Anger at newspapers' free CD offer.

Music retailers attack Mail on Sunday and Mirror over free covermount CD promotions

by Ben Cardew

Music retailers are up in arms about the comprehensive return of newspaper covermount CDs, after a week in which The Mail On Sunday gave away Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells and The Mirror began offering a series of free music CDs. Most anger was directed at the Mail's promotion, through which the newspaper gave away the original Tubular Bells on CD, with cover artwork, to its 2.25m readers.

"How do you begin to rationally explain to a customer this album is a classic and you need to pay #10 to own it or this album is a classic and it's free with Mail On Sunday? How many copies of Tubular Bells do you think we will sell this week?" says Woolworths head of trading entertainment and mobile comms and Era co-chairman Jim Batchelor. "Era will continue to lobby those engaged in covermounts and no doubt individual members will take their own steps to stop it."

"Most of the stuff is poor quality but occasionally there is a gem and that kills the title at retail and probably also costs us a sale as well," adds Era co-chairman Paul Quirk, of Quirk's Records in Ormskirk. "In my view the people doing the deals don't care about the industry or the artists they are giving away - they just take the money and run. It is pathetic that in order to sell a 40p paper, the publisher has to offer an incentive worth up to 15 times the original cost."

What is worse, according to Richard White, owner of Chalky's in Banbury, is that the move comes after a period in which newspapers appeared to have moved away from giving away music CDs, in favour of DVDs and wall charts.

"I was ...