“It is with profound sadness that I am confirming that the legendary, iconic performer Prince Rogers Nelson has died at his Paisley Park residence this morning at the age of 57,” publicist Yvette Noel-Schure said. “There are no further details as to the cause of death at this time.”

Reporting from Paisley Park on Thursday, Andrea Swensson tells Minnesota Public Radio that she was among a few dozen people who had gathered at Prince’s estate after hearing of a death there — and that “even the journalists are hugging each other” after hearing that Prince died.

Swensson, who had met Prince and spent time with him as part of a retrospective about his film Purple Rain, described him as being “shy, sensitive — and flirtatious.”

News of Prince’s death emerged after police said Thursday that they were investigating a death at his compound in Chanhassen, Minn., with the Carver County Sheriff’s Office saying that deputies were on the scene.

The department said via a statement, “When deputies and medical personnel arrived, they found an unresponsive adult male in the elevator. First responders attempted to provide lifesaving CPR, but were unable to revive the victim. He was pronounced deceased at 10:07 am.”

The sheriff’s office later released a transcript of the 911 call that brought personnel to the scene. The dispatcher had to press the caller — who was on a cellphone — for a street address, which the caller didn’t know. Eventually the caller said it was Paisley Park, and the dispatcher knew where that was and was able to send an ambulance. Authorities have given no indication that any delay affected the outcome.

TMZ reports that Prince had recently had health problems:

“The singer — full name Prince Rogers Nelson — had a medical emergency on April 15th that forced his private jet to make an emergency landing in Illinois. But he appeared at a concert the next day to assure his fans he was okay. His people told TMZ he was battling the flu.”

Prince was just 19 when he released his first album, putting out For You in 1978. In the decades that followed, he went on to develop a unique sound and style that endeared him to generations of audiences — all while exploring new ground as an artist.

Anthony Valadez, a Los Angeles-based DJ and producer, tells NPR’s Here and Now that Prince also endeared himself to those he encouraged: “African-Americans rocking out.”

“You had to be stuck in a box,” Valadez says of 1980s music culture. “Even Michael [Jackson] faced a lot of that, trying to get his videos on MTV. And you had this African-American man standing with a guitar, and, man, it was just powerful, you know? It was just really powerful.”

Prince’s fifth album, 1999, exploded onto America’s music scene. Released in 1983, it included such hits as “Little Red Corvette” and “1999.” It also set the stage for Purple Rain, the 1984 movie and soundtrack packed with songs such as “When Doves Cry” and “Let’s Go Crazy” that became fixtures on the radio and established Prince as a pop culture icon.

As Swensson wrote for MPR about Purple Rain for the film’s 30th anniversary in 2014, “it grossed $7.7 million in its opening weekend, beating out Ghostbusters — and racked up comparisons to movies like the Beatles’ Hard Day’s Night and Citizen Kane in glowing reviews from major media outlets.”

Prince also won two Grammys and an Oscar (for original song score) for Purple Rain. In 2007, he won a Golden Globe Award for best original song, “The Song of the Heart” from Happy Feet.

From 1985 to 2007, Prince won a total of seven Grammy awards — most recently for “Future Baby Mama.”

Praising Purple Rain and other Prince projects, Jesse Carmichael of the group Maroon 5 told NPR in 2009, “The reason Prince is an inspiration to me is that he’s obviously writing from the heart, and somehow he’s able to take these personal feelings, turn them into poetry and present them in a way that’s accessible and weird at the same time.”

Prince’s career was marked by a famous standoff with Warner Bros., the music company from which he split in 1996. Changing his name to a symbol, he was referred to for years as “the artist formerly known as Prince.”

In a sign that the rift had finally healed, Prince made a deal with Warner two years ago that gave him control of his own music catalog (during his career, Prince recorded well over 30 studio albums).

When he changed his name, Prince rejected the major-label system. In an interview with reporters last August, he echoed that idea again, saying “Record contracts are just like — I’m gonna say the word — slavery,” as NPR’s Eric Deggans reported.

As Eric wrote, Prince urged artists to get paid “directly from streaming services for use of their music, so that record companies and middlemen couldn’t take a share.”

