Oz Music Retailers Boycott Over Electronic Distribution

Michael Woodhams writes, "Fairfax I.T. reports that two major Australian music retail chains will no longer stock recordings from publisher Festival Mushroom Group in retaliation for the latter granting sanity.com.au exclusive rights to electronic sales and distribution of their songs. For a change, it appears that it is the exclusivity rather than electronic distribution that is causing the problem."

Comments

More money to the record company

[OpenSpace]

I dont like the fact that by owning stock in the online service, the percentage of money the record company ends up with is even more. Artists should look to get a larger share since Festival Mushroom Group is ending up with more money overall.

Darn, I was looking forward to picking up some Festival Mushroom Group artists music while I was down in Australia.

--
Offering Open Source Reward's
http://www.OpenReward.com

It's a bit late

[sstrick]

While it is good to see the Aussie music industry working to stop this sort of thing it is a bit late. The deal is already signed and sealed.

At least it might stop them renewing the agreement in 3 years but for now they are going to have to live with it.

Re:It's a bit late

[SurfsUp]

While it is good to see the Aussie music industry working to stop this sort of thing it is a bit late. The deal is already signed and sealed.

That doesn't mean a thing if both parties agree to tear it up... or if the contract is found to violate some law... say *antitrust law* or something.

Re:It's a bit late

[Anonymous Coward]

Signed, sealed, and fucken illegal, I think, my friend. Let me put it this way -- do the letters Double-ya Teee Ohhh mean anything to you guys?

The World Trade Organisation's guidelines are meant to ensure consistency in legal arrangements throught the globe. Now it's possible to argue this way and that, but the basic truth of the fact is that it all boils down to the following -- the USA, as dominant partner in the WTO (it controls 13 of the 22 seats on the WTO board), makes the rules.

A change in American law feeds through to a change in WTO rules, which are enforceable in all WTO member countries. The USA is, to use the jargon, the "Most Favoured Nation", in the sense that its legal arrangements are to be favoured above domestic law, in commercail matters relating to trade. Online distribution is intrinsically international, so US law prevails here.

And deals like this would not be permitted under American law. Exclusive agreements are banned (this is actually an archaic piece of Civil Rights law; originally, exclusive agreements were used to segregate "white" and "coloured" music labels -- it's been kept on the books as part of antitrust policy). So, I think that a single challenge to this agreement in the American courts would have more effect than anything the Australian music industry (WTF? Anyone able to name three Austrialian stars?) could do.

-- John Saul Montoya, also known as streetlawyer. I apologise to my fans for not using more of my trademark profanity, but my company has a new firewall which sweeps all our email.

Re:Double counting error?

[norton_I]

Uh... no, actually it does. When I buy a CD, revenues are divided between the producer and the retailer in some fashion. Then, the portion of the retailers revenue that is profit is divided among its owners. If one of those owners happens to be a record company, the record company gets another cut.

Is this really new?

[ChristianBaekkelund]

There really is nothing new about this situation except for the fact that it is computer and electronic distribution related. Since the dawn of commerce hundreds and hundreds (if not thousands) of years ago, such things have been going on.

Business A signs a deal with Business B, and now Businesses C & D will no longer talk to Business A.

Nothing new...old business practices. In certain situations, such reactions are illegal, but rarely. This sort of stuff happens all the time in music labels, movie production studios, etc. etc. A perfect example: a while back all the late-night talk shows (Letterman, Leno, etc.) were in fierce competition over guests, and various claims were made by various related organizations that if guests were to go and appear on one show they wouldn't be allowed to appear on the other, and vice-versa. Illegal?..no...they're just competing in one of the few ways they can. Does it still seem slightly ugly to me...a little, yes.

Nothing new under the sun, unfortunately...

Re:Who cares?

[jbrw]

I'm Australian. I live in London. I buy CDs online too, but from Australian websites.

Strangely, thanks to the exchange rate being what it is at the moment, it is (or, perhaps more correctly, can be) cheaper to get Australian pressings of UK artists from Australia and pay airmail rates than to buy from, say, amazon.co.uk

It's even better if I want to get Australian artists, obviously - an import Australian album can cost the equivalent of over AUS$50 in the UK. Ouch.

...j

So... they are the same price as regular shops!!

[Kaptain Krash]

I mean, what is the point of sanity.com.au?? I can go to KMart (large retailer, it's probably worldwide or something and i made an ass of myself) and buy all the new releases at the same price, and not pay freght!!
Buy overseas, screw the domestic economy. It's a capitalist world, and every person for themselves!

My other .sig is a 40000 line perl program.

even better

[turg]

For a change, it appears that it is the exclusivity rather than electronic distribution that is causing the problem.

Better yet, the fact that they are protesting the exclusivity must mean that they wanted to do some electronic distribution themselves!

Many American artists and labels have exclusive arrangements with online sites like emusic, real, etc. and retailers haven't made a peep about it as far as I know

========
+++For-pay Internet distributed processing.+++

um...

[Mister Attack]

From the article:
On Wednesday, Festival announced that Sanity.com.au would have exclusive right to sell and distribute digital copies of songs by its Australian artists for at least three years.

So nobody else can even sell CDs? After all, they are digital...
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Why so few comments?

[jesser]

Why are there always so many fewer comments on positive-outcome articles? It's evening and I see 48 comments on this article. 48 comments. Five of the articles above this one have more score:2+ comments than that.

Which Holland-related articles on slashdot have the fewest comments? Which have the most?

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amazon.co.uk is wacky

[/]

Amazon.co.uk has some wacky prices sometimes, especially with textbook prices. The same textbook might cost only 22 pounds at amazon.co.uk (~ $35US) and $83 at amazon.com.

Perhaps amazon is trying to dump products in the UK in an attempt to drive out competition and underhandedly achieve market dominance. If true, it's just another reason to boycot them.