Prince and the Revolution — Purple Rain: How to Identify a First Pressing

• Cover: The cover shows Prince riding a modified 1981 Honda CM400A motorcycle, wearing an elaborate purple outfit.

• Cover: The cover was shot on a Warner Bros. backlot in California, on a street called Hennesy St. designed to resemble a run-down New York tenement block.
• Other: Officially released by Warner Bros. Records on June 25, 1984 — this release date is the time baseline for judging whether the earliest copies of the album are a genuine original factory pressing.

• A remaster was released on June 23, 2017 — the first officially remastered reissue among Prince's albums released during his lifetime — in several formats, including a deluxe edition with 20 tracks and an expanded deluxe edition with 35 tracks, all clearly later than and distinct from the 1984 original vinyl.

discogs.com returned a 403 this time and could not be accessed; the English Wikipedia entry was used instead. That entry does not give a specific catalog number or label/matrix details.

• Read the runout (the smooth area between the last groove and the label) with the disc tilted under a lamp: matrix numbers, stamper codes and mastering initials are the strongest evidence.
• Label details change between pressing plants and years: rim text, logo style, address, "Manufactured by" wording.
• Cover printing shows the plant and era: printer credit, catalog number position, barcode presence.
• Match all three. A first-press disc in a later cover, or the reverse, is common.

Shoot the label straight on in even light, then the runout with the disc tilted so the etched text catches the light (a phone torch from the side works). Add the front and back cover, the spine, and any inner sleeve or insert. The app reads the label and cover; the runout photo is what confirms the pressing.