Hal Leonard's business tactics

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I received this email from Mark Sternal, a small-time music guide publisher who has written a grand total of 7 How-To guides, mostly related to guitar-playing. Apparently, Hal Leonard, the biggest print music publishing company in the world, feels threatened by Mark. Read on...

""Hello Friends, Family and Associates,

Our company is under attack by an industry bully. Attached is a press release with all the details. It doesn't make much sense, but none the less, these are the facts. If you know any media contacts, please feel free to forward this to any newspaper, magazine, TV(Oprah) or radio(Howard Stern).

Sincerely,

Mark Sternal

MJS Music Publications, www.MJSPublications.com 352-563-1779

_______________________________________________________________________________________________

Music Industry Giant Attacks Small Florida Business


11/18/2005 - Crystal River, FL. MJS Music Publications produces 7 music instruction titles, mainly for guitar enthusiasts. Although their titles have received rave reviews, the company is still young, and often struggles to keep the lights on. Their main source of income has been E-Bay sales, where the company has a stellar 11,000+ customer feedback rating. That source of income has come to a complete and unexpected halt.

The Hal Leonard Corporation is the world's largest music print publisher. It is reported that they currently publish over 95,000 titles. On 11/08, David Hall, a sales manager from Hal Leonard contacted E-Bay and under penalty of perjury signed a claim that Hal Leonard owns the rights to all 7 titles produced by MJS Music Publications. E-Bay in turn cancelled 76 listings from MJS Music Publications and advised the company to handle the claim directly with Hal Leonard. Mark Sternal, (owner of MJS Music), immediately contacted David Hall of Hal Leonard who stated the report was made not because Hal Leonard is claiming to own the rights to said titles, but because the MJS Music Publications website, (www.MJSPublications.com), had a link to another website which offered free guitar lessons with examples of popular songs that Hal Leonard believes are in copyright infringement. MJS Music Publications immediately removed the link. According to David Hall, this satisfied Hal Leonard and the verified rights ownership claim was dropped, however on Thursday, 11/17 Hal Leonard reinstated the claim and e-Bay not only ended all listings, but also suspended MJS Music Publications from selling on the website.

On Friday, Mr. Sternal went on record stating, "This is a crippling blow to our company. I don’t understand how a business like e-Bay can blindly end all of our listings without even investigating the claim. I don’t understand how the Hal Leonard Corporation can get away with telling e-Bay they own the rights to my books, and then tell me that it’s all about a link from our website!"

As of Friday 11/18 E-Bay has not returned any calls or e-mails regarding the claim. MJS Music Publications is seeking legal advice. The company website, www.MJSPublications.com, is still operational.

For Immediate Release

November 2005

Website: www.mjspblications.com
Contacts:

Mark Sternal (352) 563-1779

Isandra Gonzalez (786) 263-3925"


This is unbelievable. (Well, not really... with the advent of internet marketing, big businesses are now running scared of even one-man operations, resorting to all manner of low behavior to try and run them out of business. And Ebay seems to have forgotten they were once a small company relying on the internet. Now whenever there's a dispute, they seem to always take the side of the big company. Absolutely shameful!)

Hal Leonard will never see another dime from me. Friggin bullies! :x


JD
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but see they can do this, as I tried to explain to a developer here, it doesn't matter who's right Hal Leonard (whom which in retail I place orders with daily) has the legal staff to squash the little companies with legal red tape...though I agree with your morality in boycotting Hal Leonard the bottom line is if we boycotted every company that did this we wouldn't have anything....it's sad, it'sucks, but it's reality...Fender has done it, hanna baberra (sp) did it with an amp called Bedrock in the 80's (later changed their name to Fred's but they still buried them) that were made right here in Lowell Mass where I live.

Fender is so bad that one store/chain I worked at (Daddy's Junky Music) specialized in used gear got crap. If we had a Fender we could list it as a strat, but we couldn't call any other srtat type guitar a strat or even strat type...we had to list it as S-type...Daddy's has a lot of stores in New England and New York, so we had a monthly news letter that listed all the used gear in all the store (12 or 15 stores at the time). It really sucked... :?
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.
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Reminds me of when Monster Cable went and sued all those other companies that had "monster" in their title... :P

I never bought Hal Leonard stuff anyways. Their fake books are kinda weird and have mistakes. :P
Greg Schlaepfer
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Gregjazz wrote:Reminds me of when Monster Cable went and sued all those other companies that had "monster" in their title... :P

I never bought Hal Leonard stuff anyways. Their fake books are kinda weird and have mistakes. :P
yeah but the monster cable thing was bogus and made up by a snowboarding guy as a first strike...if you look deep enough you will find that the reports of suits were not true. Monster cable only asked for time to investigate for infringement and the only actual suit I could find was settled out of court with disney over monster inc....which is monster cable...the reports of monster suing the red sox for the monster seats was disscussed by the red sox owners this year, and said to be false...reports said that the sox settled with them by donating two monster seats to charity (seats on top of the wall they have called the green monster since 1912, of course the seats were added a couple years ago) but according to the red sox report monster bought the seats and donated them under the perview of the red sox/jimmy fund.

FWIW the guy from the monster snowboard video recanted and admitted his law suit was a publicity stunt...;)
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.
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Gregjazz wrote:Reminds me of when Monster Cable went and sued all those other companies that had "monster" in their title... :P

:P
I was thinking the same thing, but thought better of bringing it up here, since it was me and Hink who went a few rounds :box: on that before deciding to agree to disagree.

I don't believe one just has to give in because the other guy is bigger. Sony (another monster) is going through a public relations nightmare now and are calling back their CDs because of the bad press related to their copy protection. Lesson to be learned.

People have also complained on forums like these, and sometimes it has made a difference for the better.

You gotta do what you feel is right. At least, that's what I believe.

Edit: See, you got Hink worked up again! :lol:


JD
Last edited by flugel45 on Sat Nov 19, 2005 8:28 am, edited 1 time in total.
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good timing eh? :hihi:
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.
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btw I'm not worked up...I'm still using monster cables, but haven't bought any new ones in close to 5 years...they replaced one though...;)
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.
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Hink wrote:btw I'm not worked up...I'm still using monster cables, but haven't bought any new ones in close to 5 years...they replaced one though...;)
Hink, I'm just messin' with ya. :wink:

If I recall, you live in the Northeast U.S. (I'm in Los Angeles). You're up kinda late. You working the graveyard shift?

JD
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nah...havin a mellow night listening to music...I'm always up late...:shrug:
The highest form of knowledge is empathy, for it requires us to suspend our egos and live in another's world. It requires profound, purpose‐larger‐than‐the‐self kind of understanding.
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