WOW HD

WOW HD is an online store owned and operated by Élan Media Partners. They have offices in Sydney, Melbourne and Hong Kong and operate in 15 countries, hosting its servers in Australia and Jersey in the Channel Islands. They have 70 staff worldwide.[1]

WOW HD
TypePrivate
IndustryRetail
Record store
Ecommerce
Founded2000, London, England
HeadquartersWorldwide
ProductsRecorded music, videos, DVDs, books, computer games, beauty
ParentDirectToU, LLC
Websitehttp://www.wowhd.co.uk/

As a pure-pay online only store, WOW HD offers three ways to pay: through its own checkout using a credit or debit card, through PayPal, or through Google Checkout, so no sign-in is needed to make a purchase.[2]

An affiliate company of WOW HD, Access Digital Entertainment, will become the first online retailer to offer UltraViolet-enabled digital content in the UK when it launches WowHD.tv, partner site of WowHD.co.uk. The new platform will offer download-to-own and video-on-demand content compatible with Ultraviolet (UV), marking the first time UV copies of movies and TV shows will be made available for purchase as a standalone offering - rather than sold as part of a bundle with physical discs - in the UK.[3][4]

History

Under its previous name, CD WOW! launched in the UK in 2000 under MTOL HK Ltd. CD WOW! offered CDs at lower prices than its competition.

The retailer began operating in the UK in 2000, offering CDs and DVDs at lower prices than the high street. In 2004 the company was taken to court by the British Phonographic Industry, the recording industry association for the UK, for selling CDs at prices that often undercut UK retail prices by 25% as although the CDs in question were legal, many of them were licensed for sale and distribution in other markets and thus priced accordingly for those markets.

The BPI, acting on behalf of its members, saw the lower priced albums as damaging to the UK and European markets and took the company's former owners Music Trading On-Line (HK) Ltd to High Court citing UK's Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988. This resulted in CD WOW! being ordered not to sell titles that were not licensed for sale in Europe, and claiming it had to increase the price of all CDs,[5]

On 29 May 2007, the former owners of CD WOW! were ordered by the High Court to pay £41 million in damages to the BPI for breaching a 2004 agreement over the sale of imported CDs.[6] On 1 September 2007, CD WOW! was bought by Stomp Pty. Ltd.[7] In May 2008, CD WOW! launched a new site design in the UK, Ireland and the US, and changed its domain name from 'cd-wow.com' to 'cdwow.com'.

As of September 2008 CD Wow has launched the new front end into all the domains including a new domain in the Netherlands and is offering cosmetics and perfumes on all the sites via its Wowwoman.com domain.

In September 2010, Stomp AU and Stomp HK sold the assets of the business including CD WOW to a new Australian company, Élan Media Partners. Élan Media Partners Pty Ltd owns and operates online retail sites cdwow.com, chaos.com and play4me.com.au.[8]

On 20 February 2012, CD WOW! changed its name to WOW HD![9]

On Facebook WOW HD posted a message on 23 September 2015 being "Under new management" since 1 August that year. A lot of their customers were complaining on their Facebook page that they had not received orders from prior to August 1, nor refunds. This gives the impression WOW HD went bankrupt and now is under full new management. WOW HD replied to customers that as they were under new management, they had no control on any orders prior to 1 August 2015 so they could not fulfil orders pending from the previous ownership. WOW HD changed their site, forcing members to change their password to reflect the new site, and have since introduced a Wish List function.

Since mid-2015, WOW HD has been owned by DirectToU, LLC, who also operate sites such as deepdiscount.com and Amazon Marketplace/eBay seller All Your Music.[10]

References
  1. "Virtual servers bring real peace of mind for Élan Media Partners". Pa.com.au.
  2. Osbourne, Hilary (25 May 2012). "Store Wars: Play.com and WOW HD". London: Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 25 May 2012.
  3. Nash, Thomas. "Australian retailer launches first UV-compatible digital movies in UK". Screen Digest. Retrieved 6 June 2013.
  4. "WOWHD.TV WITH ULTRAVIOLET TO LAUNCH IN UK". 17 May 2013. Cue Magazine.
  5. "CD settlement forces prices up". News.bbc.co.uk. 21 January 2004. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  6. "BBC - 6 Music - CD Wow to pay out". Bbc.co.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  8. "NEW NAME, NEW BUSINESS OPPORTUNITIES AS STOMP BECOMES ÉLAN MEDIA PARTNERS" (PDF). Elanmediapartners.com. Retrieved 6 October 2010.
  9. "All Access - Library AV Materials & Services". All-access.com.au. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
  10. "WOW HD - New Release Cheap CDs, Discount DVDs, Blu-ray, Bargain Games". Wowhd.co.uk. Retrieved 3 September 2020.
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