LONDON (AP) — Pop superstar Prince has angered the music industry and stirred up trouble among British retailers by giving away his new album for free with a tabloid newspaper this weekend.Prince's decision to hand out "Planet Earth" to anyone who buys the Mail on Sunday for $1.40 (around $2.80) — before the 10-track album officially goes on sale — has been roundly condemned as a gimmick that is a major blow for an industry already facing rapidly declining CD sales.

The newspaper deal has also led Sony BMG UK, Prince's local label, to pull the plug on its own sales release of the CD in Britain.

Paul Quirk, co-chairman of the Entertainment Retailers Association, said Prince's gift to British readers ahead of the international sales launch on July 16 and the US launch on July 24 "beggars belief".

"The Artist formerly known as Prince should know that with behaviour like this he will soon be the Artist Formerly Available in Record Stores," he said, referring to a period in the 1990s when the singer, born Prince Rogers Nelson, famously stopped using his name to protest a binding record deal.

"It is an insult to all those record stores who have supported Prince throughout his career," Quirk added.

Fuelling retailers' ire further is what they see as a traitorous move by one of their own. After initially harshly criticising Prince and the deal, music and books retailer HMV — which does not normally sell newspapers — has decided to sell the Mail on Sunday in its 400-plus stores across the country.

Just a week after HMV chief executive Simon Fox said it would be "absolutely nuts" for the music industry to give away CDs with newspapers, HMV said that "like it or not, selling the newspaper is the only way to make the Prince album available to our customers".

Rival retailers were outraged.

"We're stunned that HMV has decided to take what appears to be a complete U-turn on their stance," said Simon Douglas, managing director of retail at Virgin Megastores. "It's not only retailers that suffer; the public will suffer in the long term by restricting choice on the high street."

The use of so-called "covermounts," where free CDs or DVDs are attached to the front of a newspaper to catch the buyer's eye, is widespread in Britain where many newspapers are struggling to retain readers who are turning to online news and entertainment.

Most of the giveaways are compilations of archive recordings or older films — the Mail on Sunday has in the past given away CDs by Duran Duran, Peter Gabriel and Dolly Parton. Prince's deal is notable as the most high profile and for containing new tracks along with old hits such as "Purple Rain," "Cream" and "Sign O' The Times".

Sony BMG UK said it decided it was "ridiculous" to go ahead with its own sales launch in light of the newspaper deal, but stood by their star singer, adding they remained "delighted" to be working with him.

The Mail on Sunday, a somewhat strange bedfellow for Prince with its conservative leanings, declined to say how much it paid to secure the deal with the Purple One or many copies it planned to sell. Its average circulation is 2.3 million copies.

Quirk said the deal was "yet another example of the damaging covermount culture which is destroying any perception of value around recorded music."

Beyond the covermounts, the value of recorded music is already under widespread threat from the rapid rise of digital downloads. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry estimated that overall music sales world-wide fell around three percent in 2006 as a doubling in digital sales failed to compensate for falls in physical CD sales and digital piracy.

Britain had a harsh reminder of the decline in the CD market just a week ago when retailer Fopp shut the doors on its 105 stores around the country and declared itself bankrupt.

And the deal with the Mail on Sunday — carefully timed just ahead of a 21-date London concert schedule by Prince — won't be the end of the US singer's CD giveaway.

He also plans to give a copy of the album away with each ticket sold for the Earth Tour in London later this summer. Tickets for the concerts are priced at 31.21 pounds (around US$63 or euro46) a reference to his last album "3121" and a significant discount to the 100 pounds (around US$200 or euro145) a ticket charged by Barbra Streisand for her concerts in London this month.

Prince has made the same move once before. His handout of his "Musicology" disc to US concertgoers in 2004 led Billboard magazine and Nielsen SoundScan to change the chart data methodology. To count on US charts, customers must be given the option to add the CD to the ticket purchase or forgo the CD for a reduced, ticket-only price.

The UK Official Charts Company did not immediately return calls seeking comment on whether the giveaways would be included on the country's official music charts.