Ministry Of Sound Goes Head Hunting
Ministry of Sound has fired off its third, public letter to IMPALA in less than a week demanding the immediate resignation of the the U.K. independent music industry trade association’s executives responsible for the pact with the Warner Music Group. It’s just getting uglier!
Impala, the pan-European independent labels trade body, recently forged a contentious and confidential agreement with WMG, through which the Brussels-based body vowed to not oppose the music major’s approach for EMI Group. Ministry Of Sound, and later Gut, resigned their respective memberships of AIM. London-based AIM is a member of Impala.
Ministry Of Sound’s latest letter arrived ahead of AIM’s anticipated formal announcement on last night’s executive board meeting, at which attendees failed to ratify the Impala-WMG deal. An “emergency” AIM board meeting last week also failed to reach a conclusion.
“As far as we have learned,” says Ministry Of Sound in its letter labeled AIM In Crisis, “the AIM board was unable to ratify the Impala/WMG agreement at its meeting yesterday due to the totally unreasonably restrictive gagging order placed upon it by Impala.”
Impala has placed the AIM board and the independent community “in a completely untenable position,” Ministry Of Sound says in today’s statement. It adds, “Impala has reached an agreement, which AIM has had no involvement in negotiating and Impala refuses to allow the AIM members to see the terms that Impala has agreed.”
Ministry Of Sound Music Group managing director Lohan Presencer had attended the early part of the Feb. 28 “emergency” meeting, but took no further part in proceedings when he refused to sign a non-disclosure agreement.
Ministry Of Sound admits that it had received a private, six-page response from AIM, but declares that “urgent questions surrounding conflicts of interest as raised by MoS remain unanswered.”
The Future: You have to love Ministry Of Sound for not taking IMPALA’s dishonorable behavior sitting down. The large independent dance label will continue to press its opposition until something ultimately breaks…
