Subscribers to the Sunday edition of England's legendary Daily Mail newspaper found an extra treat this week; a copy of Prince's new CD, Planet Earth. The freebie comes as the musician is about to launch a series of 21 concerts in London's O2 arena.

As you can imagine, the free distribution of up to two million copies of the new disk sat poorly with the country's music retailers and caused the world distributor for the CD, Sony Corp. (NYSE: SNE), to drop plans to market the CD in England.

Planet Earth is not the first CD to appear in the Sunday Mail. They began using the premium in 1998. Since then, the other large British newspapers have followed suit, until now each routinely offers a CD, DVD or other premium in its Sunday editions.

I look forward to the day I find a Sarah Brightman CD in my New York Times, or Australian folk ballads in the Wall Street Journal, or Britney Spears' latest in the National Enquirer. Who knows? The day may even come when we offer free downloads on Sunday to readers of BloggingStocks!

Prince's latest a freebee in U.K. originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Mon, 02 Jul 2007 08:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.