$45-Million Contract for Rolling Stones : * Pop music: A 6-year deal with Virgin makes it the highest-paid band again with an estimated $8-million fee per album and a 25% royalty on each album sold.

The Rolling Stones reclaimed their title as rock’s highest-paid band Wednesday when it signed an estimated $45-million contract with Virgin Records. The agreement begins with the group’s next studio album, due in 1993.

In bidding for the Stones, the British-based label won out over rival offers from three other companies, including Sony Music, the Japanese conglomerate that now owns Columbia Records, which signed the Stones to a record $25-million deal in 1983.

But that figure had been topped in recent months by two bands as the record industry experienced a flurry of mega-buck contracts. Aerosmith signed an estimated $37-million agreement with Sony Music in August, while Motley Crue agreed to a reported $35-million pact with Elektra Entertainment in September. Michael Jackson holds the record for a pop contract at about $65 million.

Virgin Records Group Chairman Richard Branson, who was actively involved in the campaign to land the rock quintet, said Wednesday that he felt “honored” that the Stones had decided to sign with his company. Also involved in the bidding: Thorn EMI and PolyGram.

“The Rolling Stones are the greatest rock ‘n’ roll band,” he said in press release. “I first saw the group play as an 18-year-old in Hyde Park while I was handing out leaflets for Virgin’s first mail-order record company. I never thought for a moment that (nearly) 30 years later they would be signed to our label.”

Stones members Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watts and Ron Wood met with Virgin representatives in London and Amsterdam this week to flesh out the final details of the deal. Stones bassist Bill Wyman, rumored to be leaving the group, reportedly chose not to participate in the negotiations.

The Stones’ negotiating team--business manager Prince Rupert Loewenstein and Los Angeles attorneys John Branca and Richard Leher--could not be reached for comment, but sources speculated that the Stones will be paid more than $45 million in cash advances for the deal.

Under terms of the contract, the British group will receive an estimated $8-million advance fee per album plus an undisclosed substantial one-time cash advance. The group will also be paid a blue-chip 25% royalty rate on each album sold, sources said.

The deal also reportedly includes a $20-million payment for eventual distribution rights to the Stones’ post-’60s catalogue, which includes such classic albums as “Sticky Fingers,” “Exile on Main Street” and “Some Girls.”

PolyGram Records, which dropped out of the bidding for the Stones a few weeks ago, sources say, recently extended its contract with the Stones’ former manager Allen Klein to distribute albums from the band’s pre-’70s body of work.

The band’s Sony contract expired with the release early this year of the live “Flashpoint” album. Sony--which is believed to have paid the Stones about $6 million per album during their ‘80s tenure--reportedly dropped out of the bidding for the band shortly after the company signed its deal with rival rock group Aerosmith.

Some industry observers cite the age of the group--whose founding members will be well into their 50s before the six-year agreement expires--plus the Stones’ less-than-overwhelming sales track record in recent years as factors that might have contributed to Sony pulling out of the bidding war. The band’s last three albums, for instance, sold an estimated total of 3.5 million albums in the United States.

“We had a great working relationship with the Rolling Stones,” a Columbia spokeswoman said Wednesday. “We wish them only the best.”

The Stones began their recording career in 1963 signing with London Records, then switched to Atlantic Records in 1970 and signed with Columbia Records in 1983.