Dylan Dissed in Canada

09/13/2005 4:04 PM, E! Online
Charlie Amter

Canadians attempting to buy Bob Dylan albums may temporarily be left blowing in the wind.

One of the nation's largest record chains, HMV Canada, has pulled the entire Dylan catalog from store shelves to protest the folk-rock icon's deal to exclusively sell his latest album in Starbucks stores, according to Toronto's Globe and Mail.

Bob Dylan: Live at the Gaslight 1962 collects songs recorded at the famed New York venue, including early versions of the classics "A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall" and "Don't Think Twice, It's Alright." It went on sale Aug. 30 at Starbucks' 4,600 outlets in the U.S. and Canada for $13.95. The coffee giant has exclusive rights to the Dylan disc for 18 months before the disc is available at regular retailers--the longest such window that Starbucks has secured yet.

Felling miffed, HMV Canada, a subsidiary of U.K.-based retailer HMV, reacted by yanking all Dylan discs for the duration of the Starbucks' promotion. The retailer's Dylan diss isn't unprecedented: HMV did the same earlier this year in retaliation for native daughter Alanis Morissette's similar deal with Starbucks.

While it's not immediately clear how much HMV's protest will end up hurting Dylan sales, the timing couldn't be worse for his Sony-based label, Columbia Records.

Columbia had been preparing for a Dylan sales renaissance this fall thanks in part to the release of Martin Scorsese's highly anticipated documentary, No Direction Home: Bob Dylan, which gets its world premiere Saturday at the Toronto International Film Festival. It will be released on DVD Sept. 20 and run on PBS the following week. The soundtrack, featuring 26 previously unreleased tracks, drops Tuesday. There will also be a companion coffee-table book. Meanwhile, Dylan's best-selling memoir, Chronicles: Volume One, has just been released in paperback.

HMV Canada's president, Humphrey Kadaner, told the Globe and Mail his company "will not be actively stocking, displaying nor promoting Dylan." He also proudly noted that his efforts in the past to stop exclusives from happening outside of his 108 stores "has prevented other exclusive products from crossing the U.S. border into Canada."

So far, the HMV's U.S. stores have not followed suit, but other traditional music retailers like Virgin and Tower are on record as intensely disliking the exclusive marketing agreements struck by record labels and retail giants like Best Buy and especially Starbucks.

Name-brand artists of Dylan's ilk have been increasingly drawn to the latte-slinging megachain; the Seattle-based company has ramped up its music efforts in recent years, catering to its customer base.

Caffeine junkies can now buy a variety of adult-alternative CDs--from Elvis Costello to Joni Mitchell to Michael Buble--and even make customized discs at some outlets. It was Starbucks that was credited with the massive success of Ray Charles' Genius Loves Company, accounting for a full 25 percent of the Grammy-winning disc's nearly 4 million copies.

Ken Lombard, president of Starbucks Entertainment told Billboard last month the Dylan exclusive was "a win-win for everybody involved."

Starbucks doesn't always get its way, however. In May, the caffeine-enabling chain was unable to lock up a deal to exclusively selle Bruce Springsteen's Devil & Dust. Starbucks tried to claim the deal fell through because of racy content on one of the tracks, but Springsteen's camp insisted the blue-collar rocker pulled the plug on the disc because he loathes merchandising his music.