Big-Box Retailers: Why We Need iTunes and Other Online Stores

An article in the Wall Street Journal today drives home why record labels need to hop on the DRM - free digital music train to get their ware out there . Wal - Mart , Best Buy and their like are now responsible for at least 65 percentage of all medicine sales — including online stores — and they ’re bring down the amount of music they channel as CD sales agreement drop . Do we really want Wal - Martdictatingwhat music people listen to ?

On top of grant more and better ledge quad to grown - name releases like Justin Timberlake over say , Mike Patton ’s late piece of work , and skew sales that direction , Sam Walton ’s legacy matted - out refuses to sell certain titles . And matching the 20 percent plunge in CD sales this year , it ’s plan to shrink store genuine estate dedicate to medicine by an equal amount . Best Buy ’s also cutting down on the amount of space it dedicate candle , so await the number of titles they carry—8,000 to 20,000 , versus defunct Tower Records ’ up to 100,000 — to be cut back as well .

Result ? Big name , mainstream sludge will be pushed even harder by nonpayment . As space psychiatrist , so does choice .

Last Of Us 7 Ellie Crash

Online stores have straight-out shelf infinite . They stock an unlimited measure of million of titles . While they ’re no backup for dropping by your local record store , increasingly they ’re front like the most executable style to keep choice alive in the music industry . Even just the iTunes home page has way more variety than the weekly promo display at Target .

All of this adds up to yet another reasonableness why the Big Four andother labelsneed to drop DRM to goad music gross sales online — it ’s for their own good , really . If they ’re still concerned in keeping the industry live , at any rate .

Can Music come through Inside the Big Box?[Wall Street Journal viaConsumerist ]

Mission Impossible 8 Underwater