Pop star Mariah Carey is pioneering a new business model for the struggling music business: her next album will be “sponsored” by the Bahamas Board of Tourism and perfume companies wishing to be associated with the fragrant star.

Next month’s album, Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel, will come with a 34-page booklet crammed with glossy advertisements for Elizabeth Arden and Le Métier De Beauté cosmetics, Angel pink champagne and Carmen Steffens shoes from Brazil.

The “product integration” deal, organised by the world’s largest record company, Vivendi-owned Island Def Jam, and the fashion magazine Elle, is said to have covered the costs of recording Carey’s album in the Bahamas, estimated at £4m .

The “mini-magazine”, written by Elle editorial staff, will explain to the lucky first 1.5m purchasers how they can “Mariah up” their lifestyle by buying such products.

A previous generation of pop stars would have called such deals selling out.

But the 40-year-old, whose career has lurched between mass adulation and sales and ridicule and commercial disaster, was “very open” to the idea, said Antonio Reid, chairman of Island Def Jam Records.

“The idea was really simple thinking,” said Reid. “We sell records to people who buy lots of other stuff so you should advertise with us. My artists sell two, five, eight million records, and people hold on to them for years. Most magazines are not that successful.”

If it works, Reid will negotiate similar deals with his other “more commercially minded” artists such as rapper Kanye West, R&B singer Rihanna and rocker Bon Jovi.

Terry Dry, president of Los Angeles-based marketing firm Fanscape, said that the CD booklet is a first, although he expects other record companies to follow.

“So many artists have their own brands, like Jennifer Lopez perfumes or Sean Combs’s fashion, you can see them wanting a slice of the pie. They used to promote other people’s brands in their lyrics, with Burberry and Bentley getting boasts from rap lyrics, but now they want to push their own stuff.”

The record companies need the extra revenue if they are not going to shrink to a cottage industry within a decade.

Albums sales are down again this year, by 13% according to Nielson. The Big Four record companies — Island Def Jam, Sony, Warner and the ailing EMI — sell two-thirds fewer albums than they did in 2000 and sharing live performance revenues is not compensating.

Many music companies want to give away their music, perhaps through mobile phone companies who would pay as a wholesaler, but apart from a Danish experiment, all have backed down in the face of artistic and legal objections.

Mariah Carey has had her own battles with record companies. The 5ft 9in Afro-Venezuelan-American singer was the most popular female pop star of the 1990s during which time she sold 200m albums. But her career crashed amid the wreckage of her semi-autobiographical film box-office flop Glitter in 2001.

Yet rehab, followed by a critically-lauded 2005 album The Emancipation of Mimi, put Carey back on the hot list.

“Americans love novelty as much as they love a comeback story,” said a music critic last week.

“Rock fans might object to being bombarded with adverts, but for Mariah’s fans they will lap it up. It shows there is some entrepreneurial flair left in old business yet.”

Times Recommends

• Lies and cover-up at MG Rover exposed by report
• High oil prices push manufacturing costs up
• Primark founder steps down as chief executive