Posthumous releases
The first posthumous release from Prince's estate was the greatest hits album 4Ever on November 22, 2016. It was a compilation of Prince's hits, such as "Purple Rain" and "Raspberry Beret". The album included one previously unreleased song, named "Moonbeam Levels", originally recorded in the 1999 album sessions in 1982.
On February 9, 2017, Prince's estate signed a distribution deal with Universal Music Group, which included the post-1995 recordings on his NPG Records label and unreleased tracks from his vault. On June 27, Comerica, acting on behalf of the estate, requested that Carver County District Judge Kevin Eide cancel the estate's deal with Universal, as UMG's contract would interfere with a contract with Warner Music Group that Prince signed in 2014. After Universal's attorneys were granted access to the Warner contract, the attorneys also offered to cancel the deal. On July 13, the court voided Universal's deal with Prince's estate.
On April 19, an EP featuring six unreleased Prince recordings, Deliverance, was announced with an expected release date for later that week. The next day, Prince's estate was granted a temporary restraining order against George Ian Boxill, an engineer who co-produced the tracks and was in possession of the master tapes, and halted the release of the EP. On June 23, a deluxe reissue of Purple Rain was released. The most expansive edition contained a 2015 remaster of the original album, a bonus disc of previously unreleased material called "From the Vault & Previously Unreleased", B-sides, and the first DVD issue of Prince and the Revolution: Live, which was recorded in Syracuse on the Purple Rain Tour. The album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200 and at number one on both the Billboard R&B Albums and Vinyl Albums charts.
In April 2018, the previously unreleased original recording of "Nothing Compares 2 U" from 1984 was released as a single. A music video was also released consisting of edited rehearsal footage shot in the summer of 1984. Troy Carter, adviser for Prince's estate, later announced in an interview with Variety that a full-length album was planned for release on September 28. In June of that year, the Prince estate signed a distribution deal with Sony Music Entertainment including the rights to all of Prince's studio albums, plus unreleased music, remixes, live recordings, music videos and B-sides. Since 2021, albums produced by Prince between 1978 and 1996 are distributed by Sony/Legacy Recordings in the United States, with Warner Music Group, the original publisher, still holding the international distribution rights.
On August 17, all albums produced by Prince after 1996 were released digitally on streaming platforms, together with a new compilation album entitled Anthology: 1995–2010. Only one song remained unavailable to stream, "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World", due to a plagiarism lawsuit in Italy that was not resolved until 2022. On September 21, Piano and a Microphone 1983 was released, an intimate recording of Prince privately rehearsing with a piano.
The Sony/Legacy reissues began in 2019. Throughout that year, Musicology, 3121, Planet Earth, Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic, Rave In2 the Joy Fantastic, Chaos and Disorder, and Emancipation were reissued on CD and vinyl. Ultimate Rave was also released, a 2 CD and 1 DVD set which included Rave Un2 the Year 2000, a concert film. The Versace Experience: Prelude 2 Gold was also reissued for Record Store Day. In June, a compilation of Prince's original recordings of songs given to other artists, entitled Originals, was released, initially exclusively through Tidal, then later on CD and vinyl. In October, a single of Prince's previously unheard original acoustic demo of "I Feel for You" was released digitally and as a limited 7" single.
In October 2019, Prince's incomplete memoir, titled The Beautiful Ones, was published by Random House. Prince had worked on the memoir with Dan Piepenbring during the Piano and a Microphone Tour in 2016 and had managed to complete around 50 pages before his death. The book includes those pages plus a lengthy account by Piepenbring of how the project came to be, a scrapbook of rare personal photos and miscellanea from the vault, and Prince's original handwritten concept for the film Purple Rain. In November, a deluxe reissue of 1999 was released. This reissue had several configurations, the most expansive including 35 previously unreleased songs and two live concerts.
In 2020, a Super Deluxe reissue of Sign o' the Times was released. This reissue had various configurations, with the most expansive containing the original album, the single and maxi-single mixes, related B-sides, 45 previously unissued studio tracks, a live show from the Sign o' the Times Tour in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and a DVD featuring the New Year's Eve 1987 show at Paisley Park. Pitchfork rated the Super Deluxe version 10 out of 10 and named it Best New Reissue. In June 2021, The Truth was reissued on vinyl for Record Store Day. The following month saw the release of Welcome 2 America, a previously-unreleased album originally recorded and shelved in 2010. In 2022, Prince and the Revolution: Live was reissued on Blu-Ray, along with the soundtrack which was also released on CD and vinyl for the first time. "The Most Beautiful Girl in the World" would appear on music streaming services in that same year; it had previously been unavailable due to a plagiarism lawsuit in Italy, with songwriters Bruno Bergonzi and Michele Vicino now being legally recognized as co-writers in the country.
In 2023, a Super Deluxe reissue of Diamonds and Pearls was released, containing the original album, remixes and B-sides, 33 previously unheard tracks and a Blu-ray of a live concert recorded at Glam Slam in Minneapolis as a rehearsal for the 1992 Diamonds and Pearls Tour. In 2024, a nine-hour documentary titled The Book of Prince was in production by Ezra Edelman for release on Netflix. The estate were reportedly unhappy with the project, considering it a "sensationalized" depiction of his life. A few people saw a rough cut of the film; one of them, Sasha Weiss, wrote in The New York Times Magazine that it contained at least one instance of a former girlfriend accusing him of abuse. She said "We're asked to sit with Prince's multiplying paradoxes for many hours, allowing them to unsettle one another". In February 2025, the project was officially cancelled and it was announced that "a new documentary featuring exclusive content from Prince's archive" would be produced by the estate instead; this has been described as "a watered-down take, to placate the powers that be". The Prince estate's social media accounts then posted a video of a vault door being opened with the caption "The vault is free."
In 2026, Prince's estate announced Timeless, a compilation album with nine studio recordings spanning from 1977 to 2016 in chronological order, and a live recording of "How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore?". The album was previewed with the single "With This Tear" on April 20, 2026, and the album was released on August 28, 2026.
