Today, I tried to purchase three CDs - Mandisa’s new Christmas Joy EP and two autographed CDs, Matthew West’s 2005 opus Happy and Avalon’s upcoming Another Time, Another Place: Timeless Christian Classics - off MusiChristian.com, one of my favorite online retailers for Christian CDs. The collective total, when one factors in the shipping costs, is somewhere near US$30, a price I was more than willing to pay for two autographed CDs and Mandisa’s new album.

After I filled out the shipping address information, to my consternation, a pop-up box told me that EMI will not allow the shipping of its items to a non-US address. It told me to remove the EMI CDs from my shopping cart. So I reviewed my shopping cart and found out all three CDs are distributed by Chordant/EMI. In other words, I could not buy any of the Christian CDs I wanted!

Far be it from me to rant against corporate America, but this isn’t fair. I can’t imagine American CCM piracy escalating to such a level that merits such harsh penalties on non-American Christian music lovers. Even if it has, why punish the majority for the sins of a few?

I have purchased several EMI-distributed CDs in the past, including both my autographed copies of Avalon’s Stand and The Creed (my only non-autographed Avalon CD since Michael Passon’s departure is Faith), Mandisa’s True Beauty, and Britt Nicole’s Say It. Most of these were purchased off MusiChristian.com.

I imagine I could buy off Amazon.com, but I prefer to support Christian online retailers (especially since MusiChristian.com gives me a premium with its autographed collections), plus, as in the case of Mandisa’s Christmas Joy EP, the price differential between Amazon.com and MusiChristian.com is a whopping US$3 in favor of the latter. Why pay an extra US$3 to Amazon when I can get the best price at MusiChristian.com and support a Christian retailer?

The last thing I want to do is slam corporate Christian America, but it is plain wrong to alienate someone based outside of the United States who is willing to pay full price for your CD and not download it for free off the Internet. Yes, there will be those who will cheat you, but there are those who will not. It’s not right to leave foreign fans out in the cold, it’s not, it’s not, it’s not.

Update: I received an email from MusiChristian.com. The email said:

Unfortunately for us, EMI Distribution does not allow us to ship their products outside of the USA. Any items that state “Distributed by: Chordant (EMI)” under its Product Details section we cannot ship outside the USA. However, we can ship all other items outside of the US.

Please let us know if we can further assist you in any way.
Thank you for your support and have a great day!

No, you cannot assist me further because apparently, everything I want is distributed by EMI Chordant. Something to Say is now available for purchase - with Matthew’s autograph! - and I can’t order it! GAH!

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