Oz Music Retailers Boycott Over Electronic Distribution 40
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."
More money to the record company (Score:2)
Darn, I was looking forward to picking up some Festival Mushroom Group artists music while I was down in Australia.
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Offering Open Source Reward's
http://www.OpenReward.com
It's a bit late (Score:2)
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 (Score:2)
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.
Who cares? (Score:1)
Quite honestly, Sanity/Mushroom can do whatever they want. Sure, it sucks, but i'm still gonna buy from overseas anyway...
Re:It's a bit late (Score:2)
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? (Score:2)
Re:It's a bit late (Score:1)
No, both companies are Australian so Australian law applies. This is because.......... Hang on a moment. I've just been trolled haven't I?
Is this really new? (Score:3)
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? (Score:3)
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!! (Score:2)
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.
Re:It's a bit late (Score:1)
ie. Kylie M., Danni M, Jason Donavan....
DOH...Sorry you said stars didn't you...
even better (Score:2)
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
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+++For-pay Internet distributed processing. [processtree.com]+++
It has been happening for a while now... (Score:1)
I can't remember the exact movie (major box office movie) but Video Ezy had sole hire rights to it until it moved to 3 day hire at Video Ezy, at which point all other stores could get stock.
Admittedly the Sanity deal is different in that Sanity keeps sole rights for 3 years instead of a few months, but the deal is the very much the same.
Simple solution here buy the affected music elsewhere.
um... (Score:2)
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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Re:"Festival Mushroom Group"??? (Score:1)
Re:So... they are the same price as regular shops! (Score:1)
Not the only Australian Company boycotting product (Score:1)
Re:Not the only Australian Company boycotting prod (Score:1)
...which explains why it is cheaper to buy a HP from Harvey Norman than it is to buy direct from HP. I was wondering about that
I wonder why HP would bother with the online distro if they can't ever be cheaper... they may get the occasional dimwit who couldn't be bothered shopping around, but that would hardly cover the cost of maintaining an e-commerce site??
Why so few comments? (Score:2)
Which Holland-related [slashdot.org] articles on slashdot have the fewest comments? Which have the most?
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Re:It's a bit late (Score:1)
I personally find the US domination of WTO concerning when from all the evidence I have seen it appears to be mainly used as a tool to aid American trade and not World Trade. It reminds me very much of the naming a series of games played by countries on the American continent The World Series.
(WTF? Anyone able to name three Austrialian stars?)
Midnight Oil, Silver Chair, UMI, Killing Heidi, Nick Cave, AC/DC, Baby Animals, Cold Chisel, INXS, The Wiggles, Savage Garden, The Seekers, Kate Cebrano, John Farnum, The Beegees, Hunters and Collectors, Kylie Minogue, Danii Minogue, Jimmy Barnes, Peter Allen, Joan Sutherland, The Animals, Dragon, Ice House, Men at Work, Jebodah...
try naming 3 from New York, Australia has a little less People than that city and surrounding buros.
amazon.co.uk is wacky (Score:2)
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.
Re:Australia -- land without music (Score:1)
Joan Sutherland is opera, but we are talking music not just rock. As the Wiggles who are among some of the biggest money makers in the music industry but only perform childrends songs for the 5-7 year old market. They sell CD's after all.
The Beegees were british immigrants to Australia who were "discovered" in Australia and started their music career here.
Re:Who cares? (Score:1)
IANAL, though.