Java + Jagged Little Pill = bad taste for HMV
With the recent announcement that Alanis Morrissette is set to re-issue her 1995 album Jagged Little Pill in a more mellow, acoustic format to celebrate its ten year anniversary, so came the news that the first six weeks of availability will be exclusive to the Starbucks coffee chain.
In response to this decision, HMV, Canada’s largest entertainment sales franchise, has decided to boycott Alanis’ new release, as well as stripping the entire back catalogue of the recent Canada Walk of Fame inductee from their shelves in protest, in a similar fashion to what they did to the Rolling Stones less than two years ago: Despite the short 6-week tenure of the Starbucks deal, HMV president Humphrey Kadaner feels that full availability after the Starbucks promotion is not good enough, stating in an email:
As of June 13, HMV will be removing all Alanis products from our stores, consistent with the views of the majority of our customers, and will be returning all Alanis product to the record company
The interesting point of this situation comes in considering that the entertainment industry and other public presentation mediums hold promotions all the time.
Movie theatres hold approximately a 6-week exclusivity term on new release movies, but media stores do not hesitate to stock the home video, and movie-watchers (for the most part, based on the movie watchers I know) do not simply say "I refuse to watch this movie because it was not directly available for me to buy for my home collection".
Ironically, HMV (which has partnered its catalogue with Amazon.ca), is not beyond doing the very thing that they choose to boycott Alanis’ sales for–Listed on the HMV.com is an "Amazon Exclusive" release of Pearl Jam’s CD Single, "Man of the Hour"
Hypocritical at best, HMV’s complaint and subsequent boycott of Alanis’ acoustic re-release of Jagged Little Pill seems to be on par with a professional athlete who would shun being a part of their respective league on the grounds that they were not chosen as the #1 draft pick overall, spawning denial of public access to their abilities, and losing personal revenue.
As a music lover, I personally am more offended by HMV’s hypocritical boycott than I could have ever been by an exclusive deal between Alanis and Starbucks