We have been blessed with some very beautiful official releases this year, and some leaks that can be rightly considered iconic.

So what is your highlight or highlights?

The official releases were kinda terrible imho.

2025 highlights for me were the amazing unofficial releases - Diamonds & Love, Crystal Ball rehearsals, All the Kings Horses etc.

Looking ahead to 2026, I'd hope to see the NPGMC relaunch, or some other means of releasing some vault material (demos, unreleased studio work, rehearsals, live recordings etc). Otherwise why even bother.

The realization that everything officially Prince, is pretty much over, and that there is very little left to look forward to.

That was my peak.

I no longer desire anything, I no longer expect anything.

A serious form of indifference has set in.

Plus the fact that there is so much other music to discover, and I'd rather not waste my time anymore.

I'll still come back here regularly to check things out, though.

The Prince joints I created/remixed.

This Estate is done........no more loot from me.

the leaks of course. I'm still holding out hope for a Parade Super Deluxe in 2026

nxx said:

The official releases were kinda terrible imho.

2025 highlights for me were the amazing unofficial releases - Diamonds & Love, Crystal Ball rehearsals, All the Kings Horses etc.

Looking ahead to 2026, I'd hope to see the NPGMC relaunch, or some other means of releasing some vault material (demos, unreleased studio work, rehearsals, live recordings etc). Otherwise why even bother.

Cyrstall Ball rehearsals?? Am I the only person that doesn't know ?? I missed this too I'm guessing!

cfluid said:

As so often with anything to do with Prince these days, unofficial releases and events made up about 80% of anything interesting.

I did see New Purple Celebration for the third and fourth times, and The Dawn (another, North East England-based tribute band) for the third time, which was pretty cool.

That, plus the SOTT IMAX screening, meant I got a pretty decent Princey 'live' fix this past year...

In my opinion it is hard to beat the “Diamonds and love” leak on just sheer volume of unheard music. My favourites included face2 face, with this tear, 51 hours (prince version) and Baby doll.

TheCrystal Ball musical rehearsal was as awesome as it was unexpected. I'm just wondering if there is more to come from this brief period, I have been told that all of the crystal ball album tracks were rehearsed (at least for horns), so is there a rehearsal of Good Love out there somewhere? Or a vocal version of Rock hard in a funky place? I would live for a rehearsal version of Cocoa Boys, it was supposedly played at the Paris 1986 soundcheck, but any version would be welcome.

For me the “official” highlight was the one step Purple Rain, giving it the gatefold sleeve it always deserved followed closely by the blue swirl vinyl version of Around the world in a day.

The singles box would have been a highlight if was distributed honestly and properly (and without attracting a huge tariff courtesy of the US government) We will never know how many copies there were but some are saying as many as 6185 copies, which is cool providing you don't announce 1985 copies as a limited edition.

The lack of extra material on the Around the World deluxe set was disappointing, but this has been discussed to death.

[Edited 1/4/26 4:44am]

Diamonds & Love leaks

I still have to buy the ATWIAD "deluxe", as my interest in it is so low

themanfromneptune said:

Diamonds & Love leaks

I still have to buy the ATWIAD "deluxe", as my interest in it is so low

Same!

I don't feel the need to buy ATWIAD expanded ed.

Most uninspired Estate release of 2025.

1) Working toward compiling yet another anthology of Prince's songs--the next wonderful playlist designed by me for me. Thank you, digital technology, with a special salute to Mr. Thomas M. "Dolby" Robertson for his historic efforts expended to help bring digital music transmission via PC to fruition--I read his memoir this past year!

2) Waiting on the next exciting publication of the not generally heard music of Prince.