Prince Estate Plans To Re-Release 35 Catalog Albums After Signing Deal With Sony

Prince’s Estate announced today that they plan to re-release 35 albums of the legendary singer via Sony Music Entertainment. According to Stereogum, they have signed an exclusive distribution agreement with Sony and the deal will also include distribution from Legacy Recordings. Worldwide rights will begin immediately with albums released from 1995-2010, with the following years to come later on.

Some of the albums included in the first phase are The Gold Experience (1995), Emancipation (1996), Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (1999), The Rainbow Children (2001) and 3121 (2006), as well as Musicology (2004) and Planet Earth (2007), which were originally released via Sony through Columbia.  Additional albums from 2014-2015 will also be distributed under the deal in the future. The exclusive deal also includes previously released singles, B-Sides, remixes, non-album tracks, live recordings and music videos recorded before 1995.

Beginning in 2021, Sony/Legacy’s distribution rights grow to include 12 Prince non-soundtrack catalog albums from the 1978-1996 era for distribution in the United States. Albums under the agreement from this period include Prince (1979), Dirty Mind (1980), Controversy (1981), 1999 (1982), Around The World In A Day (1985), Sign ‘O The Times (1987), Lovesexy (1988), Diamonds and Pearls (1991) and [Love, Symbol] (1992). 

Prince Estate entertainment adviser Troy Carter recently stated that a new album of unreleased music is in the works, set to be released September 28th. Carter told Variety “Prince basically saved everything, so there are decades of music and video and artefacts, but it takes long time to go through each one of those and research the historical context: where is this from, who did he collaborate with, where was it recorded, what year, was it the final version?” He continued to say that the album is not a compilation album but “more time-specific.”

It was also recently reported that Jay-Z will be overseeing a new Prince album that is set to be released next year exclusively on Tidal. Prince had released exclusive albums for the streaming platform before his passing and Jay-Z has claimed that Prince had made a deal with Tidal to be the only streaming platform to release his music on. The estate has since backed out of the deal.