Best Buy gets an exclusive with Elton John

Best Buy has scored an exclusive deal for a DVD boxed set by Elton John. The Minneapolis-based retailer will exclusively sell Dream Ticket--Four Destinations: Four DVDs starting the second week in November and at least through the 2004 holiday season. Last year Best Buy had similar exclusive DVD deals with the Rolling Stones and John Mellencamp. Officials for Best Buy, which will release the John box in its stores and on the company's Web site, would not reveal pricing for the release. Dream Ticket will consist mostly of concert footage, some of it previously unreleased, with more than 70 songs adding up to about 10 hours of material. The package will also include photos and interviews. Billboard reports that one disc will be of a concert in London with the London Symphony Orchestra; one will be from New York; one from Ephesus, Turkey; and one will be an overview-retrospective of John as a performer. The cover of the set will feature an airplane, to "signify the journey Elton and his fans have taken over time," says Best Buy senior vice president of entertainment Gary Arnold. Best Buy's exclusive deal to sell the Rolling Stones' Four Flicks DVD set was also timed for the busy fourth-quarter holiday season. Even with the exclusive deal limiting its availability at retail, Four Flicks has become one of the top-selling music video boxed sets of all time. According to Nielsen SoundScan, it has sold 296,000 units, outselling the Beatles' Anthology DVD boxed set (219,000). However, the Stones experienced a backlash for their exclusive Best Buy deal, as some competing retailers subsequently pulled the band's product from their shelves in protest for being excluded from selling the boxed set. Arnold told Billboard, "We only focus on one thing: what the consumers want. And what we've learned is that consumers want important artists at attractive prices. The artists have also been very receptive to what we have to offer." John's next studio album, Peachtree Road, is due later this year on Universal Records.