news.yahoo.com— The Internet seems to be the prime suspect in the demise of the pioneering music retailer, which filed for bankruptcy earlier this month for the second time in two years for its US stores...
Aug 28, 2006View in Crawl 4
"I'm curious what medium they should have evolved into that would allow them to avoid losing sales to people stealing music instead of buying it."There are many ways to make money. Here's a short list:Reasonable prices (see amazon), social networking (linking up friends and artists, showing what your friends are currently listening to, etc.), album previews (again, check amazon), sell merchandise, sell/advertise concert tickets, targeted advertising, etc.
Ahhh, so sweet to hear! Who killed c**k robin? Simple really watson: new media. MP3s and IPODs give 50 or 100 or 1000 tunes instead of the handful supplied by old media. No contest.What's killing the movie theater, the magazine rack, the newspaper, and the book store? Heh-he! New media. It's a lot more effective to distribute digital data than plastic. (a lot greener too)What do you think is going to happen when state-wide wifi -- or wi(x) -- is common most anywhere you'd care to go? No more dvds, thumbdrives, or card readers either. " e-bolv or die, eh. Asta la bista bebe ... so long -n- tanks por all da pish! "It's a lovely trend. I hope to see entertainers "passing the hat" for coins again -- digitally -- after a performance. Amazing how much coinage you could rake in on a world wide webcast ... if people had something like a paypal account provided with -- but isolated from -- their main checking account. You'd think bankers would be smarter and make it so?! Perhaps that's what Google needs to do ... acquire a trans-national bank and offer dual purpose accounts (g-bucks and checking). ps. Why perform in a local theater if there's a chance to be paid directly along with the rest of your drama team via a webcast. I keep waiting to see fan commented extreme sports web casts on u-toob. And fan produced fan-fic might eclipse hollywood much the same way that blogs are squeezing print sources. If it's done well, and the troup or band has a reputation for quality, then folks might even pay for a ticket-code before the webcast. No tangible entertainment is immune to digital distribution. How to get the ticket? Have it sent to your dual-account of course (aka g-bucks+checking). That ticket code (access code) would be traceable and much more likely used by just one household web connection. You'd think at least Western Union would have it figured out by now! They're the ones that like to provide intangible "bank accounts." How much harder would it be to tie one to pay-pal? Mebe "virhen mobil" could do a pay-go pay-pal instead? Ah well, like da prophet said. " da times de -r- a changin' " ¡ pure coinage !
@CorpT; in the short term, at the individual employee scale, you're correct. Sucks for those people. But you always have to look at the bigger picture.It's the flip-side of when a new supermarket opens, and there's all this stuff about "creating jobs in the area". Yadda yadda.... except it's not like manufacturing, it's *retail*, where the market is always going to be the surrounding area. It's far closer to a zero-sum game than other industries; any sustainable "new jobs" are likely to be offset by redundancies in smaller retailers in the locality.It could be argued that online retail breaks this zero-sum game, but only at a local level. And let's be honest; no-one should be morally blackmailed into supporting a large, soulless and (most of all) grossly overpriced chain just because of the employees.
The Internet did not kill Tower Records. 18.99 CD prices, dingy stores, poor customer service, and an inability to preview music killed Tower Records. And it isn't really dead, at least not in the US. We as tax payers get to help pay the debt of the fallen retail giant now that they filed chapter 11 (again).
