Prince almost as popular as princess

Well, that is sticking a Prince album on the front of a newspaper shifts almost as many copies as splashing a pictorial obituary of Princess Diana all over its pages.

UK newspaper The Daily Telegraph reported yesterday that the circulation of other UK newspaper The Mail on Sunday rose nearly a third on 16 July. It achieved sales of over 2.8m, close to the 2.84m record of the best-ever selling 1997 edition that commemorated Diana's death.

The increase was attributed to a controversial £500k deal to giveaway Prince's first studio album in years, Planet Earth, free with the newspaper.

We weren't surprised to find 833 ebay auctions for the album when we checked this morning. Could this be a damning indictment on the music itself? Hmm, less likely than a simple case of try to make a princely profit out of a freebie.