April 21, 2021 marks five years since Prince passed away and fans all over the world are remembering the icon.
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Since his passing, numerous songs from Prince’s legendary vault have been shared for the very first time and it seems likely that much more is on the way. With rumors of thousands of songs, concert tapes, videos, and more in his vault, it’s easy to think it’d be a full time job sorting through it. For one man, it is.
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Michael Howe serves as the official archivist of the Prince estate and has the dubious task of cataloging and managing all material the artist left behind in his vault.
Howe was interviewed by the Star Tribune and spoke about the storied vault and his interactions with Prince. Howe, based out of Nashville, commutes to Hollywood where he manages the contents of Prince’s vault. The administrators of Prince’s estate had the contents of the vault shipped to the Hollywood storage facility Iron Mountain.
Howe was happy to pull back the curtain and address the mystique that surrounded the vault. "Iron Mountain is a very large, windowless, climate-controlled, naturally disaster-proof, retrofitted building in Hollywood that houses a tremendous amount of other high-value entertainment assets. It's a pretty unsexy environment,” Howe said.
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While he has full access to the vault, Howe doesn’t make executive decisions on what material gets shared with the public. He speaks with the estate’s entertainment adviser, Troy Carter, on a regular basis as well as executives at Warner Bros. and Sony, which hold the rights to Prince’s music.
"It is a very tricky proposition," Howe said. He tries to imagine what Prince would do with the material when assessing the next steps. This means that any item labeled as “DNU” (do not use)” won’t be shared.
As an iconic artist with a massive fanbase, Howe recognizes that it’s just as important to please the superfans as it is to getting newer or unfamiliar fans acquainted with Prince’s material.
"We are mindful of what the superfan might find appealing," Howe said. "But we're always thinking how to bring Prince in front of people who were not familiar with his artistry or only know him by name or were too young to ever know anything about his performances."
Howe had nothing but praise for the late musician saying Prince "was absolutely wonderful: gracious, kind, accommodating, engaged, humble and just downright delightful."
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