Warner Music Australia & Inertia merge physical distribution

Warner Music Australia and local independent distributor and label services company Inertia Music have merged their physical distribution operations in Australia.

The new entity is called the Music Distribution Coalition (MDC), effective October 1, and will be responsible for all of Warner Music’s physical repertoire operations including production, warehousing, distribution, shipping, shared retail sales and customer service.

MDC will have reps from both companies, with dedicated sales managers to devise and implement sales and retail strategies with their label teams.

A combined sales and distribution division comes under Yvonne Cho, Inertia’s director of label services.

Niko Nordström, president of Warner Music Australia, said: “This new arrangement enables us to continue providing our dedicated service for physical retailers in a more efficient way, while our internal resources will be focused on creating even more innovative campaigns for our amazing artists.”

Colin Daniels, CEO of Inertia Music, added: “Working with Warner Music to establish MDC allows us to rapidly increase the service offering to match the needs of the evolving retail market.

“We remain committed to our existing physical business and together with Warner, are determined to ensure that we will always be there for our retail partners.”

Inertia Music was acquired by the UK’s [PIAS], in 2017, and now represents the artist and label roster of the [PIAS] Group in Australia.

That includes record labels such as ATO, Bella Union, Different Recordings, Heavenly Recordings, Mute, [PIAS] Recordings, Transgressive and more.

It provides sales and distribution services for Beggars Group, Elefant Traks, Flightless, Kobalt, Stop Start and others.

It provides additional marketing and PR services for labels such as Farmer & The Owl, Ninja Tune, Pieater, Secretly Group and Warp Records.