now THAT would be really freein' the music. If it works in the U.K. then it could else where.
By the way just why are a handful on here calling it a publicity stunt?, what crap, it's just good business. O.K. it almost forces people to listen to his music BUT if he ain't getting any airplay then good luck to him.

When people buy the paper, does this go towards Cd sales?!?! so he could actually have a No.1 Album in the uk?!

andykeen said:

not a hope in hell, giveaways don't count. I think the point is that he's given up on charts, let's face it most of the chart is made up of what you can listen to and if all you can hear is stuff in regular rotation then without airplay a chart is totally irrelevant.

I cannot see him doing that around the world. All his fans would buy the newspaper for the free cd. And a lot of the cds will end up on ebay.

Then why bother selling it in the retail end of it? There will be no money made off sales of the cd which I think would be extremely poor, assuming all his fans world wide bought a paper just for the cd.

My 2 cents

andykeen said:

Even if he doesn't, we're looking at potentially 2 millions folks with the CD in their hands, right?


Great advertisement. I'm assuming (hoping actually) he made this CD impressive enough to pick up new fans.

not in the "richest" country..i.e.America
too much monet to be had.

over


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ten

No. I don't want a cheap CD Sleeve. I want a cool case. I wanna buy the record in a store...

you do realise that if this works for P then there'll be a lot of people who want to do the same which will be physically impossible. I just think it is an intersting business model to look at, looks like a win, win for fans and prince and [alas] the Mail on Sunday!.

tainacher said:

the days are albums and full packages are over. all albums should be $7 and available online only. Who has the time or space for a CD and packaging? I hope record stores evaporate.

no

I heard Prince is getting paid by the newspaper for the right to give his CD away, I've heard figures of 1 million but I think that is probably highly inflated - I don't see how the newspaper would make that money back with the newspaper only costing 70p or whatever, they would have to generate a helluva lot of extra customers beyond the people who normally buy it to make it cost effective.

As for Prince, this is a great move as he gets paid a guaranteed amount he might not have gotten from his usually poor sales in record shops these days. Replicating this stunt around the world would guarantee money for Prince for the album. The downside is the album won't appear in any charts so it will be practically impossible to gauge it's popularity in comparison to Prince's other albums - but Prince hasn't been doing very well in the charts in Europe for years, so it's no loss to him.

Newspapers in the UK have been giving DVDs and music CDs away for free for ages, the only thing that is new about this venture is that it is a new original album rather than some compilation or other. They gave away a CD full of Peter Gabriel's biggest hits recently.
[Edited 7/5/07 18:00pm]

Yes, and not just newspapers.
He should xplore other avenues more suited 2 the music.
Razor blades, 4 the cutting edge stuff, tissues 4 the softer ballady stuff etc..

I said:

I say yes...why not...at least once in his life time.
I could care less if it had a cheap case
Sure i like a fancy jewel case...but when it comes down to it....
It's the music that counts...not the cover

If he gave aways the cds free around the world.....
Im sure many would end up in the trash...or traders, ebay, etc
But im sure he make some new fans no matter if it were 10 or in the hundreds

But this is just my opinion..and in reality.....
i have to pay for my cd

I could suffer thru having no jewel case if I got a cd for the price of a newspaper. We are programmed to want the whole package when it really doesn't matter much.