Inside Prince’s vault where thousands of unreleased songs are reportedly still hidden

27 October 2025, 12:55

It’s hoped the legendary stash of long-lost Prince music will eventually all see the light of day.

Thousands of Prince songs remain hidden away in the singer’s ‘vault’, nearly ten years on from his death.

While reports vary on quite how many unreleased tracks exist, some have suggested Prince’s famous vault contained what could make-up 100 albums worth of material at the time of his death in 2016.

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The ‘Purple Rain’ singer was a prolific songwriter and was often in the studio recording new material.

However, he was also very quick to move on from compositions, leading to his vault of unreleased tracks coming to be.

Prince’s collection of unpublished material was originally stored where the majority was recorded – his Paisley Park home.

But in 2017, the material was moved to a secure site in Los Angeles after concerns were raised about the archive’s original storage conditions.

For his recent biography of the ‘I Wanna Be Your Lover’ singer, author John McKie researched the truth about Prince’s vault to try to find out more about the thousands of songs that are hidden away.

“Prince released about 40 studio albums, but there is probably minimum 100 albums in [the vault] unreleased, not including live shows,” John told the Mirror.

Purple Rain

“Morris Hayes was a keyboard player with Prince for 20 years and [Prince] said to Morris ‘There is stuff in [the vault] that’s better than ‘Purple Rain’’”

According to John, Morris asked Prince whether he would ever release the songs that were in the vault, only to be told they were there for the singer’s kids.

John believes Prince would have wanted at least a few of the songs to be released for fans to hear.

This was always the belief of Prince’s sister Tyka Nelson, who shared a sixth of Prince’s estate.

In 2017, she told The Sun: “It was always Prince’s plan to release those songs. I want what Prince wants... So as soon as we can release it, don’t worry – we sure will.”

In 2021, Welcome 2 America, an album Prince recorded in 2010 but never released, was released from the vault.

At that time, Tyka told Rolling Stone: “I won’t get off this planet until he gets every single solitary thing he worked so hard for and preserved for all of the world to hear...

“Prince always wanted people to hear his music,” she stressed.

Many more treasures from Prince’s vault have been released since then, but needless to say, fans are yet to hear each of the reported thousands of tracks it holds.