Hi Ralph pals -
For a while RalphAmerica will not be carrying the Mute titles (the nice ones in the hardbound book) as the world of CD distribution and one stops (an excuse of a business that collects a bunch of releases from the major distributors, marks up the items, and sells them to smaller accounts), is a seedy, dirty little troll world (I just saw Hellboy 2 last night, it's kinda like that.)
We were dealing with a one stop (I'll leave them nameless right now, but unlike their namesake, they aren't very super), that gave us tons of trouble. We would order thru their ordering system, sometimes we'd get what we ordered, sometimes not. Then we'd order something else, and might get something we'd ordered the previous month with no warning. We never got invoices with our orders, the invoices we did get never made any sense. When we dealt with EMI directly, huge company, they were easier to deal with and a LOT more friendly than this MickeyMouse outfit. (When EMI got bought they changed their policies about selling to small accounts like us, even though we'd sell more Mute Residents titles than anyone in N. America.) Gripe gripe gripe.
When we started getting shipped double the stock we ordered, and then couldn't return it for various Cheney-like reasons, we decided we had better end the relationship. If you are at all like us, you are careful about which businesses you support, and we just didn't feel good about supporting this particular business anymore. The music business is too competitive for this sort of crap, and life is too short to deal with it. So hopefully we'll get something worked out soon, as MuteUK is being helpful in helping us find a solution.
We thought that you, our thoughtful customer, might want to know what was up. In the long run (and as you probably already know), these distributors won't be around much longer anyhow. In fact I find it hard to understand how they're even keeping the lights on these days, but it has something to do with the parasitic relationship they have with major labels and major label distribution. Pretty soon WalMart and Target will stop carrying CDs and DVDs and they'll all come crumbling down. I'll take some solace in that.
Do you have any ideas/predictions about how this industry will change in the next few years?