No, I was talking about £25 for import CDs. You're right it's not a typical price for non-imports. But don't get me started on import prices. There is _no_ justification for those prices.As for CDs being a "ghost of an experience", I think I'll stand by that. If a band is good, their live shows will always be better than their recordings, even if there's a lot missing on account of not being able to reproduce certain things live. A good example of this is the band Polysics. Their music is such that a good part of it can not be reproduced live, but their gigs are in my opinion, the best I've been to.
gd007Aug 29, 2006
Who killed Tower Records? - The Management
elusiveAug 29, 2006
"I'm curious what medium they should have evolved into that would allow them to avoid losing sales to people stealing music instead of buying it."There are many ways to make money. Here's a short list:Reasonable prices (see amazon), social networking (linking up friends and artists, showing what your friends are currently listening to, etc.), album previews (again, check amazon), sell merchandise, sell/advertise concert tickets, targeted advertising, etc.
hiscityAug 29, 2006
Ahhh, so sweet to hear! Who killed c**k robin? Simple really watson: new media. MP3s and IPODs give 50 or 100 or 1000 tunes instead of the handful supplied by old media. No contest.What's killing the movie theater, the magazine rack, the newspaper, and the book store? Heh-he! New media. It's a lot more effective to distribute digital data than plastic. (a lot greener too)What do you think is going to happen when state-wide wifi -- or wi(x) -- is common most anywhere you'd care to go? No more dvds, thumbdrives, or card readers either. " e-bolv or die, eh. Asta la bista bebe ... so long -n- tanks por all da pish! "It's a lovely trend. I hope to see entertainers "passing the hat" for coins again -- digitally -- after a performance. Amazing how much coinage you could rake in on a world wide webcast ... if people had something like a paypal account provided with -- but isolated from -- their main checking account. You'd think bankers would be smarter and make it so?! Perhaps that's what Google needs to do ... acquire a trans-national bank and offer dual purpose accounts (g-bucks and checking). ps. Why perform in a local theater if there's a chance to be paid directly along with the rest of your drama team via a webcast. I keep waiting to see fan commented extreme sports web casts on u-toob. And fan produced fan-fic might eclipse hollywood much the same way that blogs are squeezing print sources. If it's done well, and the troup or band has a reputation for quality, then folks might even pay for a ticket-code before the webcast. No tangible entertainment is immune to digital distribution. How to get the ticket? Have it sent to your dual-account of course (aka g-bucks+checking). That ticket code (access code) would be traceable and much more likely used by just one household web connection. You'd think at least Western Union would have it figured out by now! They're the ones that like to provide intangible "bank accounts." How much harder would it be to tie one to pay-pal? Mebe "virhen mobil" could do a pay-go pay-pal instead? Ah well, like da prophet said. " da times de -r- a changin' " ¡ pure coinage !
Closed AccountAug 29, 2006
Im giving you a digg just for the fact that you used the Mars Volta as an example. Great band.
nogoodnamesleftAug 29, 2006
@CorpT; in the short term, at the individual employee scale, you're correct. Sucks for those people. But you always have to look at the bigger picture.It's the flip-side of when a new supermarket opens, and there's all this stuff about "creating jobs in the area". Yadda yadda.... except it's not like manufacturing, it's *retail*, where the market is always going to be the surrounding area. It's far closer to a zero-sum game than other industries; any sustainable "new jobs" are likely to be offset by redundancies in smaller retailers in the locality.It could be argued that online retail breaks this zero-sum game, but only at a local level. And let's be honest; no-one should be morally blackmailed into supporting a large, soulless and (most of all) grossly overpriced chain just because of the employees.
nrightonAug 29, 2006
The Internet did not kill Tower Records. 18.99 CD prices, dingy stores, poor customer service, and an inability to preview music killed Tower Records. And it isn't really dead, at least not in the US. We as tax payers get to help pay the debt of the fallen retail giant now that they filed chapter 11 (again).
afrazkhanAug 31, 2006
No, I was talking about £25 for import CDs. You're right it's not a typical price for non-imports. But don't get me started on import prices. There is _no_ justification for those prices.As for CDs being a "ghost of an experience", I think I'll stand by that. If a band is good, their live shows will always be better than their recordings, even if there's a lot missing on account of not being able to reproduce certain things live. A good example of this is the band Polysics. Their music is such that a good part of it can not be reproduced live, but their gigs are in my opinion, the best I've been to.