It was released on July 15, 2007, by NPG Records and distributed, in the UK, as a free covermount with The Mail on Sunday national newspaper.

[3] During the week of September 3, 2007, Prince flew to Prague, and then Spain to film a music video for "Somewhere Here on Earth".

[4] However, Prince's management struck a deal with The Mail on Sunday to release Planet Earth as a free covermount CD with the July 15, 2007, edition of the paper.

As a result of the decision by Sony BMG to not distribute the album in the UK, record store chain HMV announced it would stock the July 15, 2007, edition of The Mail on Sunday in lieu of the CD, admitting that "selling the Mail on Sunday next week will be the only way to make the Prince album available to our customers, which, ultimately, has to be our overriding concern".

[7] On July 10, 2007, several days before the official UK release through The Mail on Sunday, a low quality version (recorded from a stream) of Planet Earth was leaked onto the Internet.

[24] As of April 2015, the album has sold about 278,000 copies in the US, with almost no promotion, with the exception of the Verizon Wireless ad for "Guitar".

[13] Veteran critic Robert Christgau gave the album a three-star honorable mention,[20] indicating "an enjoyable effort consumers attuned to its overriding aesthetic or individual vision may well treasure".

[25] Writing for MSN Music, he cited "Guitar" and "The One U Wanna C" as highlights and summarized the album with the remark, "Viva Las Vegas and later for Viagra – but not never".