Verizon Wireless and music superstar Prince today announced a partnership, which uses Prince’s new single “Guitar” to promote the V Cast Music service in an innovative arrangement that links TV advertising, music downloads and Verizon Wireless’ Song ID service together.

The single will be available exclusively on the V Cast Music deck weeks before the launch of Prince’s new album “Planet Earth.” Verizon Wireless claims it is the first direct-to-mobile exclusive in the wireless industry, and the carrier definitely plans on playing it to the hilt. It’s offering “Guitar” as a free full-track, ringtone or ringback tone download to anyone who uses V Cast Song ID service to identify it.

Song ID allows a customer to identify a song over the network by holding the phone near a music source. The application opens a connection to the Song ID server, which then ships back an MMS of the name of the song, the artist and the album with options to download it as a full-track file, a ringtone or a ringback tone. As a way to promote the new Song ID service, Verizon Wireless is not making the single searchable in its V Cast music deck, but only through Song ID search. And since the single is available only to VZW initially, the only place a customer will hear the song initially is on the carrier’s commercials, online and on TV. So Verizon Wireless is counting on customers to hear the song first in its commercials, use Song ID to identify the song from those commercials and download it to their music phones--all for free.

The commercials will begin airing tonight on Entertainment Tonight, but customers can also find the ad on the Verizon Wireless Web site as well as licensed versions on content sites like YouTube, Revver and MySpace.