News of Prince’s death spread on social media, sparking tributes from fans, fellow artists, celebrities and even President Obama, who released this statement:

“Today, the world lost a creative icon. Michelle and I join millions of fans from around the world in mourning the sudden death of Prince. Few artists have influenced the sound and trajectory of popular music more distinctly, or touched quite so many people with their talent. As one of the most gifted and prolific musicians of our time, Prince did it all. Funk. R&B. Rock and roll. He was a virtuoso instrumentalist, a brilliant bandleader, and an electrifying performer.

” ‘A strong spirit transcends rules,’ Prince once said — and nobody’s spirit was stronger, bolder, or more creative. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family, his band, and all who loved him.‎”

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

“David Bowie died peacefully today surrounded by his family after a courageous 18-month battle with cancer,” it read.

Bowie’s death was confirmed by his son, Duncan Jones, who tweeted, “Very sorry and sad to say it’s true. I’ll be offline for a while. Love to all.”

The singer released his latest album, Blackstar, on his birthday on Friday. The New York Times described the album as “typically enigmatic and exploratory.”

In a career that spanned decades and incorporated various personas, including Ziggy Stardust and the Thin White Duke, Bowie was known for his innovative and wide-ranging musical styles and his highly theatrical stage presentation.

John Covach, director of the Institute for Popular Music at the University of Rochester, highlighted Bowie’s influence on rock in the 1970s, singling out the album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust for the “Ziggy Stardust” persona that Bowie adopted.

Covach adds:

“Jim Morrison had flirted with the persona of the Lizard King already in the late 1960s, and the donning of a persona in UK pop singing could be traced back at least to Screaming Lord Sutch in the early to mid 1960s. Like Alice Cooper and Peter Gabriel at about the same time, Bowie’s performances became theatrical in ways that focused on the persona, and these shows took rock performance to new production levels, with greater emphasis on staging and costumes.

“Bowie’s creative and performing persona would change from album to album and from tour to tour, permitting him to transform his music in ways that fans might not have embraced in other artists (Madonna would adopt a similar strategy beginning in the 1980s).”

The New York Times reports:

“Mr. Bowie was his generation’s standard-bearer for rock as theater: something constructed and inflated yet sincere in its artifice, saying more than naturalism could. With a voice that dipped down to baritone and leaped into falsetto, he was complexly androgynous, an explorer of human impulses that could not be quantified.

“He also pushed the limits of ‘Fashion’ and ‘Fame,’ writing songs with those titles and also thinking deeply about the possibilities and strictures of pop renown.”

Bowie’s popularity hit another peak in the ’80s with the release of Let’s Dance. Hit singles from that album included the title track as well as “Modern Love” and “China Girl.”

In addition to his musical career, Bowie was an actor, appearing in films including The Man Who Fell to Earth and Labyrinth.

Bowie is survived by two children and his wife, the model Iman.

Copyright 2016 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

According to the statement, Weiland died in Bloomington, Minn.; other details, such as the cause of death, were not revealed, citing his family’s desire for privacy.

The Los Angeles Times reports:

“Jamie Weiland, the singer’s wife, confirmed the news of his death to The Times in a brief conversation Thursday.

” ‘I can’t deal with this right now,’ she said, sobbing. ‘It’s true.’ ”

Weiland, whose career was marked by both Grammy Awards and drug and alcohol abuse problems, was the lead singer of Stone Temple Pilots, which had numerous hits in the 1990s, and of Velvet Revolver, a supergroup that paired him with former members of Guns N’ Roses.

Weiland’s hits with Stone Temple Pilots include “Interstate Love Song,” “Creep,” “Plush” and “Big Empty.”

At the time of his death, Weiland had been touring with his new band, The Wildabouts. According to the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, the band’s Thursday night show “was canceled nine days ago because of slow ticket sales.”

It was a far cry from the heights of Weiland’s career, when he became famous both for reeling off chart-topping rock songs and for his wide-ranging fashion sense — from shirtless to shirt-and-tie. Over his career, Weiland sold tens of millions of records worldwide.

His struggles with heroin and other drugs often derailed Weiland over the years, even as he kept performing. Visits to rehab and police stations were also a distraction from the singer’s powerful voice, a gravelly bass that he tamed to sing rock ballads such as Velvet Revolver’s “Fall to Pieces” — a song about a singer struggling with demons, and whose video includes the depiction of a seeming drug overdose.

