More importantly, NZ has no rules like that. I’ve never heard of music censorship here and the only censorship of games / movies I’ve seen has been govt. inforced upon import.

Yep, New Zealand’s lack of receiving music is more about how small a market it is. Historically, in terms of music CDs/DVDs, NZ typically gets what AUS gets, because all the major labels offices in NZ are subbranches of their AUS offices. The “versions” of CDs/DVDs we get are actually the Australian version imported over. One of the people I know who used to work for EMI Aus says they used to have roughly 100 staff in Aus, and 10 in NZ (and now it’s more like 60 in AUS/3 in NZ). The bottom right of this chart gives a fairly good idea as to how small the New Zealand market is. Anyway, the business model they had was more of CD/DVD importers than music distributors, so NZ has been fairly reliant on Australia in terms of CDs/DVDs.

Online distribution is fairly tough, even for the US. When online music stores first came up, record labels couldn’t immediately distribute their entire catalogue; they needed to draw up/renegotiate contracts with the artists. The contract includes:

• where they can distribute
• in what formats (cd, online, etc)
• the royalty rates

For older artists (like Waits) online distribution can get difficult, because they need to renogotiate existing contracts with the artists, which can get messy, especially given that the labels would sometimes need to get a bunch of people in the same room that probably haven’t worked with each other in a while, and may not get along very well, to argue over royalty rates. So anybody who co-writes a song with Waits (I don’t know how often that happens) on a specific album needs to be involved in the contract for that album as well.

They also need to agree on rates that the writers/performers/label/distributors will get per country. For smaller markets (like NZ), the overhead costs for CDs/DVDs are relatively higher than their expected revenue, and so the distribution companies are likely to demand higher rates for themselves there. If one of the relevant contributors to the album says “fuck that” to the rate they get in NZ, then NZ just falls off the distribution list (and usually, NZ isn’t on the distribution list to begin with, it’s typically AUS). Ideally, it’d be nice if they could negotiate seperate clause rates for online distribution and other mediums of distribution, since overhead costs are fairly minimal online.

Old music, in general, is also very hard to contract. E.g, The Beatles (who should be a major seller) were a hassle to get online for the longest time because of the need to get all relevant people represented: George Martin, George Harrison (who might’ve been dying/dead at the time), Yoko Ono (for John Lennon and in some cases, herself), Michael Jackson (who owned some sort of rights to the majority of the Beatles’ body of work), Paul McCartney, who had become a stingy bastard because of Michael Jackson, and other collaborating artists (e.g, Eric Clapton) who may have contributed to some tracks. Music industries generally would only put this much effort in for albums who they think would go platinum in the specified regions.

So, anyway, the music that you’d find tough in to buy in New Zealand is probably going to be old music bound by old contracts (like Tom Waits back catalogue) that aren’t worth it to the industry to renegotiate much, so they won’t want to bring Warner Bros NZ into the mix. New music, or old music that has a lot of resell value are more likely to have better distribution contracts, because it’s easier or more worthwhile.

I’m not saying the system is great for everybody, but it’s not (only) the fault of the big record labels or distributors like iTunes; these organizations do want to make as many sales as they can, and the region restrictions/rules aren’t quite as paradoxical or as easy to control as you’re suggesting.

If they decided that pre-optimisation it would sell 1000 albums, but with optimisation it would sell 2000, but it costs money to optimise. So wouldn’t you just release it as is– you’d rather sell >0 than 0.

And having music stores flick the switch for the region costs you (I would imagine, just guessing etc) ticking ‘yes’ instead of ‘no’ when the online store asks where it can sell this particular album.

The same thing probably applies to music. The same artists (especially commercially mainstream ones) make different versions of their album for different countries just to increase their sales likeliness. There are some crazy rules in places like Germany/China/Japan.

You may have a point.

Except that I can buy that music here, in CD form. And while a lot of the examples I’ve looked at are smaller less popular groups, that’s just because that tends to be the kind of thing I listen to.

