50 CENT ALBUM HITTING THE STREETS FIVE DAYS EARLY

The release date of Get Rich or Die Tryin', the new Shady/Aftermath/Interscope album from the protege of Eminem and Dr. Dre, will be moved up five days, from Feb. 11 to Thursday, Feb. 6, in the wake of wide-scale pirating.

This highly unconventional move was first employed by Interscope last Memorial Day, when the Eminem album, The Eminem Show, was put on sale Sunday of Memorial Day weekend instead of the following Tuesday (see hitsdailydouble.com, 5/27). Columbia employed a similar tactic with the most recent Nas album, whose release date was moved up several days late last year.

Earlier, Interscope had decided to make the entire release available for sale on the Internet next Tuesday (2/4); the download now has just a two-day jump on brick-and-mortar retail.

Online, consumers will be able to purchase the release on a track-by-track basis for 99 cents apiece through any number of online outlets, including Pressplay and Liquid Audio.

Trans World’s Jerry Kamiler reacted for most of retail when he said he’d much rather get the CD early and on shelves than have it released on the Internet: “Now we can do the same thing that we did on Eminem, which we weren’t crazy about, but we dealt with, in order to protect our own interests.”

Finally, after a spirited bidding war, Universal Music Publishing Group’s David Renzer is expected to announce today the signing of the rising hip-hop star to an exclusive, worldwide publishing deal. In a separate agreement, the company has inked the rapper’s producer/manager, Sha Money XL.