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Legacy Reissues

On 27 June 2018, The Prince Estate struck a distribution partnership with Legacy Recordings, an imprint within Sony Music Entertainment established in 1990 to manage “the world’s foremost library of historically significant commercial recordings”. The arrangement awarded Sony exclusive worldwide rights to thirty-five of Prince’s thirty-nine non-soundtrack albums. Split into two phases, the initial stage (2018 to 2021) granted Sony publishing rights to nineteen albums of Prince’s post 1995 catalogue – the year he fulfilled contractual obligations with Warner Bros Records. These rights were extended in the second phase which began on 1 January 2021 when Warner’s US rights to other recordings expired – the twelve albums produced during the 19-years Prince was signed to the label (1978-1996).

The four remaining soundtrack albums (Purple Rain, Parade, Batman and Graffiti Bridge) continued to be owned by Warner (since 28 May 2019 rebranded Warner Records) and subject to a separate agreement they signed with Prince on 18 April 2014. The estate’s lawyer’s non-disclosure of Warner’s rights to those albums, Purple Rain and Batman being Prince’s most successful, led to a previous deal worth $31 million reached between The Prince Estate and Universal Music Group on 2 November 2016, be contested and eventually nullified in court on 13 July 2017. Below is the complete list of every Sony Legacy reissue of Prince albums distributed in their original configuration under their agreement.

Are the Legacy reissues faithful to the originals?

While the noticeable change is the appearance of logos of The Prince Estate and Legacy Recordings in place of the original production and distributor labels, the original artwork and packaging is largely and faithfully reproduced, including liner notes, interior booklets and even original hype stickers. Various elements of packaging and overall design display subtle improvements. It is also worth noting sound quality has benefited from current manufacturing and pressing processes, this is particularly good news for older albums. The Lovesexy reissue, for example, retains the untracked format of the original. Many of these reissued albums also receive their vinyl format debut.