Music Week has reported that Prince will receive a "million-dollar pay packet" from that cover-mount deal with the Mail On Sunday, in addition to a commitment to spend at least £750,000 on the promotion of the free CD.
As previously reported, there has been considerable outrage in parts of the British music industry, and especially music retail, since it was announced that the Sunday newspaper would be giving away free copies of Prince's new album, 'Planet Earth', ahead of its formal release. The Prince promotion follows similar concerns expressed in the retail and management communities when EMI did a deal with the same paper to make Mike Oldfield's classic album 'Tubular Bells' available as a free cover-mount. This time, however, the deal was made with Prince's management direct, with the label that was due to release the album through conventional channels, SonyBMG, pulling out of its commitments to the album in the UK because of the cover-mount deal.
Music Week has spoken to the agent who set up both the 'Tubular Bells' and Prince deal, Upfront Promotions' Simon Stanford, who says this will be the Mail On Sunday's biggest cover-mount promotion ever, saying: "This is a big thing for them. It will be heavily advertised. It will be more intense than usual". The paper will print just under 3 million copies of next Sunday's issue, considerably more than its normal average circulation which is in the region of 275,000.
The Mail On Sunday won't be drawn on exactly how much it is paying for the Prince promotion, with the paper's MD Stephen Miron telling the trade magazine simply: "We are spending more than any record company would spend on a launch". However, he did imply another major music promotion would be announced in the near future. He told Music Week: "This is part of something very interesting in the way that music is distributed in this country. This has attracted more attention than we expected from around the globe".
PS: One music retailer who is possibly warming to the Prince cover-mount is HMV who, again according to Music Week, have just announced they will be selling the Mail On Sunday this Sunday. If you can't beat them, join em, I suppose.