The Covermount Is Only Prince's Latest Marketing Coup
ED CHRISTMAN

http://www.billboard.biz/...a893853add

Normally, I am in the thick of things when artists or labels get into a spitting contest with music retailers or visa versa. But how much fun have I had watching this Prince CD/newspaper giveaway story from the sidelines?

This was a hoot all the way through. It had everything: high-profile threats (the artist formerly in record stores), ridiculous threats (retailers snitching to environmental advocates about the CD becoming landfill waste), betrayal (HMV joining the chorus of U.K. retailers that initially denounced the move and then stocking the album, I mean newspaper, after all) and Pontius Pilate (Sony BMG shrewdly deciding not to distribute the album to U.K. retail and then wisely hightailing it for the hills).

Oh, and it produced a boatload of publicity for Prince, which I suspect was the point in the first place. In case you missed it, his new album, "Planet Earth," represents the first time a major star has given away a new studio album as a covermount on a newspaper—in this case, the Sunday version of the Daily Mail. That U.K. paper usually sells 2.4 million copies, but the one with Prince sold 3 million.

You can call him Prince or the artist formerly known as Prince or the symbol formerly known as the artist or whatever you want, but I consider him the artist who thinks about business. And while I may not agree with his thinking, I certainly respect it. This isn't the first time Prince has upset the apple cart.

In 1997, about 18 months after he'd got his symbol on and began playing with Warner Bros.' head, he started to get under retail's skin. He was the first major artist to bypass retail to embrace the Internet when he initially sold his three-CD "Crystal Ball" set from a Prince Web site. While Prince never revealed how it did in sales, it probably didn't do so well, since that was the early days of the Internet mail-order business. But his next move showed Prince was just getting warmed up. In an apparent attempt to salvage sales for "Crystal Ball," in 1998, he sold a four-CD version of the album one-way (i.e., no returns) to Best Buy. The chain appeared to have it exclusively, except for Prince's requirement that it sell the album to independents in markets where it didn't have stores.

But before the consumer electronic chain could stock it, Musicland and Blockbuster cut their own deals and started selling it first. Then Prince further distributed that album through the now-defunct M.S. Distributing. After all that maneuvering, "Crystal Ball" has sold 113,000 copies, according to Nielsen SoundScan, which didn't track the initial Internet sales.

After that, Prince kept selling to the beat of his own drum. His next studio album, "Newpower Soul," with 214,000 scans, also came out on his own NPG label and through an independent distributor. But the one after that, "Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic," with 487,000 scans, was delivered through NPG/Arista.

Prince then went back to indie distribution in 2001 for "The Rainbow Children," which scanned 158,000 units, and delivered two stop-gap projects—an instrumental album and a live album—each scanning 30,000 units.

In 2004, even though Prince signed with Sony Music Entertainment, he found yet another way to challenge the status quo. He gave away a white-sleeve version of "Musicology" to every fan who attended his sold-out tour, while people going to stores got a full-package version.

That approach pissed off retail—because it lost sales to the giveaway—and labels—which argued that a concert giveaway shouldn't be counted as sales for the charts. In the end, "Musicology," scanned 2 million units, about half from store sales, so retail didn't fare too bad on that deal. His follow-up, "3121," went through Universal Republic and scanned 524,000 units.

And now "Planet Earth" is out July 24 stateside, although I hear the British version is already on eBay for $5. Thanks to the U.K. brouhaha, at least people know it's out. Apparently it's being distributed traditionally in the States—but with Prince, you never know. Still, whatever he does, I hope American merchants don't make the mistake of their British counterparts. All that whining didn't play well in the press.

Looking at his track record, Prince remakes the business model every few years. So retail should get ready for something new to come down the pike from him eventually. Retailers figure that he owes them because they supported him in his early days. But Prince probably figures he's paid them by providing multiplatinum sales throughout his career.

cryndove said: