Wednesday 20 April 2005

Unfair practice?

Hi Keith. I've always wondered about the practice of including bonus tracks on international releases. The issue most recently comes to mind because the Japanese version of Mariah Carey's "The Emancipation of Mimi" contains two extra songs. A scenario I can understand is when an artist re-records a popular song in another language and uses that version to promote the CD in other countries.

But in this case, the songs are in English and would have no greater appeal to the Japanese. Isn't it unfair that hardcore American fans have to pay 20-30 dollars more for imports at stores such as Virgin Megastore just for two extra songs? And assuming people do spend the extra money, doesn't that take away from the U.S. sales that would otherwise count towards the Billboard charts? Am I missing something? Is there really some logic to this? Thanks, Jay Urban.

Keith Caulfield answers: Hello Jay. The goal isn't to force Americans to buy the Japanese import. The goal is to keep the domestic Japanese customers from buying the American import.

Because U.S. albums are also exported to other countries, and because our dollar is weak compared to the Japanese yen, it ultimately doesn't cost very much to import an American album into Japan. Therefore, if you are a customer in Japan, and you go to your local Virgin Megastore and you see two different Mariah albums - one being the domestic Japanese version that costs a lot, and another being the cheap U.S. import - you'd tend to buy the cheaper American version.

Japanese record labels started adding bonus tracks to their domestic versions in order to curb this trend, and to encourage the purchase of Japanese-produced albums. Now, if you are a customer in Japan presented with the slightly more-expensive Japanese edition of an album with bonus tracks, versus the cheaper American version, you might opt to buy the Japanese version.

(Ask Billboard)



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