US court sends unreleased Prince tracks back into the vault

A six-pack of previously unreleased Prince tracks will go back into the vault after an American court blocked a sound engineer from sharing music the pair had worked on.

The Purple One’s estate and Paisley Park Park Enterprises last month filed a federal lawsuit against George Ian Boxill for control of the tracks on the Deliverance EP, which he had planned to release through Rogue Music Alliance (RMA).

Boxill, a sound engineer, songwriter and producer, had worked with Prince in 2006 and briefly made the title track available on iTunes and Apple Music last month.

The disputed songs were written and recorded when Prince was an independent artist, “protesting what he saw as an unjust music industry”, according a statement issued by the Vancouver-based independent RMA ahead of the planned EP release.

Prince’s reps see it differently. Boxill signed a confidentiality agreement that the recordings would remain Prince’s property, according to the lawsuit.

As the weight of legal action bore down, Deliverance was pulled and the posthumous EP release won’t be seeing the light of day anytime soon.

On Monday, U.S. District Judge Wilhelmina Wright issued a preliminary injunction saying Boxill and RMA couldn’t issue unreleased recordings until the dispute is resolved, the AP reports, and both Boxill and RMA are frozen out from using Prince’s trademark to sell or promote Deliverance.

As previously reported, Prince’s estate has recommended rescinding Universal Music Group’s US$31 million deal to license a chunk of the late artist’s catalogue.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.