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Business News Deals Labels & Publishers
Beggars and Hostess partner in Japan
By CMU Editorial | Published on Thursday 23 July 2009
London-based indie the Beggars Group has announced a partnership with Japanese indie label distributors Hostess which will see the latter distribute the former’s releases in Japan. Beggars will also launch its own company in the territory to oversee marketing and promotion of its releases.
I’m assuming the new deal replaces a previous partnership in the Japanese market between Beggars and Warner Music – a partnership which was a little bit controversial when indie label trade body IMPALA was in talks with Warner Music about supporting the major’s then active proposals to merge with EMI.
As previously reported, IMPALA traditionally objects to any major label mergers, and encourages the European Commission to block them, but in 2007 it said it wouldn’t object to a Warner takeover of EMI because of various commitments Warner had made to the indie label community. In the end Warner’s takeover ambitions were halted by Terra Firma’s acquisition of EMI, but not before some had questioned if Beggars – as influential players in the indie label community – were biased in supporting Warner because of their business partnership in Japan.
Anyway, that’s all ancient history, back to the Hostess deal. And Beggars chief Martin Mills says this: “I am delighted that our independent future has arrived in Japan. We will always be grateful to our partners over the years for their support, but now Beggars Japan will become part of the Beggars worldwide fully independent structure. We look forward with excitement to working with our great Japanese staff, our new partner in Hostess, our labels XL, Rough Trade, Matador and 4AD, and most of all, of course, our artists, and being on the front line in these stimulating times”.
Hostess man Andrew Lazonby says this: “It’s very exciting to be working with Hostess during the next chapter of Beggars Japan. In a more and more challenging market, we are confident that the partnership will enable us to bring our innovative and cutting edge artists to a wider Japanese audience”.
