Ozzy Osbourne And Metal Hammer Team Up For Special Edition Magazine
Ozzy Osbourne And Metal Hammer Team Up For Special Edition Magazine
July 19, 2010
Sharon and Ozzy Osbourne have struck their first official magazine deal with Future Publishing’s Metal Hammer to produce a premium-priced collectors edition in the run up to Ozzfest at the O2 Arena in September.
The one-off edition, which at £7.99 will be almost double the price of a regular edition, is Future’s second foray into premium special issues for fans.
In April, Future’s Classic Rock offered an exclusive solo album from the former Guns N’ Roses guitarist Slash along with a collector’s edition costing £14.99. The Ozzy Osbourne special does not come with an exclusive album — his latest came out last month — but is understood to come with a music download card.
Chris Ingham, group publisher of Future’s music magazine division, argued that it had hit upon a better model than the giveaway strategy employed by Trinity Mirror’s Daily Mirror and Daily Record earlier this month with Prince’s new album 20TEN.
“I don’t subscribe to the free music model, I don’t think it sits very easily with hardcore rock fans,” he said. “If people want to steal music online, they will. But there is a hardcore group that want products they can touch and they are willing to pay for it.”
The 132-page “fan pack” Ozzy Osbourne edition of Metal Hammer goes on sale on 16 August — it is the official companion to Ozzfest on 18 September — in about 4,500-5,000 WH Smith outlets in mainline train stations and tube stations as well as at airports. A typical edition of Metal Hammer, which retails at £4.25, would be sold in about 8,000 outlets nationwide.
Ingham said that the strategy was to sell at fewer stores but with much heavier marketing.
The Osbourne issue has about 12-15 pages of ads, compared with about 40 in a regular edition, and will be published in a run of 30,000.
Ingham said that it takes a solid 12 weeks to get a special edition deal off the ground and in this case negotiations were held with Sharon Osbourne Management, Sony Music and the Ozzfest event organisers, Kilimanjaro.
He said that Future’s new “fan pack” strategy was a case of “so far so good — as long as it [premium tie-ups] tip the balance on value for money we will be all right. We are not trying to sell 100,000 copies, just the hardcore valuable 20,000 or 25,000.”
Courtesy of www.sleazeroxx.com and www.guardian.co.uk