Planet Earth : Prince

Regarding the new Prince album, Planet Earth, being given away with the Mail on Sunday tomorrow. I've no idea whether it makes sense for the newspaper but it might indeed make sense for Prince himself:

A Sunday newspaper is understood to have paid the Princely sum of $1m (£500,000) to give away the pint-sized popstar's new album, in an unprecedented move that has infuriated music retailers.

HMV chief executive Simon Fox has said it would be "absolutely nuts" for the music industry to give away new CDs through papers amid fears that other artists will follow suit.

The Mail on Sunday is hoping that its costs will be justified by increased sales when it releases the Planet Earth album before any other distributor in the world.

Newspapers have used CD and DVD cover mounts for several years but never before has an artist released a new album as a giveaway.

The music industry, which is battling fierce competition from online piracy, fears the move will further devalue its product.

Martin Talbot, editor of Music Week, said: "The danger is that it becomes a trend for artists who can get a large sum upfront with no marketing costs."

If Prince is on the usual sort of deal with his record company he'll be on 4% of the gross price (which I'll assume is £15) as the songwriter. He shares that with his publishing company (which I assume that he also owns, that's how it goes these days) but we'll count that as all his.

He also gets 14% of the gross as the performer: out of which he pays recording and marketing costs. Those latter are very high indeed. A badly performing album can leave a musician in debt.

So, if the album went on sale he'd get some £2.70 per copy.  Out of which he has to pay those marketing costs. However, his deal with the Mail gives him (approx) the revenue from 200,000 sales, without any of those costs.

So how many copies of an album would Prince expect to sell in the UK anyway? If it's anything less that 500,000 or so then I would say he's quids in with this deal.

He's reduced his risk and quite possibly increased his income at the same time.

(Please note, all numbers are very vague and only illustrative).

There's also one other money maker here. Will making the album free mean more radio time for it? I have absolutely no idea, it could go either way I guess. But the UK is a wonderful place to have your song (as the writer, not the musician) played on the radio. A local radio station will pay £35 or so, a national one £45 to the songwriter for each and every play of it. Have a hit (in terms of radio play) and you've got what, 20 or so stations, playing the song four times a day? More maybe? But even at that it's £3,000 a day for the four or five weeks you're on the playlist. Call it a round £ 100k for being the songwriter of something that gets heavy radio play then.

So, does giving away the album make this more or less likely?