Originally Posted by Ronnie
As an example... try and fit your above theory to the the facts below

Dusty Springfield is a British artist... who has sold a lot of albums in the UK and around the world

Thus an MQA version of her best ever selling album is bound to do well in the UK... and be worth it to the Label to pay "MQA licensing cost" that may be required to release or stream that album in the UK

Rhino / Warner are a US label and control the rights to "Dusty in Memphis" in the UK, Europe and the US

Wilson Pickett is a US artist... who hasn't sold as well as Dusty in the UK

Again, Rhino / Warner control the licensing and availability of Wilson's catalog in the UK, Europe and the US

So apply your MQA Licensing Cost theory to the above... and obviously Rhino will make Dusty available in the UK [where it will do well]... while making Wilson available in the US

So what did they ACTUALLY do??

Dusty in Memphis in MQA is a US ONLY album... not available in the UK... while 12 of Wilson's albums are available to stream in the UK

And there are literally hundreds to thousands of such decsions that can be detailed and debated... and in the end, make zero sense to anybody who isn't privy to the insider detais of label licensing and how it works
Yes, that was my original point - it makes zero sense.

And yes, of course my per-region licensing theory was speculation, can't see how the way I wrote it could be interpreted as me presenting a fact (the e.g., is a clue!).

What makes you certain MQA being regionally licensed is incorrect, though, out of interest? Just the general randomness of how these decisions seem to be made, as you outlined above?

Even if that's the case, I'm afraid it still doesn't make it any less of a pet hate of mine! I think there maybe was a time when it almost made sense, but now, living in a world where we purchase online from all over the world, and especially on a service like Tidal which is all the same streaming platform, it doesn't. Don't get me wrong, I completely understand why you might release an album, or song, in one market or not. That's a separate issue - rights to be sorted for different regions, etc. What I don't get is when you ARE releasing the same material, why you'd care about a format difference on the same streaming platform, when MQA doesn't even require you to have two different versions on your servers?

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