Ah, more covermount rage for you. Actually, quite a lot of rage this time. And the raging is against the Mail On Sunday again who, as previously reported, recently came under some criticism from music retailers and the artist community after Mike Oldfield criticised EMI for letting the paper give away full copies of his classic album 'Tubular Bells'.
The latest outrage follows an announcement that the new Prince album will be launched in the UK as a free covermount via the Sunday newspaper. This will mean that readers of the paper will be able to get a version of the album for free with the paper ahead of the long player's official retail release on 24 Jul.
The Mail On Sunday promotion has been arranged directly with Prince's management, and the paper's Managing Director, Stephen Miron, told reporters yesterday that the covermount deal had come about because Prince "believes in spreading the music he produces to as many people as possible", adding that "This is the biggest innovation in newspaper promotions in recent times".
However, UK music retailers, already suffering from a decline in CD sales, have hit out at a move which will take a large portion of the distribution of one of the year's biggest album releases away from the traditional retail sector. Such is the opposition of the retailers that SonyBMG have pulled out of a deal with Prince to distribute the CD in the UK, seemingly to appease the angry retailers.
Commenting on the promotion, the co-chairman of the UK's Entertainment Retailer Association, Paul Quirk, said: "It would be an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career. It would be yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music. The Artist Formerly Known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores. And I say that to all the other artists who may be tempted to dally with the Mail on Sunday".
HMV chief Simon Fox meanwhile said he thought the Prince proposals were "absolutely nuts", adding: "I can't believe the music industry would do it to itself. I simply can't believe it would happen, it would be absolute madness".