I had the opportunity to interview Stephen from Amplifier, who were selling classic Flying Nun records online – classic and archetypal albums – but had their catalogue pulled, much to the dismay of some NZ music fans, for whom the ongoing availability of FN records is part of the culture of NZ music.

1) A lot of people seemed alarmed when some Flying Nun catalogue disappeared from your site. What happened?

Warner Music (WM) has taken the decision to not repress the Flying Nun catalogue on CD. As they run out of stock of a given title then that title will cease to exist physically. We were given a list of FN titles and their current stock levels. Several were already out of print and a dozen had such small stock levels that we couldn’t be guaranteed supply. To the dismay of the office we were left with no option but to remove those titles from sale. Many more will also be removed over the coming weeks/months as stock levels fall.

WM are making these titles available digitally through iTunes, however we have no digital agreement in place with WM so we’re left with no way to retail Flying Nun.

The explanation that we were given by WM was that the titles were commercially unviable and that a re-run of 500 CDs would take years to sell. From a business perspective I can’t fault this however when you’re dealing with art, and music is art, I feel there should be some level of custodianship taken into account. Also I know that for the majority of NZ CDs are still the primary media for accessing purchased music.