Tasmin Little's Naked Violin is Latest Free Download

A constantly increasing trend in the music world has been the digital download. In fact, these days, digital music has been a point of controversy and contention. Popular online music sellers such as iTunes, eMusic and Rhapsody offer downloads of entire albums or individual songs from the albums of almost any artist. It's been argued that this means of selling individual artist songs has hurt album sales as a whole. Not only have individual MP3 sales contributed to the slow death of the compact disc or record, but the constantly pirated MP3 downloads and P2P file sharing have also contributed.

Several artists have decided to take a next step in the digital music era by "giving away" their albums. First it was Prince, who had copies of his album Planet Earth given away as CD copies to British fans who bought the Mail on Sunday newspaper. When this occurred, Sony/BMG put distribution of the album by Great Britain's record stores on hold. It caused uproar as retailers felt it was supporting the idea that music is free. Prince still profited from the initial and original idea. According to a Wired.com article, Prince was given an undisclosed upfront payment for copies of Planet Earth, which went to over 3 million newspaper readers. So the music could have helped boost the paper's sales as well as interest in Prince, rather than hurt music sales. Prince got an early jump on the new trend in music giveaways, while still promoting himself and his music.