Stone Temple Pilots broke up in 2003 and got back together in 2008 — only to split for good in 2013.

During Stone Temple Pilots’ hiatus, Weiland found success again with Velvet Revolver, with the single “Set Me Free” from the Hulk soundtrack and the aforementioned “Fall to Pieces” and “Slither” from the band’s album Contraband.

In 2012, Weiland published a book called Not Dead & Not for Sale, in which he described being the victim of rape as a schoolboy, and in which he detailed his struggles with addiction.

From the prelude:

“Every time I try to catch up to my life, something stops me. Different people making claims on my life. Old friends telling me new friends aren’t true friends. All friends trying to convince me that I can’t survive without them.

“Then there are the pay-for-hire get-off-drugs professionals with their own methods and madness. They help, they hurt, they welcome me into their institutions … and, well, their madness.

“Welcome to my life.”

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

The letter, from a law firm representing Universal, was addressed to the antitrust bureau of the attorney general’s office. It stated that Universal currently has no deals with Apple or companies such as Sony Music that would “impede the availability of free or ad-supported music streaming services, or … limit, restrict, or prevent UMG from licensing its recorded music repertoire to any music streaming service.”

The letter did not specifically say Apple was among the targets of the investigation. But Universal’s attorneys did say the company was not colluding with Apple or its two major rival labels, Sony Music Entertainment and Warner Music Group.

A spokesperson for New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman had this response:

“This letter is part of an ongoing investigation of the music streaming business, an industry in which competition has recently led to new and different ways for consumers to listen to music. To preserve these benefits, it’s important to ensure that the market continues to develop free from collusion and other anti-competitive practices.”

The investigation centers on whether Apple may have urged the labels to drop support for free, ad-supported streaming services such as Spotify and Google’s YouTube. Such a move could be seen as anti-competitive.

Albert Foer, the founder of the American Antitrust Institute, says the current investigation may have been sparked in part by Apple’s history. The company was found guilty last year of conspiring with book publishers to raise the price of e-books when it launched its online book store. Among those who brought the charges were 33 state attorneys general, including Schneiderman.

There are some parallels between the music industry and the publishing business. At the time Apple entered into the e-book market, publishers were upset by the prices Amazon was forcing on them. Apple had a business model that let publishers set the prices higher. In the case of music, the labels have been unhappy with the money paid out by free, ad-supported services. Most famously, Taylor Swift withheld her latest music from Spotify over the issue.

“The suspicion would be of the corporate culture and how they operate,” Foer says about why the attorney general would investigate Apple Music. “It’s just that investigators will have suspicions in some cases because of what happened in the past.” But he says the investigation could also have been triggered by complaints from someone inside the music industry.

Chris Castle, a music industry attorney, finds it hard to believe that Apple would follow the same road that made it the target of an investigation that resulted in a $450 million settlement, along with supervision by an antitrust monitor. “The idea that these guys would blindly walk into this is crazy,” says Castle. “It just doesn’t seem plausible.”

In fact, Connecticut State Attorney General George Jepsen, who is also focused on music streaming, told Reuters that his office was satisfied that Universal did not have anti-competitive agreements to withhold music titles from free services. However, Jepsen did not say he’d stopped investigating Apple. And European Union officials are also investigating Apple Music.

But Castle says he will be surprised if this goes anywhere. Apple, he notes, has a lot of competition in the streaming music space: Spotify, YouTube, GooglePlay, Amazon. “There are inquiries all the time” he says. “They ask a few questions. You send a response and that’s it.”

Copyright 2015 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

As former NPR broadcaster Paul Brown adds in an appreciation he prepared for Morning Edition, Seeger’s tools “were his songs, his voice, his enthusiasm and his musical instruments.”

The songs he’ll be long remembered for include “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn” and “Where Have All the Flowers Gone.”

