Last week I linked to a piece on wired.com about how Prince is pointing the way to a “brighter future for music”. The deal to distribute his latest album ‘Planet Earth’ free with the Mail on Sunday had music industry executives foaming at the mouth; they consider this “nuts” move to be setting a dangerous precedent for other artists to publish their music without the big companies seeing a penny.

No doubt that getting the Music Industry in a tizzy is a good thing, but we shouldn’t consider Prince as the artist leading us to a new era of music publishing. He just wants to get his music out to more than the 80,000 people in the UK that bought his previous album, and do a deal with the Mail on Sunday in the process.

Admittedly, the marketing worked on me, and I paid a visit to my local newsagent on Sunday. I felt a bit dirty buying the Mail on Sunday, but luckily there was a newspaper recycling bin nearby.