Legacy Recordings, a division of Sony Music Entertainment, is launched its first round of Prince catalog digital releases on August 17.
The first wave of Prince catalog titles to be released through an exclusive agreement struck in June between SME and The Prince Estate focuses on 1995-2010, a crucial epoch in Prince history. 23 highly-collectible Prince catalog titles (many of them hard-to-find or out-of-print) and Prince Anthology: 1995-2010 (a newly-curated anthology of 37 essential tracks from the era) are now available across all major streaming services and digital service providers.
Many of these albums, long sought-after by fans and collectors, are available for the first time for streaming and download, adding more than 300 essential Prince songs to the artist's online in-print catalog.
For Prince, 1995-2010 was an unprecedented period of sustained and prolific creativity. Releasing fresh recordings at a rapid-fire pace through a variety of distribution strategies including his own online NPG Music Club, Prince was making some of the most provocative, experimental and soulful music of his career. Freed from major label demands and expectations, Prince was able to write, record and release his own music on his own terms.
Assembled and curated under the auspices of The Prince Estate, ‘Prince Anthology: 1995-2010’ brings together 37 key recordings from the era. Opening with the title track from ‘Emancipation’ (“This is my most important record," said Prince when the album was released in 1996) and closing with the anthemic We March (from 1995's ‘The Gold Experience’), this new compilation provides a coherent musical chronicle of Prince's artistic and spiritual evolution through the late 20th and early 21st centuries in songs that continue to resonant in the culture.
‘Prince Anthology: 1995- 2010’ draws spotlight tracks from The Gold Experience, Emancipation, Chaos and Disorder, Crystal Ball, The Truth, Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic, Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic, The Rainbow Children, One Nite Alone..., C-Note, N.E.W.S., Xpectation, Musicology (includes 2005 Best Male R&B Performance Grammy winner Call My Name), The Slaughterhouse, The Chocolate Invasion, 3121 (the first Prince album to debut at #1 on the Billboard 200), Planet Earth, LOtUSFLOW3R, MPLSoUND and 20Ten.