DISTRIBUTORS (and licensing partners)

(as of December 1997)

If you can't find our albums in a store near you, please contact our local distributor (or e-mail us at 73233.557@compuserve.com) or send us a fax at (-49-221)-9319507.

EUROPE:

Country	Company	City	E-mail or Fax
Austria	Edel Musik Vertrieb	Wien
BeNeLux	Challenge Records	Arnhem	+ 31 - 26 - 446 05 02
Espana	Distrimusic S.A.	Madrid	+ 34 - 1 - 677 26 18
France	TMS Distribution	Paris /Biesheim	+ 33 - 389 - 72 02 11
Germany	EFA Medien	Hamburg, Frankfurt, Berlin
Italia	IRD	Vimercate / Milano	+ 39 - 39 - 6 99 14 01
Norway	Musikkdistributsijon	Oslo	+ 47 - 22 - 71 09 60
Sweden	Border Music	Göteborg	+ 46 - 31 - 19 23 70
Switzerland	COD Tuxedo	Cham & Lausanne	+ 41 - 41 - 7 - 41 80 08
Tchechia	Cure Pink , P&J	Bratislava a.o.	+42 - 69 - 6 91 20 14
UK	Timewarp a.o.

Some albums (like Simon Phillips - Symbiosis and Another Lifetime , Adam Holzman - Manifesto, Metro - Tree People) are licensed to the JMS - label (distributed by Sony Music) in France. One artist - Ray Gaskins - is with Timewarp Distribution in the UK.

In the UK, most of our albums are currently available through the main retail stores.

JAPAN:

In Japan our partner is JVC Victor Entertainment - with some albums being imported through their Victor Music Trading Co., while others are manufactured under our license in Japan.

SOUTH-EAST ASIA

Our labels LIPSTICK and JAZZLINE are licensed to ROCK Records for these countries. The company headquarters is based in Taiwan, but as one of the biggest asian entertainment companies, it has local subsidiaries in most countries in the Pacific region. Especially in South-Korea and Taiwan, most of our albums should be available in good music stores.

USA:

Since the fall of 1997 we are again represented in the USA - through ALLEGRO Distribution, Portland, Oregon. As you may know, we were distributed through Alliance Entertainment (for a few years the biggest independend US-distribution company) before this - but Alliance went bancrupt in 1997.

Now we are releasing our albums as exports to the USA with Allegro - and in some cases our albums will be licensed to other US-companies. Several people have already approached us regarding some albums - and for Simon Phillips' album "Another Lifetime" there will be a US-release in Spring of 1999.

There are still big problems with the CD-market in the USA:

• most retailers only buy albums which they think will sell huge numbers per week in each store
• because of this, they do not even buy most albums that people might want to buy in their store
• people coming to the stores become frustrated, because they usually want to buy a specific album .. and often can't find it.
• this happens to potential customers a few times they get really frustrated and stop going to a music store
• then people start ordering online or per fax or mailorder
• the profit margins of CD retailers and distributors are much lower then in most countries , which most of them think can be compensated by higher numbers. Since this is not true anymore (people only buy a certain number of very good albums each year, no matter what the price is), they get into serious trouble.
• in turn, their problems create problems for record companies - and then for the musicians and composers too.

While everyone thinks that low prices are good, low prices can in some cases (as in music) lead to a greatly reduced choice of good products in an ecenomic field - and after a typical shake-out lead to much higher prices when things stabilize.
One of the most stupid and greedy assumptions is the idea of some retail chains that they can survive just on high volume with low margins of a few goods - in todays world with an educated consumer and very varied and individual taste this is a traders greedy dream - no knowledge or training necessary, low margin, but lots of turnover etc.. - but it is exactly this - a dream, which is not related to reality.

This is the current situation - but changes are possible. During the past few years we have made a few changes because some distributors in many countries developed financial difficulties or where not able to supply our records to enough of the important stores in their countries.

We also usually get rid of distributors which we catch repeatedly exporting to other countries in which we have a different partner. This is to protect our partners as well as to protect ourselves in some cases (when we only have regional marketing rights to an album, which sometimes, if rarely happens).