iTunes At Your Local Record Store
With the success of the iTunes Music Store, traditional record stores are starting to get worried. There has been a decline in CD sales for a quite a few years now. With illegal music downloading sites starting with Napster and with Kazaa, record stores with their $17 cds just simply could not compete. The one saving grace that stores had, however, were the PC users and the music shoppers who had a conscience. This has all changed. iTunes is available to Windows users and AOL users. It is now legally possible to preview music and download it to your computer and legally burn more than 1 copy. And with websites cropping up offering scans of the cd booklets, you could pretty much duplicate the entire music shopping experience without leaving the comforts of your house.
I can’t say that I blame the record stores. They are being put out of business. I try to support local record stores as much as possible. These stores normally offer good deals for new CDs and great deals on used ones. And there are quite a few great albums that are out of print these days. Even the big chains like Virgin and Tower have a special place in my heart because they carry hard to find imports and bootlegs. All of these places serve a function. And the choice of where and how to buy is the greatest thing for the music lover.
In an effort to promote Apple and keep the traditional record stores alive I propose Apple throws these stores a piece of the pie. This can be achieved by offering stores an iTunes Music Store Kiosk. By setting up an iTunes Music Store kiosk at your local record store, you can get the best of both worlds. You can browse new and used CDs and at the same place download exclusive iTunes-only tracks from the same artist.
The benefit for Apple? Apple could lease out these kiosks to record stores for a monthly licensing fee. All transactions would in turn go through the iTunes Music Store sending the appropriate take in each $.99 sale to Apple and the record companies. This would also position Apple as THE provider of music content for music lovers. It would utilize existing technology and continue to build dependency to the store.
The benefit for the record stores? They could make money on marked up blank CDs and jewel cases. They could also choose to add a slight markup per download. All downloads should be over the minimum $.99 per song. Record stores could also opt to sell iPods and have customers download straight into their new iPods. Who knows, maybe stores might actually start selling iPods preloaded with complete discographies of artists. Say, the U2 iPod preloaded with all their albums. Most importantly, the record store will make themselves relevant again.
This idea does not have to be just for record stores either. How about positioning them at movie theaters: where someone can go see Lord of the Rings and then download the soundtrack while waiting for their date to get out of the bathroom. Or how about putting them at bookstores where you could download a few audiobooks before a long trip? And speaking of trips—how about putting them on airplanes, where passengers can download local tropical music on their way home from the Bahamas. The possibilities are endless.
This could be the start of the new way to buy and enjoy music—allowing the customer to once again feel the joy of browsing music in the stores, meeting fellow music lovers, and supporting the artists that they enjoy.
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Comments
Your ideas are well-put but ultimately hopeless for the record industry. Virgin and Tower have already branched out to sell a lot of materials other than music, and that diversity will keep them going. (I am unsure of where you have ever seen bootlegs at either store - such corporate stores would never carry a bootleg.) Your ideas for kiosks may play a part in these corporate stores. The problem is what happens to the local, independent store. Where will they find the capital to install kiosks and the like?
Finally, you article has not mentioned one advantage that CDs have over mp4 and mp3 files: sound quality. A 20 or 24-bit version of a song on CD simply blows away a flat sounding mp3 or mp4. And CD manufacturers are fighting back: the re-releases of some Bob Dylan titles, for instance, come on Super Audio CDs often with surround mixes, as well as much better packaging and printing than regular CDs. People are asking more for their money and getting it. There are also several good music titles available on DVD audio. These, plus the remasters of older albums from such bands as The Who and The Stones, as well as several jazz greats, indicate that only in the last few years have CDs begun to approach the former audio quality of good vinyl. Until small, downloadable song files can carry this kind of sonic fidelity - which right now they do not even come close to approaching - I’ll continue to put my money in CDs.
bah - sound quality. 80% of listeners out there don’t have a stereo system and speakers that can reveal the difference of cd vs. aac. Let alone even have them and the environment calibrated properly if they do. Even with quality headphones, ambient noise will destroy any quality perception.
The idea of getting an iPod with pre-installed discographies! sign me up man, that is a fantastic idea… so good you wonder why they haven’t offered it yet.
While 80% of listeners may not care that the sound is crappy. Most any reasonable stereo in a car or boom-box will reveal the difference between AAC and CD, it is a major difference. When my car is roaring down the road, it doesn’t matter to me that big chuncks of the mid and high range are missing. For this reason my simple motto is DON"T BUY DOWNLOADED MUSIC! You can buy it at a store for $1-$3 dollars more, you get MUCH better sound quality, no drm, and you can rip it to the format of the day, all teh while getting nice liner notes and artwork. The ONLY advantage I see to downloadable music is instant gratification and all the negatives make that gratification expensive. Apple doesn’t make any money off the iTunes store anyway so you’re not hurting apple buy buying real CDs and SACDs. One exception to my rule may be that it is ok to download music if it is the only way to support independent musicians.
