Warner Music gets lucky break

Posted Apr 26th 2007 6:29PM by Richard Driver
Filed under: Good news, Products and Services, Consumer Experience, Columns

It was twenty years ago today... well not exactly, but it was 1987 and five of the world's most influential musicians came together to record a b-side for George Harrison's "This Is Love" single. Harrison , along with Tom Petty, Bob Dylan, Roy Orbison, and ELO's Jeff Lynne, recorded "Handle with Care" and created supergroup history. You may not remember the Traveling Wilburys, or even have known those artists were involved, but in 1988 their album Traveling Wilburys Vol. 1 reached #3 on the Billboard albums chart and sold more than 2 million copies.

For more than 10 years that album along with the follow-up two years later, have been unavailable. This summer Rhino Records, an imprint of Warner Music Group (NYSE:WMG), will re-release both Traveling Wilburys albums as well as bonus video material in a special reissue set. It's an interesting re-issue for this summer, not because it does not deserve to be re-issued, but because it is part of the re-issuing of George Harrison's post-Beatles career by his estate (here is the press release).

Warner caught a lucky break with these reissues because most of Harrison 's material reverted to EMI (he was originally with the London-based label as a Beatle and a solo artist). It was assumed that these two albums also reverted, but those assumptions were obviously wrong.

This reissue will do quite well because it was a collaboration between five talents and received such high praise upon its initial release. By comparison Harrison's solo material was often hit or miss.

I've blogged recently about Warner's lack of a digital strategy, primarily about their squabble with newly created digital service AnywhereCD. Both parties are currently involved in a lawsuit over DRM (Digital Rights Management) and AnywhereCD's non-use of the technology. DRM is the technology label's force digital services to use to limit the sharing of mp3 tracks and other media files. Currently, the only label to have completely dropped DRM technology is EMI.

Warner will offer this reissue in a digital format, but it will use DRM (as of this writing, unless something changes between now and June). More importantly are the risks Warner is taking with such a massive reissue. They won't be re-issuing both albums separately, only together, which forces the standard set to be list priced at $30 and the deluxe at $45. Not a very manageable price for the average listener, but Warner is undoubtedly banking on the fact that the Traveling Wilburys were a supergroup and lately those have been quite in style. Remember "Feel Good Inc." by Gorillaz last year? Supergroup. The Raconteurs? Supergroup. Audioslave, Velvet Revolver... all supergroups. All successful.

In addition to these details, which certainly can (and probably do) play a role in the release, Bob Dylan's most recent release did well when it was released last September, reaching #1 in Billboard's album chart and selling almost 200,000 copies the first week. The re-issue set also comes within a year of another Wilbury's most recent solo album – Tom Petty's Highway Companion which reached #4 and was produced by Jeff Lynne (another Wilbury). That album was released by Warner as well, so we should expect the label to bank with that connection.

Finally, and this is vitally important for Warner is the fact that the set holds material that far outpaces a lot of the music available in the market today (my opinion). The biggest problem will likely by the price, but if those are the prices for the physical formats and the digital formats are significantly less it could mark an important shift for Warner in the digital world. It's just the kind of change that Warner may need in the face of the current problems with AnywhereCD and the ongoing discussion about DRM. We can assume that fans of the group from the eighties will buy the album, but Warner has a lot of marketing to do to bring the release to the current listener. Making the connections to more recent "supergroups" or at least some of the recent chart toppers that perform similar music (rock – Modest Mouse topped the chart in March and the current line-up is close to a supergroup) will benefit the release and Warner greatly, then at least it won't be me buying two copies, one for me and my sister.

Tags: bob dylan, BobDylan, emi, george harrison, GeorgeHarrison, jeff lynne, JeffLynne, rhino records, RhinoRecords, roy orbison, RoyOrbison, the beatles, TheBeatles, tom petty, TomPetty, traveling wilburrys, TravelingWilburrys, warner music, WarnerMusic, wmg