A better example would be say, not being able to buy most of Tom Wait’s back catalogue on eMusic (if you managed to get a subscription before they stopped people from NZ signing up at all). He’s not Britney mainstream, but he’s certainly no Birchhill Cat Motel (i.e. very much not mainstream).

More importantly, I think while ‘optimisation’ as you call it happens for games, I can’t think of a situation when that wasn’t for anything other than legal or rating reasons (no Nazi images in german copies of games, games that make ‘R’ ratings in the US mean that Best Buy doesn’t sell them so no one will buy them).

And I’ve never seen that with music. No one cares if albums have swear words in them, they still sell in mainstream shops. The only word-changing on music I’m aware of is when it’s on TV. Perhaps nazi images on the cover, but surely that’s a case of simply being aware when they designed the thing that it in face didn’t have Nazi pictures on the cover.

More importantly, NZ has no rules like that. I’ve never heard of music censorship here and the only censorship of games / movies I’ve seen has been govt. inforced upon import.

Not every artist makes enough revenue in each region for their record label to spend enough overhead costs ensuring that an album is optimized for different region markets, so the less successful artists probably can’t get good enough distribution deals with their labels. The big four don’t want album covers with drowned babies or swastikas to be associated with their company in certain countries.

Since we’re just speculating here anyway, my guess is that the artists being looked up are not so popular and more likely to have pretty poor (if any) distribution deals for anywhere outside where they’re locally from. If iTunes is stopping Stefan from purchasing tracks off Britney’s latest album, then I really am perplexed.

It does seem like you’re just guessing, though.

Totally.

“MAYBE THEY’RE RETARDED”

While I never went that far, it looks like my attempt at using hyperbole for humor failed. Noted.

…doesn’t feel like particularly useful speculation.

I didn’t think there was such a thing as useful speculation.

Basically, I’m venting. I have no room in my life or my room for CDs, and buying them to just rip them and throw them away seems just a monumentally wasteful thing to do. So I turn to online music, and actively try to give these people my money, only to have ridiculious and archacic excuses about regions thrown in my face.

Don’t let me get in the way of your argumentum ex ridiculous anecdotum though.

I’m not entirely sure what that means, but I think it means you read until the end!

If it’s as simple as you say then I agree it feels a little strange for them to throw away all these potential customers. It does seem like you’re just guessing, though.

Perhaps if we knew the reason why these restrictions were in place we would be better placed to comment on it. “MAYBE THEY’RE RETARDED” doesn’t feel like particularly useful speculation.

Don’t let me get in the way of your argumentum ex ridiculous anecdotum though.

I read up until the bit where you said stop reading.

I said can stop reading, but still.

What makes you think it isn’t something simple like contracts / licensing / random legal issues preventing them from selling their catalog here?

That’s exactly what it is. What makes it stupid is that those are rules they (they being music labels) have built around themselves. It’s a non-global country-partitioned system that they control, and have the power to change.

I understand that it’s not eMusic’s fault, or iTunes’ fault, or whatever. I understand that they are just doing what the music labels allow them to do.

What I fail to understand is how the particular way they (the labels) do business makes them more money than not doing it that way. It’s not like they are legally bound by law to do business this way by the country they operate in, it’s just how they are set up.

How does not selling me an album make anymore more money? I suppose they think I’ll buy it from a store, meaning that Sony NZ will get money instead of Sony. Which is possibly true.

Except that people are who pirate music buy more than those that don’t, and those that pirate tend to like buying online music over physical CDs, which labels tend to make more money off.

Which to me suggests you want to make online distribution as frictionless as possible, lest those people give up and download music illegally.

Moreover, if they can detect that I’m from NZ, why can’t they just flick the money (or the money sans network costs, or whatever) to Sony NZ instead of Sony.

I guess the answer to that is that Sony NZ wants to ‘control’ how they sell their product.

Which is totally their right. But that doesn’t make it a stupid call.