The Mail on Sunday has threatened legal action over its unprecedented giveaway of Prince's new album Planet Earth to try and force it into the official music charts.

MediaGuardian.co.uk has seen a copy of a letter the Mail on Sunday managing director, Stephen Miron, sent this week to the Official UK Charts Company, demanding it include Planet Earth in its albums chart.

On Sunday the MoS will distribute 2.9m copies with the Planet Earth CD included for free, after paying about £250,000 to Prince for the licence.

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An extra 200,000 copies of the paper will be printed without the CD for foreign and bulk sales.

The Mail on Sunday sells 2.3m copies each weekend, according to the latest ABC figures.

Producing and marketing the Prince CD will add several hundred thousand pounds to the MoS's costs, pushing the total bill for the Associated Newspapers title's promotional gambit towards £1m.

"We are spending a fortune on this," said Mr Miron.

In the letter to the Official UK Charts Company, Mr Miron wrote: "Given our belief that this album should still be included on the official UK album charts and having responded to your issues, I would urge you to reconsider your previous position as a matter of urgency, before we engage our lawyers for legal advice to force a challenge to this restraint on our trade."

The Official UK Charts Company has refused to enter the album Planet Earth on its chart, saying it could not prove that newspaper sales were "genuine consumer purchases" and that it could not audit sales accurately.

"It's denying Prince his rights," Mr Miron told MediaGuardian.co.uk. "It will be number one in the UK chart and we think that's something that he should be able to do.

"The fact that they are referring back to rules put in place ages ago doesn't seem to fit with the way the music industry is now. I think they are mad."

Mr Miron said that legal action was not inevitable. "We are just considering our position with that at the moment really," he added.

Prince will also receive royalties from each copy of the Mail on Sunday sold in addition to the licence fee.

"Prince would not be able to get as much money by selling this record in shops than he will with this deal," Mr Miron said.

He added that despite the enormous expense of the promotion, whether it was profitable for the paper depended on how many copies the Mail on Sunday sold his weekend. "It may be the best value promotion that we have ever done," he said.

Already news of the alliance between the paper and the recording star has featured on the BBC Six O'Clock News and in the New York Times. Advertisers are crowding into the paper as a result, according to Mr Miron.

For the first time, music chain HMV will sell the newspaper after initially complaining about the promotion.

An edition of the MoS containing a giveaway of Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells album earlier this year sold 2.6m copies, while the edition that carried news of the death of Diana, Princess of Wales in 1997 sold 2.8m copies.

When Prince's UK record company Sony BMG found out about the MoS's promotion, it suspended the release of the album.

The deal was negotiated between the Mail on Sunday, Prince's manager Paul Gongaware, and Rob Hallet, an executive with entertainment company AEG, the major redevelopers of the Millennium Dome, now known as the O2, where the artist will be performing later this year.

Agent Simon Stanford of Upfront Promotions set up the deal, which will see the CD and the CD cover incorporate the Mail on Sunday logo.

The Entertainment Retailers Association, whose members account for more than 90% of retail sales of CDs in the UK and which half owns the Official UK Charts Company, has protested to the Audit Bureau of Circulations in an attempt to get it to discount the sales boost from the paper's circulation results.

"We believe that this promotion and others like it potentially distort the accuracy of ABC's audit in a way which could mislead advertisers and other users of your data," wrote the ERA secretary general, Kim Bayley.

The MoS was offering an incentive to purchase worth up to seven times the £1.40 cover price of the newspaper, the ERA said.

"These people are desperate people," Mr Miron responded.

The ABC did not release a comment responding to the ERA, but will audit the paper to the agreed industry standards.

Ummm mebbe I'm missing something that's obvious to others here, but...

What does it matter to the Daily Mail if Prince charts or not?
I mean, what do they gain if this album does?
It seems to me that their interests would be financial, and it sounds like they were getting that back through more ad placements and increased sales for that issue.

Sooo, back to my question... why would they take up this fight?

Ummm mebbe I'm missing something that's obvious to others here, but...

What does it matter to the Daily Mail if Prince charts or not?
I mean, what do they gain if this album does?
It seems to me that their interests would be financial, and it sounds like they were getting that back through more ad placements and increased sales for that issue.

Sooo, back to my question... why would they take up this fight?

It SHOULDNT chart....if they are claiming its a free giveaway then it cant count towards record sales.

It SHOULDNT chart....if they are claiming its a free giveaway then it cant count towards record sales.

purpledoveuk said:

what if you never by the sunday Mail, and buy it only cause it has the Prince cd...?

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so they can sell it to the next guy who wants to buy themselves a #1 record.

An extra 200,000 copies of the paper will be printed without the CD for foreign and bulk sales.

what if you never by the sunday Mail, and buy it only cause it has the Prince cd...?

BlackAdder7 said:

Then you will be in a big minority. It's sad but true, many of his last albums haven't sold well here. They might sell big for a week to the harcore fans but they disappear rapidly after that.

It SHOULDNT chart....if they are claiming its a free giveaway then it cant count towards record sales.

SO THE AMAZING THING IS PRINCE WILL GET MORE COPIES OF THIS ALBUM OUT IN THE UK ( IF THEY LISTEN TO IT OR NOT ) THAN HE SOLD DURING THE ENTIRE 1980S ???...WITH THE NEWSPAPER AND THE CONCERT CDS...THATS WELL OVER 3 MILLION ' PLANET EARTH' ALBUMS IN THE UK ???...IT WILL BE INTERESTING TO SEE THE EFFECT THIS HAS ON HIS CAREER AND WEATHER IT PUSHES THE SALES OF HIS BACK CATALOGUE UP IN THIS COUNTRY....I THINK IT WILL
[Edited 7/13/07 15:56pm]

purpledoveuk said:

I agree. It's being given away for free to the public. Heck I can do THAT...does that mean I am now number one? The Musicology thing was different as folks were buying tix to his concert and thus it was more aligned with him.

That said, I think charts are HOOEY and mean almost nothing. They certainly don't reflect what is good and decent, like they used to.