Prince has sparked an outcry by giving away his new album in the Mail on Sunday. Many weekend newspapers are now sold with a CD or film enclosed. Forget downloads, are free CDs killing music?
Freebies fill the newspaper and magazine racks in such abundance it's possible to get kitted out for the summer on this week's pickings.
As well as the usual array of DVDs and CDs, there are sunglasses, flip-flops, "designer bangles" and for those looking for a change of image, a superhero Thing face mask.
The giveaway, or covermount as it is known in the trade, is now big business, but on Sunday the market experiences a fresh twist.
Although covermounts have for years been a major concern to the Entertainment Retailers Association, its director general Kim Bayley says this marks a new low.
"It devalues the music and the losers will be new artists who are trying to come through who won't have any support from recording companies because established artists are chucking out their music for free.
"Consumers only have so much listening time in the week and if they receive the new album from Prince then they don't need to buy new music and will spend their money on something else."
FOOK FOOK FOOK FOOK FOOK OFF!!! is what I say to the robbing greedy barstard record companies!
Me and Mark were talking about this yesterday, and its pretty simple from the consumers point of view, we have been getting ripped off by record companies making billions of dollars every year for decades and now we are fighting back!
And I am sick to death of artists and record companies churning out utter shite like the crap found on the likes of the X-Factor because they wont promote genuine artists who do music for the love of music and not the fame and fortune, just because they are not "in the public spotlight".
Go prince, and I hope more artists do this, its about time artists were allowed to express themselves and consumers were allowed to get the best deal instead of the record companies ramming shite down our throats and restricting artists creativity just so they can line their fooking pockets with more billions!!!
BBC News Report 
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