HMV is to launch a national advertising campaign featuring David Bowie, Ozzy Osbourne and Razorlight among other stars in a bid to emphasise its specialist music credentials.
The campaign, called "My inspiration", uses 10 artists and a lyric from a song that has inspired each of them.
David Bowie has chosen a line from Syd Barrett's Gigolo Aunt, while Sir Elton John selected the Scissor Sisters' Take Your Mama.
Other artists include Ozzy Osbourne, who chose Bruce Springsteen's Working Class Hero, Paul Weller, who selected the Beatles' Strawberry Fields Forever, as well as Razorlight, Richard Hawley, The Killers and The Fratellis.
The campaign begins next week and will appear in titles including NME and the Guardian.
In a departure for HMV, the ads will feature no price promotion or product shots, instead focusing on reinforcing the HMV brand and raising awareness of its hmv.co.uk and hmvdigital.com websites.
HMV has struggled against competitors, including supermarkets, and the growth in music downloads.
In September last year, HMV ploughed £4m into launching its own download service, HMV Digital, in conjunction with Microsoft to belatedly try to retain customers flocking to Apple's iTunes and other such providers. It has recently overhauled the service.
HMV this week launched a television campaign using the tagline "Be inspired", which features a scene from The Wizard of Oz with the yellow brick road changed to HMV's signature magenta.
Other ads yet to air will feature the "Play it for me" scene from Casablanca and the famous "Here's Johnny" scene from The Shining.
After a poor Christmas sales period, the HMV chief executive, Alan Giles, announced he would step down, admitting that a key factor in his decision was the "quantum jump" in online spending that he had originally thought would not surpass 10% of all sales.
In the nine weeks until the end of June, HMV announced a 16% decline in like-for-like sales.
The campaign has been created by Quiet Storm.
· To contact the MediaGuardian newsdesk email editor@mediatheguardian.com or phone 020 7239 9857
· If you are writing a comment for publication, please mark clearly "for publication".
