Stop if You’ve heard this before. De La Soul’s past catalog is coming soon to the streaming service. This time around, it looks like that’s actually going to happen, with the legendary hip-hop trio announcing that their music will finally reach the digital realm on March 3rd.
De La Soul began teasing the news on social media and its website. A Facebook post featured an image that simply read, “De La Soul Streaming March 3, 2023.” Meanwhile, on Instagram, the group shared a video of a giant billboard emblazoned with “Alexa, what’s the magic number,” linked to Amazon Music.
De La Soul rep didn’t return immediately rolling stonerequest for further comments.
De La Soul’s back catalog has been stuck in digital purgatory for years thanks to various legal issues. In 2014, De La Soul bypassed official channels and offered their music for free for a short period of time. I decided to.
For several years as well, the rights to the band’s catalog had been entangled in major label bureaucracy since their days at Warner Bros. Records. In 2019, when De La Soul’s first label, Tommy Boy, regained control of the trio’s catalog, it seemed to have been wiped out, but negotiations over streaming rights faltered and eventually ended. In De La Soul cut ties with Tommy Boy before the music was released.
In June 2021, when music rights company Reservoir Media acquired Tommy Boy, the possibilities became apparent again. A few months later, De La Soul announced on his Instagram Live that he was looking to put his music out on his streaming platform by the end of the year. It took a little longer than that, but after just a few months, it looks like the effort is finally paying off.
“We’re trying to work hard and hard with the good people at Reservoir to get this done. We sat down and actually got it done pretty quickly,” Trugoy the pigeon said at the time. “It was kind of impressive how quickly we got it done. It was probably a two-week time top. It’s a completely different approach to what was happening with Tommy Boy, and I’ve been using bash and I’m not talking. [founder] Whether it’s Tom Silverman or Tommy Boy, I’m glad the chapter is over. “