Paul is not just a newsman, but also a banjo player himself. Here’s more from his look back at Seeger’s long life:

“Seeger came by his beliefs honestly. His father, Charles Seeger, was an ethnomusicologist and pioneering folklorist whose left wing views got him in trouble at the University of California. Charles Seeger introduced his son to some of the most important musicians of the Depression era, including Lead Belly and Woody Guthrie. Seeger and Guthrie became fast friends, though they didn’t agree on all things. They crisscrossed the country performing together. …

“As early as 1941, they found themselves blacklisted. Seeger was a member of the Communist Party in those early days, though he later said he quit after coming to understand the evils of Stalin. …

“Following World War II and service entertaining the troops, Seeger teamed up with Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman to form the astonishingly successful folk group The Weavers. …

“If The Weavers hit an emotional and cultural sweet spot in postwar America, the ‘red scare’ quickly soured it. In 1955, Seeger refused to answer questions before Congress about his political beliefs and associations. He was held in contempt and nearly served a jail sentence before charges were finally dropped in 1962 on a technicality.

“But the troubles with Congress finished The Weavers. …

“Shut out of the big gigs, he played coffeehouses, union halls and college campuses to support his family. … He co-founded and wrote for Sing Out, one of the first and most important magazines to grow out of the folk revival. He produced children’s songs and books. But his commitment to causes never waned.

“Seeger sang and marched nationwide for civil rights and against the Vietnam War. In 1968, he went local … but in a big way. Upset at the filth clogging the Hudson River near his home, he spearheaded the building of the sloop Clearwater, which volunteers sailed up and down the Hudson. Politicians and polluters had to take notice.

“For all of his social activism, Seeger said more than once that if he had done nothing more than write his slim book How to Play the Five String Banjo, his life’s work would have been complete. …

“If Pete Seeger didn’t save the world, he certainly did change the lives of millions of people by leading them to sing, to take action and to at least consider his dream of what society could be.”

The New York Times says Seeger’s career “carried him from singing at labor rallies to the Top 10 to college auditoriums to folk festivals, and from a conviction for contempt of Congress (after defying the House Un-American Activities Committee in the 1950s) to performing on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at an inaugural concert for Barack Obama.”

And the Times notes that Seeger “was a mentor to younger folk and topical singers in the ’50s and ’60s, among them Bob Dylan, Don McLean and Bernice Johnson Reagon, who founded Sweet Honey in the Rock.”

Seeger’s influence went well beyond folk music. He’s a member of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, which says that in Seeger’s “capable hands, from the ’40s to the present day, a concert isn’t regarded as a one-way proceeding but a group singalong.”

According to The Associated Press, “Seeger’s grandson, Kitama Cahill-Jackson said his grandfather died peacefully in his sleep around 9:30 p.m. at New York Presbyterian Hospital, where he had been for six days. Family members were with him.”

There’s much more about Seeger in this archive of NPR’s coverage of him over the years.

Update at 11 a.m. ET. Seeger Stood Up For What’s Right, Spoke Out Against What’s Wrong, Obamas Say.

The White House just released this statement from the president:

“Once called ‘America’s tuning fork,’ Pete Seeger believed deeply in the power of song. But more importantly, he believed in the power of community – to stand up for what’s right, speak out against what’s wrong, and move this country closer to the America he knew we could be. Over the years, Pete used his voice — and his hammer — to strike blows for worker’s rights and civil rights; world peace and environmental conservation. And he always invited us to sing along. For reminding us where we come from and showing us where we need to go, we will always be grateful to Pete Seeger. Michelle and I send our thoughts and prayers to Pete’s family and all those who loved him.”

Copyright 2014 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.

It was 50 years ago today, Kabir Bhatia from member station WKSU in Cleveland reminds our Newscast Desk, that Capitol Records released the Beatles’ I Want To Hold Your Hand in the U.S.

The fab four, as he says, had “sold millions of records in Europe throughout 1963, but had flopped in the U.S. after several releases on small, regional labels.”

Then came I Want To Hold Your Hand.

Capitol, according to Penn State Beatles authority Kenneth Womack, had planned to release the song in early 1964. But “Carroll James, a Washington, D.C., deejay began playing a U.K. import of I Want to Hold Your Hand on WWDC radio. Faced with unprecedented public demand, Capitol released the single ahead of schedule in late December.”

This was back in the day, of course, when songs were put on vinyl.

By the time the band made its famous first appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show on Feb. 9, 1964, I Want To Hold Your Hand was “in the midst of a seven-week run at No. 1,” he adds. More than 2 million copies of the single had been sold in the U.S. and it was still flying off shelves.

Beatlemania was in full swing.

We hope you enjoy the clip, and perhaps dig out that old single for a fresh listen.

Copyright 2013 NPR. To see more, visit http://www.npr.org/.