HW: Yuri etc...

[Andrew Garibaldi]

Love to add my voice to this one so apologies if it goes on a bit. No matter
what distribution deal any label has, the buck stops at the store/shop
buyer - if he or she does not want that Hawkwind album in his or her shop,
then it does not matter one jot who the distributor is and how far-reaching
the distribution is.
In terms of independent shops fighting for survival- or doing pretty well -
it is the units that walk out of the door versus the attarctiveness of the
stock that counts, in addition to knowing the sort of musical direction the
shop has and the "sort of thing" the customers want. Record company reps
these days do not tend to do the "bullet-at-the-head" style sell-in that
they used to do in the late seventies so that if a store buyer says no, the
rep takes it as no - and carries on.
Most stores would far rather sell twenty Godspeed albums than worry about
the one Hawkwind sale, but that can also be due to the age range and musical
awareness of the people in the shop, allied, as I said to knowing what their
market is all about.
In terms of the "multiples', it's a different affair. HMV only have central
buying for all stores. The shop managers have no say in what gets stocked in
that shop. Virgin meanwhile, currently it is rumoured to be operating under
a 290 million pound year-on-year loss, may be generally being even more
cautious with regard to stock, and understandably so if that is true.
The chain independents such as Fopp and Music Zone are doing quite well,
have individual shop buying allied to the flexibility of central stocking
but being shops of a rather smaller square footage,have to make each stock
unit "count" so it's still open to debate as to how any Hawkwind album would
be treated here.
Voiceprint CD's tend to be sold into the shops by phone care of Nova - not
sure if they have a rep force -  while Dave Anderson's stuff tends to be
sold into shops by visiting reps - maybe there's a difference?
Demi-Monde, formerly distributed by Rough Trade then Magnum, has now
undergone more licensing chameleon-like changes than I've had hot dinners.
You can currently find his product under the guises of Burning Airlines,
Dressed To Kill, Pegasus, Alchemy Entertainment, etc,etc- the list goes on.
More licensing than you can shake a stick at.
It's the old battle between having one slice of excellent product versus
tons of slices of inferior product, the former not quite as "in-your-face"
as the latter. Voiceprint have a good overseas distribution, via Caroline I
believe,  but then we're back to the shop buyer - full circle. The sped at
which the Voiceprint stuff gets out there is, I imagine, down to the process
of selling-in taking orders, supplying orders, exporting goods getting good
s to shops, etc - all takes time the way it's done, but then that's why the
prices are kept down.
I'm hoping to put the new Krel CD through national distribution via RSK in
the UK - if it works, you can guarantee I'll let the Hawk crew know about
it, but if the shops don't want Hawkwind, what chance has Krel got to get
through the door - still, it won't be for want of trying. Watch this space.
Andy G.

----- Original Message -----
From: "Doug Pearson" <jasret at MINDSPRING.COM>
To: <BOC-L at LISTSERV.SPC.EDU>
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2003 8:02 PM
Subject: Re: HW: Yuri etc...


> On Sun, 6 Apr 2003 21:48:42 +0100, Jon Jarrett
> <jjarrett at CHIARK.GREENEND.ORG.UK> wrote:
> >What Voiceprint seem to lack is
> >any kind of extra-English distribution, but people on-list from
> >outside the UK don't seem to be able to get the EMI stuff either, so I
> >don't really understand that as they can hardly lack such things.
>
> That may be true for the smaller extra-English markets, but in San
> Francisco, it's pathetically easy to find Voiceprint releases (at least,
> same as with Jon, Hawkwind and the Fall, the bands I'm most interested
in),
> both at the corporate (Virgin Megawhore) and indie (Amoeba, Rasputins)
> store levels.  The only problem is that they're not very timely about it;
I
> still haven't seen copies of Canterbury yet (so I ordered mine online),
but
> the Collectors series, Weird reissues, 'Yule Ritual', etc. can all be
> easily found here.  I'm sure the situation is similar in NYC, LA, and
> Chicago, but probably not in smaller markets.
>
>     -Doug
>      jasret at mindspring.com