Prince to launch album as free UK newspaper giveaway

kinaldo

http://business.guardian.co.uk/story/0,,2114076,00.html

Mossy Monk

The retailers are pissed, good. Rip off merchants. Will this album be available over here also?

scitilop

This is a fantastic idea. Prince will probably make more money off it than he normally would make off an album in the UK. Prince releases so many albums and never really tries to milk them; he seems to be more interested in being a successful artist rather than rich (I suppose he is this also!) I presume it will be available here also. I wonder what newspaper it will be? Here's hoping not the Mail On Sunday because I mightn't be able to force myself to buy that.

kinaldo

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/showbiz/showbiznews.html?in_article_id=465229&in_page_id=1773

Coming soon... the greatest newspaper giveaway... EVER!
FREE inside the Mail on Sunday on 15th July!

Last updated at 12:05pm on 5th July 2007

Comments Comments (41)
Fantastic... beautiful... wow!

Just some of the superlatives readers have used on our website to describe the Mail on Sunday's latest world first in free CDs.

In two weeks time - on July 15th - The Mail on Sunday will carry the greatest ever newspaper CD giveaway. The complete new 10-track album by rock superstar Prince, called Planet Earth, will be absolutely free inside every copy of the paper.

Even more amazingly, the album will not be available through British music retailers, so the only way to get one will be to get The Mail on Sunday, or go to one of Prince's concerts at the O2 Arena, where audiences will all get a free copy too.

Prince's decision to give the music to his fans in this unprecedented way has caused a huge furore. All this week record industry bosses have been expressing their shock that this could happen.

Paul Quirk, co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said that Prince's decision "beggars belief". "The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores", he said, referring to a period in the 1990s when the star reinvented himself by using a symbol instead of his full name. "It is an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career. It is yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music."

Simon Fox, chief executive of High Street music giant HMV, speaking just before The Mail on Sunday confirmed the rumours, said, "I think it would be absolutely nuts. I simply can't believe it would happen; it would be absolute madness."

But Prince, whose Purple Rain album sold more than 11 million copies, has always kept control of his own music and is adamant that he wants as many fans as possible to share it. Columbia Records, who will sell the CD at full price elsewhere in the world, chose to withdraw the disc from retailers when it became aware of Prince's plans.

But the fans are in no doubt that giving the album away through The Mail on Sunday is a brilliant idea. "Prince has always been a trailblazer for new channels of distribution," writes one fan on our reader comments. "This is a good way for long lost fans to re-acquaint themselves, new fans to realise how good he still is and a thank you to all his loyal fans."

Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright said: "Prince is running a campaign to give music back to the fans and we are delighted to be involved."

Mail on Sunday managing director Stephen Miron said, "Prince believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible. This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times."

The album features 10 brand new tracks, and the few who have heard it say it is among the best Prince albums yet, with his trademark blend of funky, driving rock and laidback jazzy ballads. The 10 tracks include the one track which has already been played on Radio 2, called Guitar.

The Mail on Sunday has offered its readers a string of ground-breaking CDs and DVDs, with recent give-aways featuring artists Peter Gabriel, Dolly Parton, Duran Duran and UB40. These artists have enjoyed subsequent increased sales and sell-out tours.

In April millions of readers received a free copy of the original studio recording of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells with their newspaper. It was so popular that copies of the classic album were later exchanging hands for up to £7 on internet site eBay.

Demand for The Mail on Sunday on July 15th is certain to be massive, so readers are advised to order their copy through their newsagent.

kinaldo

The vinyl frontier


Fopp's gone bankrupt. Prince is bypassing the stores completely to give away his new CD. But Adam Webb finds that the future of the record shop might not be as gloomy as the past week's headlines suggest

Friday July 6, 2007
The Guardian

<snip>

Sign of the times

Prince's decision to give away his forthcoming album, Planet Earth, as a Mail on Sunday covermount on July 15 was received with predictable howls of derision by both high-street retailers and the record industry. HMV chief executive, Simon Fox, described the move as "absolute madness", while, perhaps more understandably, the artist's UK label, Sony BMG, quickly dropped him from his one-album deal.

For retailers in particular, the move was tantamount to betrayal. "It's not just about the units they would have sold," says Music Week editor Martin Talbot, "because in reality Prince albums haven't sold in huge volumes for some time. I think it's more about the signals of disloyalty that it sends out to the retailers who supported him through his career. It's a slippery slope and it sends out a really damaging message about music."

But is it that much of a surprise? And is the loss of an album from an artist way past his creative peak really that damaging? For starters, it's not as if the man who once scrawled "SLAVE" down his right cheek and changed his name to a symbol doesn't have a bit of previous when it comes to record labels. Over the past 10 years Prince has wheeled and dealed his way through any number of one-off contracts, as well as pioneering the unusual business plan of giving his music away for nothing.

The impact of this was first witnessed when US ticket holders attending shows on his Musicology tour in 2004 received a free copy of the Musicology album. The result? Nearly $90m (£45m) in gate receipts, and the most profitable tour of the year. The strategy will be repeated for Prince's 21 dates at The O2 this August, where UK fans will be given Planet Earth as part of the £31.21 ticket price.

In effect, already living outside of the record industry system, Prince makes the bulk of his revenue from touring. Few radio stations would touch his new music, and so giving it away is the most effective means of marketing and distribution. It might not work for everyone, but, considering the volume of column inches it inspires, it certainly works for him. And the Mail on Sunday deal, while depriving the record shops and Sony BMG of money, will make more for him: Prince is estimated to be being paid between £250,000 and £300,000 by the newspaper, a far greater sum than he would receive as an advance from a record company.

The retailers might not like it but, as one poster to the music industry's Record of the Day messageboard quipped, it might be better to go with the flow than look back in anger. How about ordering a job-lot of copies of the Mail on Sunday and stacking them next to some Prince CDs that people might actually pay for?

http://music.guardian.co.uk/pop/story/0,,2119272,00.html

crybaby

"It is an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career. It is yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music."

ah yes all of those poor record shops who have had such a hard time selling the millions of Prince albums and singles over the years