Retail Track

CHANGING WAYS: Lower prices and new ideas continue to make their way into the marketplace. When Universal Music & Video Distribution (UMVD) announced its 7 Series, it also launched a tiered front-line rebate for retailers. The program is apparently designed to accelerate sales on new releases, but it can also be applied in case an album is over-shipped.

The program kicks off with the 50 Cent DVD/CD The New Breed, which is a DVD with four bonus music tracks. It initially shipped 1.2 million units, and now it is up to 1.5 million.

On May 1, UMVD announced a tiered rebate for the Shady/Aftermath/Interscope title. For every unit sold where the price is between $12 and $16.99, there is a $1 rebate for merchants. There is a $2 rebate for units sold in the price range of $10-$11.99 and $3 off if the price is less than $9.99.

In its five weeks of availability, The New Breed has sold 436,000 units, according to Nielsen SoundScan; 67,000 of them were sold during the rebate period, which runs May 5 through June 1. Retailers suggest that the title might have generated more traffic if it had more than three songs from the artist. That issue was addressed by having the replenished shipments contain an additional song, bringing the total number of tracks to four.

Some merchants are unhappy with the rebate for the under $9.99 sale pricing. With a boxlot cost of $12.65, the rebate would bring a merchant's cost down to $9.65, leaving very little room for profit.



NEW POSITIONS: With the restructuring at Sony Music Distribution (SMD), the company has embraced the hybrid position employed by the other major distributors—the one of combining field marketing responsibilities with selling, in a new position called "retail coordinators."

SMD still has pure marketing positions, similar to what the field marketing representatives do, but now they are called "retail specialists." Those staffers deal with the national chain stores in their region, regardless of where buying is done.

"They understand what is supposed to be happening at the stores and try to correct any problems before they leave the stores," explains Bill Frohlich, executive VP at SMD.

In another move, SMD has created the new post of director of major account marketing. It has named Sherif Shafi, formerly marketing manager for the Southwest branch, to that position. Shafi will focus on SMD's top five accounts: Handleman, Anderson, Target, Trans World, and Best Buy.

"He will drill down with [those] accounts and try to create opportunities that weren't there before," says Tom Donnarumma, executive VP of the Sony Label Group.

Frohlich says Shafi will be involved in long-term planning, trying to "align our creative elements at our labels with the marketing departments" at those accounts to find incremental opportunities and produce bigger and better promotions.



NEW DIRECTIONS: The Isis Listening Stations/Almighty Lighted Display team is adding to its offerings by building a computerized database of music retailers. Joel Oberstein, president of the Los Angeles-based company, claimed in an e-mail he sent to me that it will be the "most detailed [one] ever assembled."

Called the Almighty Institute of Music Retail, the database will be searchable by genre, point-of-purchase preference, radio station impact, tour markets, and advertising programs, among other criteria. The company is still gathering data but hopes to have a finished product to show the industry by summer.

I would be remiss if I didn't point out that Billboard publishes its own Record Retailing Directory, which is also available online.



CONGRATS: Bob Higgins, the chairman/CEO of Trans World Entertainment in Albany, N.Y., and his wife, Anne, received honorary doctorate of music degrees from Siena College in Loudonville, N.Y. The two are benefactors of Siena College, funding a Higgins Scholarship, which is awarded to liberal arts majors.



MAKING TRACKS: Gary Newman, executive VP of BMG Special Products/BMG Heritage, will leave the company to pursue other opportunities. He can be reached at garyenewman@yahoo.com.