At Date: Sun, 11 Mar 2007 11:57:46 Bill Holmes wrote:

>It's an advance...comes out in May...and yes, I've heard there are going to 
>be some different editions. I hate this trend.

The biggest reason labels are doing this, myself included, is that 
distributors are dumping product into territories where they don't really 
have legal rights to. So, if a label has sub-licensed an album in a specific 
territory, that sub-label wants exclusive content so that when another 
distributor elsewhere in the food chain dumps the domestic product into the 
sub-label's territory there's at least a fighting chance of selling the 
licensed album cause it's got bonus or different material on it.

For example. I've released a CD with 15 songs in North America of one of my 
acts. I've also licensed the same album in Japan, Europe and Australia to 
three other labels because I can get a nice modest advance on sales from 
them. These labels want their investment protected because my distributor(s) 
in North America have wholesale clients they deal with who drop kick those 
discs, at cheaper costs, into the territories of the labels I just signed 
deals with. The labels in these territories want bonus material, alternate 
packaging, etc. to distinguish their release from the imports being thrown 
over the fence into the same retail outlets.

Expect this trend to heat up and get worse. Avril Lavigne's management just 
cleverly had her sing her new song "Girlfriend" in eight different languages 
and these versions of the songs will only be available in the territories 
where these translations will make sense. That's EIGHT different versions of 
her new album. In this case, it was as a means to cater to the fanbase 
exclusively...including a version in Mandarin because Lavigne has cracked 
China's charts there as an import.

Jaimie Vernon,
Bullseye

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