One Less Online Music Store To Deal With
from the let-others-cannibalize-our-business! dept
In early 2003 a group of the top brick-and-mortar music retail shops announced plans for a unified downloadable music store that got lots of attention. We were a bit skeptical, assuming (like most companies) they wouldn't really want to cannibalize their existing business models and would come up with something that was expensive and weak. They didn't even get that far. Without ever launching, they've pulled the plug on the program, claiming that there's just not enough business in online music sales for it to matter to them. While it's nice that there's not "yet another" online music store offering music that won't work with any music you buy from any other music download store, this is quite a statement on how these stores view downloadable music. Downloadable music is much more of a threat to the record stores' business models than the record labels, yet the stores have mostly decided to put their heads in the sand and assume it's not worth worrying about. Someone ought to send them a copy of The Innovator's Dilemma.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
