May 31, 2007

By By Antony Bruno, Denver

Verizon Wireless has nabbed the exclusive of the first single form Prince's upcoming album "Planet Earth," scheduled for to release sometime in July.

The single, "Guitar," will be available for free to any Verizon subscriber who participates in an online or demo of its new Song ID music identification service, which will be available on Verizon's Web site, as well as online video outlets like YouTube, Revver and MySpace. Prince currently has no label deal to market or distribute the album. He is relying on Verizon to generate awareness. "There is no music label involved here," says Verizon senior VP of marketing and digital media John Harrobin. "That enabled us to work very closely together."

The demo consists of a clip of the music video for the single and a prompt for subscribers to hold their phone to the computer speaker to ID the song. Once identified, users can then download the song in a single click.

Verizon will promote the campaign in a TV ad that begins airing tonight featuring the artist and the music video.

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