From Jeff Waye Sent Thu, Jul 16th 1998, 19:15
From Jeff Waye Sent Thu, Jul 16th 1998, 19:15
>> What with all the import ban type stuff being bantered about, thought I >> might mention that I picked up the Autechre import in an HMV (major >> music retailer) here in Vancouver today. Pretty cheap: $22, canadian. >> I also got WAP100 ($22). Couldn't really believe I was in HMV. > >Hmmmm. This makes me wonder... there's a distributor in Montreal called >Nice Music who worked out a special import deal with Warp on the BoC and >WAP100 so they could sell them here at close to domestic prices - perhaps >they did the same with the Ae as well? Maybe the Nothing deal only applies >to the US. > >Greg It's the same old story I would think. Majors in Canada are even more clueless then there American offices and it leaves it open for good distributors to cut deals on the side (foriegn labels rarely realize that the market here is massive. Almost 25% of our sales are in Canada) There's a long history of European labels that sign deals for North America to labels that do nothing for them in Canada. I used to be a buyer for a Canadian distributor and one of the biggest parts of our business was scoping out releases that were technically owned by a Canadian majors but as they had decided to not release them we would bring them in from the U.S and make loads. Another lame major label trick was to release a record while the band was on tour (due to pressure from whoever A&R'ed the record at there US office) so that the band wouldn't bitch that the record wasn't available where they were touring,immediatly delete it post-tour, and then serve us with legal cease and desist orders to not carry the U.S version in Canada....artists best interest indeed. All this export ban stuff. Happens all the time with any liscensed release. It is hard to release something with the same release dates worldwide. There are different lead-times for press, distributors, etc...Plus remember North America is a hell of a lot bigger then the UK. It's not such a bad thing as long as the record eventually comes out. The people who are in the know will always be able to find it (and remember the people in the know make up a small fraction of the music buying public so them scoping the imports doesn't really effect the eventual market the major will cator to) Where it really hurts is in the cases pointed out already with Warp titles, or in the case where technically Mo Wax 12" are export banned because of there deal with A&M (actually Island now I think, due to all the Polygram-Seagrams shakeup) even thou you know there is no chance in hell they will ever release the vinyl over here. It's all very sad really and I could go on for ever. All I can say is that I'm thankful every day that other people's agendas and various 'old boy network ego' bullshit doesn't have any bearing on our Ninja Tune release schedule. I highly recommeded reading 'The Hitmen' if you want a good idea of how major labels work. Or if you ever run into Mixmaster Morris I'm sure he'll be happy to go on for hours about his feelings of major label control. It's like we say, the scenic route to success is a much more fun route. Take Care Jeff