Resale price maintenance in the musical instruments industry: the CMA goes on a crusade

While at the Podcast show on 25 May 2022, I struck a conversation with Kevin Fairburn, senior account manager for the Japanese musical products brand Zoom at Sound Service MSL Distribution Ltd, who mentioned that online retailing of musical instruments (‟MI”) and products was more strictly regulated, in the United Kingdom (‟UK”), since its Competition and Markets Authority (‟CMA”) had handed down several decisions against top MI suppliers and retailers, such as Roland and Fender. Intrigued, I decided to dive in, and get to the bottom of these CMA cases which, according to Kevin, did a lot to make MI online retailing a better place for fairer competition. Here is what I found.