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Comment by cs702 | Hacker News Reader

For those who don't know, Prince legally changed his name to a made-up unpronounceable symbol in the early 90's to sidestep restrictions in the contract he had signed with his record company, Warner, which at the time had the rights to use the name "Prince" for music and merchandise.

After the legal name change, news outlets started calling him "the artist formerly known as Prince." Meanwhile, Warner had no rights to the new, unpronounceable name. Warner executives likely were not too happy about that, but couldn't do anything about it.

In 2000, after the contract with Warner expired, Prince went back to using his old name.

Source: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-36107590

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Is the part about him legally changing his name really true? All the sources say so, but surely there are laws and regulations around name changes in the US. I have a hard time imagining the IRS having him down as the symbol.

Also, changing your name can't be a legal way of getting out of contracts, can it? If it is, then someone should let Ke$ha know...

I've heard several different reasonings over the years. I don't think it actual got him out of a contract but it allowed him to screw the record company. His new 'name' was difficult to market and they had the rights to the 'Prince' name, not his new one, so any new merchandise they created would not be matching the name he was now marketing himself under. Fans are going to listen to him and not the record company. So all in all he was just screwing them out of money and making their job difficult but it didn't actually end any contract.

Looking at the discography and discussion on the Wikipedia artivle, I don't think the name change got him out of his contract. It seems that he had to release a certain number of albums to finish his contract. I think by using the symbol on those albums, he prevented Warner brothers from having rights to use his name in connection with it. He probably negotiated his next contract a bit differently.

What he did was start turning the crank, churning out five albums in three years, since the contract stipulates a certain number of albums to be produced. Which leads one to wonder if he didn't want the Prince "branding" applied to this work; maybe he thought the label was meddling too much and it wasn't really his work?

svantana: for the purpose of Warner enforcing its contract with Prince, he legally changed his stage name, i.e., the name of his act.

I remember when Prince did that soon after Weird Al Yankovic said he was going to legally change his name to Prince but Prince said no.

I knew about the name change but not the reason. I had always chalked it up to hubris on his part. Thanks :)

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