made the American League playoffs in 2011, a return to winning that brought more fans to Comerica Park.

Tigers general manager Dave Dombrowski said Ilitch was simply driven to win.

“He has a good feel for sports, baseball in particular, and that’s always good when you’re working for someone like that,” Dombrowski said in 2010, shortly after Ilitch announced he would try to buy the Detroit Pistons. Ilitch had jumped in amid speculation another buyer might move the pro basketball team.

“When I read in the paper there was the chance that this great sports town could lose one of its professional sports franchises, I just didn’t see how we could let that happen,” Ilitch told The Associated Press in 2010. “The Pistons, just like the Red Wings, Tigers and the (Detroit) Lions, have a rich and storied tradition in this community.”

California billionaire and Michigan State University graduate Tom Gores eventually bought the Pistons and kept the team at its stadium in Auburn Hills, north of Detroit.

Ilitch’s admiration of Detroit also was put on display in 2009, when General Motors — struggling under the threat of bankruptcy — discontinued its sponsorship of the popular General Motors Fountain at Comerica Park. Instead of selling the space to other bidders, Ilitch gave the advertising spot to each of the area’s car companies that season at no cost.

“He cares about the city of Detroit. This is something he wanted to do. It’s for the Big Three,” Ron Colangelo, the Tigers’ spokesman, said at the time.

Philanthropy always was a major focus. In 1985, he established the Little Caesars Love Kitchen, a restaurant on wheels to feed the hungry and help with food distribution following national disasters.

Ilitch founded the Little Caesars Veterans Program in 2006 to provide honorably discharged veterans the chance to own a Little Caesars franchise, and his Ilitch Charities invests in programs promoting economic and job growth. Contributions, sponsorships and in-kind donations from the Ilitch companies total more than $4 million per year.

Ilitch is survived by his wife, seven children and numerous grandchildren.