Peter McLennan writes (on Facebook):
WHAT THE???? Amplifier.co.nz just had to delete titles by JPSE, Mint Chicks, The Bats, HDU, Garageland, Kilgour, Knox, SJF, as Warners not repressing. Lets hide our musical heritage under a rock so no-one can hear it! IDIOTS! Haven’t they heard of the long tail? Jeeeeeeeezzz…..
These are legendary and important artists in the NZ Music canon, released on the Flying Nun label over the past 25 years or so. Originally a staunchly independent and groundbreaking record label, Flying Nun’s catalogue is now owned by a major.
The idea that a site that provides digital download site would be required to stop making available this material because it isn’t being ‘repressed’ seems insane. It’s possible, of course, that there’s a lot more to this – and that the material is only being removed from Amplifier because of some deal elsewhere (Vodafone’s music website perhaps? NZ iTunes?).
However – as NZ’s oldest and most established local music download platform, not having your classic Flying Nun albums available in any form is beyond bizarre. The only thing I can think of is an attempt at artificial scarcity in the build-up to another FN boxed set.
I’m going to try and get an interview with someone at Amplifier about this. And Warner Music NZ.
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Tagged: catalogue, deleted works, download, nz
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10 Comments
This is madness. Seems to prove once again that major record labels are more concerned about controling their catalogue than promoting it and allowing it to be heard. Record labels deliberately make their product scarce via legal channels, and then they moan about illegal file sharing? There’s some dissonance in their reasoning there.
I gave a talk today about the evolving music experience talking about this kind of insanity. Very difficult to comprehend or see any logic in decisions like this.
BTW: Recommended the students check out NMS ;)
Much appreciated. By contrast, I’ve just posted about something really clever and noteworthy from the world of New Zealand music on New Music Strategies:
Sonic Museum
A lot of previously-unavailable FNun appeared on iTunes down under late last year, apparently as part of Warners reissuing the catalogue at least digitally. Much of my favourite NZ music has never been available anywhere since original release – the old Pagan, Flying Nun, Jayrem stuff from the 80’s – but surely it’s in everybodys interest to transfer to digital, remaster, and release via the interwebs to preserve it?
As stated on Twitter, many Nun groups never signed, and it may only be funds preventing their self-releasing of material. NRA? Chainsaw Masochist? Body Electric? Car Crash Set?
Its only CDs being deleted, not digital… Amplifier doesn’t have the rights to sell Warners digital catalogue which includes Flying Nun
I’d imagine the Flying Nun contracts for most acts are a mess, I know FMR attempted or were attempting to sort many of them out but I imagine time ran out … hence only a small part of the catalogue ever seeing digital release and I doubt their is anyone at Warners (or anywhere ) that would be interested in trying to sort them out
“As stated on Twitter, many Nun groups never signed, and it may only be funds preventing their self-releasing of material. NRA? Chainsaw Masochist? Body Electric? Car Crash Set?”
or complete indifference and lack of relevance to their currents situations?
Hey Dubber
This is not quite accurate. Amplifier has never had digital rights to any of the catalogue controlled by Warner, not for want of trying but just way too hard, for years it was because we were not prepared to go with drm, then we weren’t prepared to restrict our territory to NZ only, then it was because of prioritites and we were way down the list and then it was whatever other crap they could come up with so in the end I gave up trying. I figure that old vietnamese thing about sitting by the side of the river will eventually come into play and I’m not going anywhere.
In order to mainatain some semblence of having some catalogue and because of demand we have always made all NZ releases available on CD whether we had digital rights or not, I mean some of these releases are pretty hard to get unless you live in the big city
all this is about now is the gradual ackniowledgement by warner that the old cd market is dying, actually this in my view is a fairly progressive step on their part. and what they are doing is deleting the CDs. I am pretty sure the digital versions will still be available on itunes and other such sites, just not on niche nz focused ones like us for some reason.
the real news story here is not the deletion of the music in general but further evidence of the death of the CD
and the real bugbear from my perspective is how a dedicated nz store that has been in business for 10 years can still not get to stock and sell catalogue from Warner or for that matter Sony or UMG.
What’s great about this, of course, is how important it all is. In the last 24 hours I’ve had some conversations with people who have such amazing and intriguing stories to tell about the relationships between the artists and the label, the label and its owners, and there’s been rumour, speculation and substantiated (but ‘off-the-record’) fact along the way.
What I can say, clearly, is that there negotiations to sell the label are happening. Paul Kennedy’s Radioscope has the deal on that.
I love the idea of this catalogue returning to its original owner. But I agree that it’s absurd that Amplifier can’t carry some of New Zealand’s most iconic music…
Might as well have the 3rd head of the Amplifier beast throw his 2 cents in as well.
One of the things we’ve done at Amplifier over the past couple of years is branch off into digital aggregation. Through Digital Rights Management New Zealand Ltd (yes, Hocquard was having a laugh when he named this company) we’ve managed to make available a lot of old NZ catalogue that was either deleted or very hard to find.
This included catalogue from Jayrem, Pagan Antenna, Wildside/Southside and Ode. They’re all available via Amplifier (as 320kb MP3’s), iTunes (DRM free now), digiRAMA, Telecom, Vodafone and shortly via Vodafone’s subscription service MusicStation.
So regardless of how the majors are approaching their back catalogue, we’re doing all we can to make sure that a great deal of NZ’s musical heritage is again available commercially.
The best example of the deamand for some of this back catalogue was last year when Poi E managed to get back into the NZ top 40 after a 20 odd year absence. Honestly I smiled for days when that happened.
With regard to Amplifier making digital content from the majors available we already have EMI’s catalogue and will shortly have another major available. As mentioned by Bob and Chris the deletion of CDs is unfortunate and possibly even tragic but it’s going to happen with a higher frequency as more people make their music purchases digitally.
Ka kite
Stephen
General Manager
Amplifier.co.nz and Digtial Rights Management NZ Ltd
good info, i find new information here.. thanks