HMV, the largest entertainment retailer in the United Kingdom and Canada, pulled all of Alanis Morissette’s albums and DVDs off of store shelves.  The drastic move is to protest Morissette’s deal with Starbucks to exclusively sell her new album for the first six weeks after the release.  The new album is a celebratory 10th anniversary acoustic version of Jagged Little Pill.  After the six weeks period, the album will be available for sale by traditional music retailers.
Humphrey Kadaner, head of HMV, claims that the decision to pull Morissette’s material and send them back to her record company, Maverick Records, is what the majority of its customers would have wanted.

Coincidentally, another record chain, Sunrise Records, also retaliated against the exclusive Starbuck’s deal by pulling Morrissette’s albums as well.  An executive with Sunrise Records, Tim Baker, feels betrayed by the arrangement.  “We’re upset about the fact that it’s being made available on an exclusive basis to a chain of stores that doesn’t really sell music and we’ve been selling Alanis Morissette records for almost 20 years,” Tim Baker said in an interview with CBC News. “We’ve helped to make her a household name in this country.”

In response to the upheaval, Morissette sympathetically responded that it was not her intention to offend HMV and other record retailers with the exclusive deal, although she feels that Starbucks is the right place to sell to her demographics.  “My intention certainly was not to ruffle feathers in that department although it’s inevitable obviously,” Morissette told the Boston Herald. “I have had a really sweet and positive relationship with retailers my entire career.”

Tags: Alanis Morissette, HMV

This post was written by Ivonne Aceventrix

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