It’s finally happened. Less than a year after Prince’s death, a majority of his albums from 1978 through 1996 have appeared on major streaming services, including Spotify, Apple Music, Pandora, Amazon Prime, and more. The list includes classics like Purple Rain, Sign ‘O’ The Times, 1999, Dirty Mind and so many more, now available at our listening pleasure.
In his lifetime, Prince openly spoke against streaming his music through these types of services, saying that it devalued an artist’s music. It’s likely that if Prince were still alive today, this arrangement would not be the case. However, his estate owes a significant amount of money, and have reached a licensing agreement with Universal Music Group, thus giving the streaming outlets an opportunity to share his music. Additionally, no will for Prince was ever recovered.
These 19 albums are just the tip of the iceberg, if we’re to believe the reports of this deal. Additional albums, unreleased music, and more will be released, as well as deluxe editions of Prince’s classic albums. The first such release will be a deluxe reboot of Purple Rain, due out June 9th. Warner Bros. CEO Cameron Strang spoke about the new release, saying that it will include “two incredible albums of previously unreleased Prince music and two complete concert films from the Paisley Park vault.”
In the meantime, we have 19 full albums of Prince music to enjoy! Stream some of them below, and head to Prince’s artist page on Spotify to see the full selection.
[Photo by Chad Anderson at MSG]