macnn/electronista
10/08/2008, 2:05pm, EDT
Wednesday, October 8thEMI to launch own-label online music store
EMI is planning to launch an online music store of its own rather than just depend on outside stores, a claim from the Financial Times says [registration required]. The record label began developing the store earlier this year and will let users buy music and videos directly from EMI's site. Formats, pricing and a launch date are still unknown, though at least a small amount of content will be free. EMI was also one of the first major labels to accept unprotected formats.
There are no immediate plans to sign extra labels to the project, though EMI is said to consider the store a "learning lab" for audiences rather than a central destination for music sales.
EMI's experiment is the latest in a series of attempts by major labels to partly bypass some levels of traditional stores. While Sony has long since discarded its earlier PressPlay service, Universal recently set out plans to offer its own videos. Critics have charged that most services aren't successful as customers tend to gravitate towards multi-label outlets and don't often associate individual acts with their labels.
Filed under: industry, audio
Other story tags: sony, Universal, EMI
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idiots
when will they learn...
Learn what??
Learn what, exactly?? That iTMS should be the only music outlet allowed?
If all you're selling is MP3 files, why not cut out the middle man (Amazon, Apple) and make a few pennies more selling direct? That's surely what the web should be doing.
The logical thing would be click-to-buy right on the artists home-page. Except so many artists homepages are now on mySpace, making advertising money for News International.
Learn
That they have no chance of making any money at it. People are not going to go browse 5 different labels sites, subject themselves to 5 different sets of rules and DRMs or will they trust any new service with all the failed ones who turned off there DRM servers.
Its iTunes (legal) and bittorrents (illegal) world. .
EMI
EMI was not just one of the first, it was THE first major label to allow non-DRM music sales, and is still the only one to sell non-DRM music through iTunes.