EMI To Sell Direct to Consumer - Will Consumer Care?
The Constable on October 8th, 2008
According to an article at The Financial Times today , EMI is going back into the direct to consumer market with its music downloads. As some of you may remember, they tried something similar in the past with Musicnet (which was a failure).
At this point not much is known about the new venture, other than that is planned to be live by Christmas. Of course, the big question on everyone’s mind is “why should I bother shopping there?” - and EMI has yet to answer this. In today’s marketplace, a site or store with the broadest selection is most likely to succeed, even in the face of competition including price (see online sheet music site Musicnotes’ 80% market share vs. that of their competitor, Sheet Music Direct for proof).
Of course, the experience is another key component - but even if EMI offers a great experience it is unlikely to triumph over the experience already available from iTunes and others. Exclusive content might help, but for the most part if the rest of the content isn’t there the destination is likely to become an “I am going there specifically for this” vs. “I am going there because I like shopping there” kind of option.
That is, unless EMI is using this as an option should they decide to stop licensing retailers like iTunes, or force them to change their pricing structure (using the “if you don’t like it, we’ll just sell it ourselves” threat).
Of course, a lot of my ideas are speculation - but they’re valid speculation at least…