Where are these sites with CD booklet scans??
Try http://www.mega-search.net/ or http://www.cdcovers.cc/
Let’s not forget the record stores’ other enemy; the mega-low mart around the corner. Best Buy, Wal-Mart, and Target are the largest distributors of pre-packaged music. Combine this with them offering a lot of their CDs for $9.99 or less, the record stores just can’t compete. I hate to say it, but the record store is a dying breed, and I personally don’t think diversity will solve their problem. Buying music in today’s time is a lot different than it was 10 years ago.
Mom & Pop record stores are like independant/used booksellers. Barnes & Noble ran our local ind. book store out of business, and stores like Best Buy and WalMart ran the local ind. record store out of business. In fact, the Apple reseller I work at is now in that space where the record shop used to be.
Everything is about big businesses nowadays. It’s sad and not at all comforting to think how it’s becoming harder and harder to run a business when everything is run by a few major corporations.
There will always be a market for physical media. However, it is true that the retail business is undergoing major changes. Most music retail outlets no longer are finding it profitable to sell CDs. Case in point - have you noticed how many retails places now cater in used or previously owned material? The economics are simple. Given that the record industry keeps costs high, a mom and pop store finds they can make triple the margin selling used CDs.
Consider that such a place will buy a used CD from you and me for $3 each. They then sell it back to the public at $6 to $9, which means they make an average of $3 to $6 in profit. There is no way a retail outlet can match that kind of margin selling new CDs, where CDs are either loss leaders (sold for a loss in the hope to bring customers into the store, on the hope they will then buy other more profitable items) or sold for a minimal profit (typically $1 or less).
So the local record store is changing, but more in the direction of the used market than a place for getting digital downloads.
For that, the best place will still your computer. The whole point of a digital download is that it’s convenient, and going out to a kiosk at your local record store to burn a CD when you can do that in the comfort of your own home even more cheaply just doesn’t make sense. It’s the reason why off-line kiosks have failed miserably to date.
After all, the Mac is being sold as the ultimate digital hub, which to me, also means the best music kiosk you can possibly get.
Actually, this is an interesting topic…
Amoeba Music in San Francisco (where I work) is going to add their own hand-made listening stations with full songs. Their LA store already has this, but I thought I’d be funny and say, “Why not just mount iPods to the wall with big over-the-head headphones?” Then I realized that my idea was probably really wise for one reason and one reason only: space efficiency. Costs aside, an iPod securely attached to a wall or shelf unit takes up so little space. The only downside is keeping them charged from 10:30 am to 10:00 pm!!!
I kinda like this topics much.
How about a day when we purchase the rights to listen/play music through a variety of devices that obtain the streaming of entitled music from a central server?
The central server shall catalogue a person’s entire collection and play as the person’s wish, anywhere, anytime. I believe there is right technologies to make it happy.
Let’s do it! All recording studios please.
I find myself iTunes artwork from amazon, walmart & buy.com
Best High Quality images i have found from [url=http://www.buy.com]http://www.buy.com[/url] (500 x 500 pixels). Sometimes other musicstore has better quality (walmart & amazon) pictures & buy.com has not so big music range/selection.
[url=http://www.walmart.com]http://www.walmart.com[/url] has same resolution (500x500 pixel) pictures but sometimes quality is not so good than in [url=http://www.buy.com]http://www.buy.com[/url] . In [url=http://www.amazon.com]http://www.amazon.com[/url] has also somtimes 500x500 pixel pictures but not so usually than walmart & buy.com
Make quick compare from these sample:
Christina Aguilera - Buy.com
http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/180/60330180.jpg
Christina Aguilera - Amazon.com
http://i.walmart.com/i/p/00/07/86/36/76/0007863676902_500X500.jpg
Bad Boy ll - Buy.com
http://ak.buy.com/db_assets/large_images/863/60605863.jpg
Bad Boy ll - Walmart.com
http://i.walmart.com/i/p/00/04/40/07/50/0004400750329_500X500.jpg
I have tested those automatic itunes import software and they always found pictures from amazon. Even Export Artwork software dont find pictures from buy.com even that have options to find pictures from buy.com .
PS. Original iTunes MusicStore ( iTMS ) real iTunes Artwork size/resolution is 600x600 pixel.