Un2 the joy fantastic: 23 Prince albums from 1995-2010 hit streaming services for first time

23 albums from Prince’s most prolific period – between 1995 and 2010 –  are on all the major streaming services via Sony Music Entertainment’s Legacy imprint.

These including Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon Music, Pandora, Napster, Deezer (in the US only), Playstation Music, Soundcloud (premier), Tidal, HD Tracks and TouchTunes/AMI.

These are the first catalogue titles to be released via a deal struck in June between Sony Music Entertainment and the Prince estate, initially for 35 albums.

There’s also the new Prince Anthology 1995—2010 of 37 tracks from the era.

It is described as “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.”

Many of the tracks came from a time when Prince was experimenting with a non-traditional way of getting his music out to fans.

He’d already changed his name to the deliberately unmarketable Love Symbol and appeared in public with ‘slave’ written on his cheek to protest what he considered unfair contractual demands by the label.

He was one of the first artists to use the internet as a music platform, setting up a sub-service NPG and releasing 1998’s Crystal Ball on the relatively new format.

In 2008, he received a Webby award for his “visionary use of the Internet to distribute music and connect with audiences”.

But in later years he wasn’t sure of how effective the new frontier was, famously claiming in 2010 that “the internet is completely over”.

From 2021, Sony/Legacy’s distribution rights expand to include 12 Prince non-soundtrack catalogue albums from 1978-1996 for distribution in the US.

Since Prince’s death in 2016, his catalogue and recordings have been tangled in a legal mess.

Universal landed a deal to manage his NPG tracks constituting 25 albums but this was axed after it was discovered that Warner Bros owned distribution rights up to 2021 for songs recorded before 1996.

This is the list of albums hitting the streaming services, many for the first time.

1. The Gold Experience (1995) (The Most Beautiful Girl In The World greyed out, album unavailable for download)
2. Chaos And Disorder (1996)
3. Emancipation (1996)
4. Crystal Ball (1998)
5. The Truth (1998)
6. Rave Un2 The Joy Fantastic (1999)
7. Rave In2 The Joy Fantastic (2001)
8. The Rainbow Children (2001)
9. One Nite Alone… (2002)
10. One Nite Alone…Live! (2002)
11. 11.One Nite Alone…Live – The Aftershow: It Ain’t Over (Up Late with Prince & The NPG) (2002)
12. Xpectation (2003)
13. N.E.W.S. (2003)
14. C-Note (2004)
15. Musicology (2004)
16. The Chocolate Invasion (Trax from the NPG Music Club: Volume 1) (2004)
17. The Slaughterhouse (Trax from the NPG Music Club: Volume 2) (2004)
18. 3121 (2006)
19. Planet Earth (2007)
20. Indigo Nights (2008)
21. LOtUSFLOW3R (2009)
22. MPLSoUND (2009)
23. 20Ten (2010)
24. Prince Anthology: 1995-201