DMB Ends European BMG Relationship

By Waldo Jaquith
There are strong indications that Dave Matthews Band has severed ties with the European arm of BMG, RCA's parent company. The first sign was on July 30th, when the Dave Matthews Band page was removed from click2music.co.uk, BMG's UK website. After that, the release of "Where Are You Going" was cancelled. Then, the release of Busted Stuff was called off. Around the same time, DMB fans seeking to form a street team were stonewalled by the previously-excited promotional team at BMG. Finally, BMG representatives at both the UK and Italian offices have stated that the band has not renewed their contract with BMG Europe, and so they will no longer be handling any distribution or promotion for the band. Interestingly, BMG Italy representatives have indicated that an independent company will distribute Busted Stuff in Europe, though there's no more information available about that at this time. All of this stands in stark contrast to the stream of singles (there were seven of "The Space Between" alone) and promotional items released in support of Everyday in the UK just one year ago, although that yielded a paltry 40,000 sales. Band representatives did not respond to our query by press time, so we have no word on what this could mean for the future of Dave Matthews Band and their plans to expand beyond the U.S. market. Our thanks to Scott McBurney for all of his UK research, and Sergio Pastore and Luigi Lenzi from Italian website "DMB Con-Fusion" for their invaluable assistance.