In the UK, newspapers have been competing for readers by offering free CDs or DVDs. For example, The Daily Mail caused a fuss when it offered Prince’s new album for free.
Here in Canada, The Vancouver Sun has dipped its toes into the free music market. It offered a digital compilation for download for free, not just to its readers, but to anyone willing to give it an e-mail address.
The exercise appeared to have paid off with the compilation downloaded more than 27,000 times over the weekend, reports the paper. The 15 tracks were offered as free MP3 files, with no digital restrictions, which might account for the popularity of the compilation. It was also picked up and discussed on forums across the internet.
The download was only supposed to be available over the weekend, but on Monday morning it was still available here.
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