A recent survey of dedicated music demographics indicates access to music from services like Spotify, YouTube, Grooveshark and others significantly decreases the interest in purchasing across all groups except the least dedicated.
“Services like Spotify increase access, but also decrease spending in many situations. Which means less money from higher-returning formats like iTunes downloads, CDs, and LPs,” according to Digital Music News. “But free access also includes a range of other services, including YouTube, Grooveshark, and various freebie competitors. And all of these are sapping the juice out of higher-end impulse buying, once a music industry lifeblood.”
The recently released findings from NPD Group and NARM have already had an impact. “Following a study that claims that streaming music is damaging to record sales, a distributor representing more than 200 labels has withdrawn its entire catalogue from Spotify, Napster, Simfy and Rdio,” reports Huffington Post.
“As a distributor we have to do what is best for our labels,” STHoldings explained in a statement. “The majority of which do not want their music on such services because of the poor revenues and the detrimental affect on sales. Add to that the feeling that their music loses its specialness by its exploitation as a low value/free commodity.”
In a related All Things D story, Spotify announced it has new things on the horizon, but has yet to provide details. “In New York on November 30th, we are holding our first press conference to unveil the latest major development from Spotify — and a new direction for the company. The press event will be hosted by CEO and Founder Daniel Ek, along with special guests,” wrote the company’s PR unit.
All Things D speculates Spotify may be releasing a U.S. service to buy songs (already available in Europe) or an iPad app, but “it is courting the risk of overpromising” if these are the only developments to be announced.
New iPad apps are rolling out this holiday season to entice the eight percent of online shoppers that own tablets.
That percentage may seem small, but Forrester Research found that 60 percent of tablet owners use their devices to shop and many prefer them to smartphones or computers for shopping. For clothing company Anthropologie, iPad shopping accounted for six percent of sales this year and is expected to rise to 20 percent with the introduction of their new app.
These new apps aim to provide a more interactive experience and capture some of the in-store essence by revamping their electronic catalogs and adding new features to their shopping pages.
Revel Touch has built apps for multiple companies including functions like a “virtual dressing room,” that allows users to create outfits and the ability to share choices on social networks. Apps allow tablet shoppers to zoom in, see videos and find the sizes they want with ease.
“You can bring the objects to life on an iPad and you can’t do that on paper — and you don’t have to chop down a tree,” the CEO of Catalog Spree told The New York Times. The company also reported that, on weekends, its users spend almost eight times as long on the retailers’ app as they do on the retailers’ Web sites.
Amazon is willing to lose hundreds of millions of dollars annually on the Amazon Prime customer-loyalty program because of the increased consumer spending it creates.
“The cost of Prime underscores the willingness of Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos to shell out money as he continues the company’s transition from an online retailer of paper books, to an Internet megamall that sells an array of products from various companies, to a seller of digital goods and even its own devices, such as the Kindle Fire tablet computer,” reports The Wall Street Journal.
“[Fiona Dias, VP of rival service Shoprunner] estimated that after joining Prime, members tripled the amount of money they spent on Amazon to $1,500 a year,” the article indicates. “She estimated up to 40 percent of Amazon’s domestic revenue, which totaled $18.7 billion in 2010, comes from Prime members.”
Some investors look unfavorably on Amazon’s subsidizing (the company loses $90 a year on each Prime subscriber and sells each Kindle model at a loss of $10+), but analysts say the costs are offset by Amazon’s profitable website.
Prime will be offered free for 30 days on the new Kindle Fire.
Apple’s new retail store app for iOS is expected to launch today, and will include two major features: 1) Online ordering with retail store pick-up, and 2) Self check-out at retail locations.
The new services have already started at a number of Apple locations in California and New York City.
A customer will be able to order an in-stock product online and pick it up approximately 12 minutes later — skipping lines and registers, then simply picking up and signing for the product.
If customers order an item that is not in-stock, they’ll be a given a pick-up date right after the online purchase is completed. All products sent to an Apple store will include free shipping.
With self check-out, customers are encouraged to launch the Apple Store app on an iOS device to purchase in-store items. “You scan the product with the camera on your device in the app, click purchase, and it will charge whatever credit card is associated to your Apple ID,” reports BGR.
The company expects the new program will generate a 30 percent increase in sales.
Shall I Buy is a free iPhone app with the goal of combining instant social feedback for shoppers to make better purchasing decisions and possibly combat buyer’s remorse.
A shopper can share a video, picture, price and location to engage potential followers and incite comments, and allows sharing of links through Facebook and Twitter.
“The app is done simply, taking heavy styling cues from Instagram, but in doing so it’s effective and easy to use,” reports TheNextWeb.
The post cites two potential downsides: 1) By default, users receive a great number of push notifications, and 2) It would be helpful to have “a way to configure notifications inside of the app itself,” rather than going to the website.
Robert Scoble equates it to “Foodspotting for everything else.”
Google has announced that through the new Merch Store feature, YouTube partners “will be able to sell artist merchandise, digital downloads, concert tickets and other experiences to fans and visitors.”
The Merch Store evolved from multiple partnerships: Marketing enabler Topspin will handle merchandise sales, while concert organizer SongKick will handle ticket sales. Amazon and iTunes will power transactions for music download transactions.
“The ability to add merchandise sales, ticket sales, digital downloads and more to an artist’s YouTube site definitely gives these sites more of an engaging presence for artists with their fans,” reports TechCrunch. “These destinations will now become more than just a way to discover music videos, but also a way to transact business and actually see the artist and buy their works.”
The feature should arrive in the coming weeks. YouTube will take a percentage of sales to cover costs.
CinemaNow — the online video service launched by electronics chain Best Buy in 2010 — has announced it will offer 1080p HD movies from Fox and Warner Bros. on personal computers. “Until now, only standard-definition movies were available from CinemaNow on the PC,” writes Carolyn Giardina in The Hollywood Reporter.
Thomas Gewecke, president of Warner Bros. Digital Distribution, indicates that CinemaNow is using Intel technology to make secure HD content available. “Intel Insider is a hardware-based security technology in second-generation Intel Core processors,” reports THR, “which is the fastest-shipping Intel product with more than 75 million units shipped to date.”
“The partnership with Intel and Best Buy’s CinemaNow to bring HD digital downloads of our movies to the PC will expand our reach to millions of devices in the U.S. and potentially more around the world,” adds Mike Dunn, worldwide president at 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment.
CinemaNow currently offers approximately 15,000 movies and TV shows.
Following failed attempts to draw investor interest in a bankruptcy court auction, Borders Group Inc. has announced it will liquidate its remaining assets.
The second-largest U.S. bookstore chain says it will start liquidating its remaining 399 stores as soon as Friday, with the business to be shuttered for good by September. The company employs nearly 11,000 people.
“We were all working hard toward a different outcome, but the head winds we have been facing for quite some time, including the rapidly changing book industry, [electronic reader] revolution and turbulent economy, have brought us to where we are now,” explained Borders President Mike Edwards.
Analysts have expressed concern that the demise of Borders may speed the decline in book sales and possibly make it more challenging for new writers to be discovered. Michael Norris, a senior analyst at Simba Information added, “Thousands of people whose job consisted of talking up and selling books will eventually being doing something else, and that’s bad for authors, agents, and everyone associated with the value chain in books.”
ETCentric staffer Dennis Kuba commented: “Looks like Amazon has one more to go. I’ll miss browsing through the stacks.”