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Download In The Store
from the this-is-progress? dept
Jeremiah writes "On the heels of iTunes announcement that it has sold 800,000 tracks in its first week of operation in Europe, BestBuy announces it will partner with Napster and promote it as its "leading digital music service." It's my personal belief this signals the beginning-of-the-end of the "shiny, plastic-disc" era of digital music... but I digress. The "scoop", however, is not the above stories (which you can read anywhere); they're just for context. Word on the street is a major bookseller (B&N or Borders) is planning to install WiFi in its stores *AND* provide access to libraries of digital music for download onto your device of choice. One marketing idea is to sell mp3 players in-store with a $10 gift-cert for digital downloads, or players with audio-books preloaded. To access their in-store WiFi, customers will lease a wireless NIC on an hourly basis, that's been "keyed" to only work on their network (removing the motivation to steal the nics). The hourly cost is "...somewhere around what you'd pay for a large coffee." Word is a beta will be in some west-coast stores around August-Sept." There have been similar rumors of services at certain music stores in the past, but it sounds like such talk is heating up. Of course, this does make you wonder what the purpose of the "store" is? If you can download from anywhere, why would you need to go to a store to download?
Reader Comments
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No Subject Given
Go to the store for the Latte, stay for the music ? Nah.
iTunes still has the best formula. Waiting for Mr. Softies foray into the digital music world. While Bill and company have never done anything original, they are pretty good at co-opting other peoples idea's and adding those 'little extras' that others can't mimic because they don't own the underlying OS or have access to the APIs.
What monoply ?
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What about built in wireless cards ?
Just a thought:
I have a built in Wireless G card for my laptop
How would this work for those of us that wouldn't need a card that plugs into your laptop ?
Any advise or thoughts on this would be appreciated !
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Re: No Subject Given
I think they're betting on the social nature of their stores to bring people in. Yes, you can download from anywhere, but isn't it a lot more fun with four of your friends??
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Discs
All of the "Sony discs" in record stores should be 24-bit SACDs. I see no reason for 16-bit audio disc production to continue. If it's gotta be 16-bit, then I would prefer a digital file that I can listen to on a variety of devices.
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