HMV to sell controversial newspaper
09 July 2007 - 09:46:07
Source: Music Week


HMV has struck a dramatic deal with The Mail On Sunday to stock the newspaper for the first time, when it gives away Prince's new album this weekend.

The deal, which was revealed to Music Week yesterday (Sunday), is the latest twist in the saga of the controversial Prince giveaway.

Confirming the deal yesterday, HMV Group chief executive Simon Fox - who described the Prince giveaway as "absolute madness" just a fortnight ago - said, "HMV does not condone covermounts. We would obviously have wanted to stock the Prince album, but this is not a possibility.

“Selling The Mail On Sunday next week is the only way to make the album available to our customers. It will create additional traffic in the stores and therefore give us the opportunity to sell other music products to our customers."

Mail On Sunday managing director Stephen Miron says final numbers have yet to be finalised, but that HMV will take tens of thousands of copies. Miron, who adds that HMV approached the newspaper just over a week ago, says that the MoS has even written to the UK Official Charts Company asking whether sales of the newspaper will be allowed to count towards the albums chart. The OCC could not be contacted to comment on the suggestion before Music Week went to press.

Details of the HMV deal came as the scale of the Mail's Prince agreement became clearer last week. It is understood that Prince is being paid £500,000 for his Planet Earth album, while The Mail on Sunday is also committing £750,000 to manufacturing and marketing the CD this week.

Miron says the company never discusses financial terms of any deal, and hints that the paper will be announcing another significant cover-mount deal in the coming days.
Simon Stanford, the managing director of Upfront Promotions, which put together the Prince deal, as well as the newspaper’s Tubular Bells promotion, says the paper will be printing just under 3m copies of this coming Sunday’s issue, almost a third more than its average circulation of 2,274,551 (for the period from April 30 to May 27).

At the current cover price of £1.40, 3m sales will bring in revenue of £4.2m; this means that, if all copies are sold out, the Mail will effectively be down on the Prince deal, spending £1.25m to gain additional revenue of only just over £1m.

The Prince promotion is the latest in a series of Mail On Sunday music giveaways, including a Madness live greatest hits set, a Simply Red live album and Mike Oldfield’s Tubular Bells.

Irony.....

Business is business. This is so funny to me. I guest they don't hate Prince THAT much after all!

"At the current cover price of £1.40, 3m sales will bring in revenue of £4.2m; this means that, if all copies are sold out, the Mail will effectively be down on the Prince deal, spending £1.25m to gain additional revenue of only just over £1m."

Doesn't make sense! A newspaper has advertisers, which may have to pay a premium to appear in this issue. I don't believe they're losing money on this deal at all.

i for one would be VERY surprised if the mail on sunday don't increase the price of the paper on sunday, especially if the financial sums being talked about r true. i mean, 'a loss leader' is one thing, but when u add in all the advertising and promotion they r throwing at this thing, its crazy. don't get me wrong, puttng money in the pockets of this ridiculous 'news'paper is the last thing i want, but it will sure be fascinating 2 c how this all ends up.

If they can't beat em...they gonna join em! Besides, they want their piece of the purple pie!!!

Already a thread http://www.prince.org/msg/7/233755