Sprint is NOT the first company to advertise and underwrite songs within P2P music services, as this NYP story tries to hype up, but the format of the campaign is certainly novel: Sprint’s logo will be embedded into free copies of tracks from Atlantic Records hip-hop artist Plies, alongside Plies’ name and the song title on the screen of a desktop, portable music player of cellphone when downloaded. The company had tied up with ArtistDirect’s MediaDefender division….MediaDefender is more know for its P2P anti-piracy technologies than this, but seems like the technology is being put to this use now.

The story says MediaDefender will push 16 million Plies song files over a three-month period in return for a “substantial six-figure” fee to be divided between Media Defender, Atlantic Records, Plies and his publishing company.

Will it make any difference? Sprint thinks this will endear it with the younger generation….well, yeah, for the free part.