Last month, Napster offered up to eight free downloads (over an eight-week period) to readers through The Sun and may expand this offering to other News International titles such as The Times, News of the World and the Sunday Times. The London Evening Standard has reached its own deal with Wippit to offer up to 50 free tracks per reader. This marks the latest evolution in free download giveaways following iTunes Music Store�s promotional partnership with Pepsi in the US and Sony Connect�s deal with McDonald�s.

It is too early to tell if downloads will completely replace covermounts, but there are immense opportunities here. For newspaper and magazine publishers they represent a considerably less expensive way to boost their circulation figures as they do not have to pay heavy manufacturing costs. Indeed, several music magazines (notably Uncut in the UK) carry covermounts as standard every issue, other titles (NME, Mojo etc.) run them as semi-regular fixtures and the weekend broadsheets are increasingly seeing the benefit to their ABC figures by either offering CDs or, in the Sunday Times� case, monthly entertainment CD-ROMs.

The most attractive aspect of newspapers and magazines pushing free downloads is that there will be less �waste� as only consumers who really want the tracks will bother to download them. In doing so, they will have to give over e-mail details and this could create a more direct relationship with the newspaper and download services. This � if managed properly - offers greater long-term tangible benefits compared to the �passive� relationship they have with CD covermounts.

The danger, of course, is that many consumers will not be inclined to collect the requisite �tokens� (or bother going to the effort of downloading the � often bulky � software) if the promotion runs over several weeks. Indeed, it is a relatively untested marketing and promotions route. On top of this, there is a real risk that in an age of file-sharing, music being given away for free can devalue music as the industry moves to convince consumers to pay for downloads. It also risks excluding non-downloading demographics.