SonyBMG label Columbia has announced it will release a new album from Prince, what it is describing as "the latest full-length studio collection", whatever that means. It's called 'Planet Earth' and will be released in the UK on 16 Jul. Prince worked with Columbia on the 2004 album 'Musicology', but he signed to Universal for the release of last year's '3121'. On the opportunity to work with Prince again, Columbia Label Group MD Mike Smith told CMU: "We're very excited about having Prince back on the Columbia label. 'Planet Earth' will be a landmark album for him and the whole UK team looks forward to being a part of making this happen".
In other Prince news, he's just added six more dates at the massive The O2 venue, meaning he will now play at the new look Dome on 1, 3, 4, 7, 10, 11, 14, 17, 18, 24, 25, 28 and 31 Aug, and 1, 6, 9, 12, 13, 16, 20 and 21 Sep, which is all bit insane really. The existing fifteen dates have all sold out, but tickets for the new dates - 24 and 25 Aug, 6, 16, 20 and 21 Sep - go on sale on Friday. That all means Prince will be playing a 21 night residency at the Dome.
I don't know what that means regarding Prince playing any gigs at smaller venues. When Prince's plans to play lots of London dates this summer were first announced it was reported that there would be 21 gigs in total, some at The O2, others elsewhere. Whether the extension of The O2 season means there will be no smaller gigs, or more than the originally planned 21 dates, I don't know.
The plan was do to 21 dates in line with the '3121' thing that Prince is very attached to still. Perhaps he could do 31 gigs instead. Or 121. Or 312. Hell, why not 3121. He could probably sell them all out, he seemingly being in high demand just at the moment.