Record Stores Pitch Digital Downloads

from the it's-about-time dept

Knowing a few people who have worked with some big record stores on similar deals, I've heard that they were all itching to offer something like this, but the details never seemed to fall in place. Now, however, Best Buy, Tower Records, Virgin Records, Wherehouse and some other record stores are teaming up to offer a digital music download system called Echo. Of course, Wherehouse just announced that they were filing for bankruptcy and blamed music downloaders in the process. Reading the details of Echo, though, it sounds like they don't have much of a plan yet, other than "figure out something that keeps us in the game". My guess is that they'll make the same mistakes over again that all the other "legitimate" music services have made, because they're coming at it from a biased standpoint. They'll want to protect their old business model, and, in doing so, won't be willing to fully embrace the technology in a way that will open up the real opportunities to them.

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