Fist fights at dawn I say. It's the only grown up way to solve disputes like this. Yes, Virgin Megastore have been bitching about rivals HMV over their previously reported decision to participate in the Mail On Sunday's controversial Prince cover-mount promotion.
As much previously reported, the Sunday newspaper has caused some outrage in the UK music industry through its recent programme of cover-mount promotions. Earlier this year it gave every reader a free copy of Mike Oldfield's 'Tubular Bells' though a deal with EMI which was publicly criticised by Oldfield himself. Its latest controversial deal is with Prince, who will make his new album 'Planet Earth' available for free via the paper this Sunday. This deal does not involve a label, and SonyBMG pulled out of its commitments to release the album in the UK after the newspaper deal was announced.
The music retailers are traditionally the biggest critics of newspaper cover-mount promotions, of course, because while artists, labels and publishers normally receive some kind of payment - cash or in kind - the retailers lose out both on their cut from a sale and from the store traffic high profile releases generate. However, HMV yesterday announced that it was participating in the Prince promotion by selling the Mail On Sunday in its stores the day the paper cover-mounts the new album.
Obviously it is an attempt by HMV to gain some commercial benefit from the promotion, but it is a decision that has been criticised by other music retailers who are more prone to boycott Prince because of the promotion. Virgin Retail MD Simon Douglas, speaking for the Virgin Megastore, was quoted by Billboard yesterday as saying: "We're stunned that HMV has decided to take what appears to be a complete u-turn on their stance towards cover-mounts and particularly in this case, as only a week ago they were so vocal about the damage it will cause. Simon Fox [HMV chief executive] labelled the Mail on Sunday deal as 'devaluing music' and 'absolute madness', now they appear to have joined forces to sell more copies of the very same paper".
A spokesman for HMV defended their decision, saying it did not indicate a change of policy, but was a pragmatic way to deal with something out of their hands: "HMV does not condone the use of cover-mounts as a primary channel for distributing music and film content, and we understand and acknowledge the issues that they raise. Clearly, we would have much preferred to have stocked the new Prince album, but his decision to effectively release it in this way means that this will, unfortunately, not be possible".