Prince has caused confusion and concern among fans after deleting his Twitter and Facebook accounts, as well as many of his videos from Youtube, Gigwise said.

The enigmatic Purple One has also had the Twitter account of his band 3RDEYEGIRL removed too, after touring with them in recent years and releasing album PLECTRUMELECTRUM in 2014.

The accounts of 3RDEYEGIRL members Donna Grantis and Ida Nielsen remain active, despite not having Tweeted anything in several days. Not only that, but His Royal Badness has also deleted all but three videos from Youtube channel PrinceVevo.

Many fans are now speculating as to whether Prince has pulled the plug on the 3RDEYEGIRL project to move on to something new.

"We're always working on new material," drummer Hannah Ford told Gigwise earlier this year. "We're always rehearsing and jamming so it stays fresh. A lot of what the last few months have been is preparation for the album, talking about how to release it, what we want to do. Now we're preparing for what happens next.

"We recorded a whole lot of new stuff, so we'll see what happens there. 'The vault' exists - it really does."