Update (5/10/08)

(5/7/2008) Paul McCartney's latest album, "Memory Almost Full," will be given away free to subscribers of the UK paper Mail on Sunday, reports Music Week. Mail on Sunday has previously given away studio albums from Prince, Simply Red and UB40, but the deal involving McCartney's album is the biggest one yet. Music Week says "Memory Almost Full" hit #4 on the chart and sold almost 100,000 copies in the UK to date, according to Official Charts Company figures. In the U.S., according to Wikipedia, the album debuted at #3 with about 161,000 copies sold, making it McCartney's highest-charting album in this country since "Flaming Pie."

New York Times journalist and Beatles book author Allan Kozinn, contacted by Abbeyrd's Beatles Page, said, "It's an interesting idea: until now, giveaways of this kind have involved new material. Here's an album that, after a year on the market -- and after several incarnations to get multiple sales to die-hards -- has undoubtedly already had its initial sales burst. Giving it away now probably doesn't cost any sales, as it would have done a year ago, but it may pay dividends in getting people interested in his other recent work. That's a gamble of course: if this theory is correct, it would meant that the people who get it as a freebie have to first play it (not necessarily a given) and then they have to like it. If so, they might figure, hey, his recent stuff is okay, and then either explore the back catalogue, or be open to whatever he does next. Just my theory, of course."

But Journalist Bill DeYoung feels differently. "I can't imagine that anyone who's interested in the album doesn't already have it. I expect it'll get tossed out with the rest of the Sunday inserts. And maybe I'm living in a dream world, but I always preferred to think that Macca was above gimmicks like that," he told us.