LONDON, UK (Napster UK, Ltd press release) - Napster UK, Ltd., a subsidiary of Roxio, Inc, is to run a series of major consumer promotions in conjunction with The Sun, the UK's biggest selling national daily newspaper (a News Group Newspapers Limited property).
On Saturday, and for eight Saturdays throughout the summer, The Sun will offer its 10 million daily readers the opportunity to download any tracks for free from Napster's library of over 750,000 songs. The partnership between The Sun and Napster begins today (Thursday) with a 50,000 pounds sterling music related prize giveaway in the paper. Top prize in today's competition, is the chance to win a trip to Napster's Melrose Avenue headquarters in Los Angeles to attend a live, private recording session and receive a platinum disc from a major artist.
Other prizes include over 200 free subscriptions to Napster's online music service featuring over 750,000 tracks; Samsung's highly anticipated Napster branded YH920 MP3 players; Rio Chiba MP3 players; free subscriptions to ntl's broadband and Broadband Plus services; and packs of Roxio's award winning Creator 7 multimedia software.
The competition will be followed throughout the rest of the summer by a series of innovative major music giveaways from Napster in The Sun, with accompanying promotion on The Sun's website, https://www.thesun.co.uk. Napster and The Sun set yet another new digital mark as this is the first time a national daily newspaper in the UK has ever run a campaign on this scale with an online music company.
"This is a significant partnership for Napster," said Brad Duea,, president of Napster. "The Sun has tremendous brand identity and reach throughout the UK and has proven itself time and again as a major influencer of public opinion. Napster was the first online music service to partner with a major UK consumer electronics retailer - the Dixons Group - and now we're the first in our industry to join forces with a daily national paper. We are very pleased to see another world class organization and brand embrace Napster through a mutually beneficial partnership."
"The Sun has always made its name by being first to market, whether it be breaking news scoops, editorial developments or the biggest, best and most exciting reader promotions, said Sean Mahon, head of marketing strategy, News Group Newspapers, publisher of The Sun.
"We are always looking to innovate and deliver value and with the recent rise in legitimate online music services we felt the time is right to offer readers, especially younger ones a market leading and exciting, free music download promotion. Instead of us providing a free CD with pre-selected tracks, we are offering readers the opportunity to create their own compilation by downloading free tracks throughout the summer.
"We chose Napster because of their credibility and brand image which conveys irreverence, fun and youthfulness, all similar values to The Sun brand itself," continued Mahon. "We also feel that Napster's service offers our readers fantastic value through access to over three-quarters of a million songs. From a marketing point of view this promotion not only ticks many of the right brand boxes but will also deliver sales contribution as both offline and online Sun consumers will be buying the newspaper on a regular basis to take advantage of the promotion."
Danny Rogers, Sun online marketing manager, added: "When you add in a further 4.5 million unique users who visit https://www.thesun.co.uk on a monthly basis, we can safely say that this is the biggest free music download promotion ever run in the UK."
Napster vice-president and UK general manager, Leanne Sharman, added: "Napster is the world's biggest name in online music and by combining our marketing resources with the UK's favorite newspaper we now have a hugely efficient mechanism for maintaining and extending our message before a national audience."
For further information please contact: Adam Howorth, Communications Director of Napster, +44(0) 207 1017281, [email protected].
