Tuesday, January 8, 2008

Brick and Mortar Online Music Store

Well, the time has come to post this one. I wasn't too sure at first because I thought it was too good of an idea to let go but, as usual, I can't do a darn thing with it so someone else might.

On the ride to work the other day, I had some more ideas pop up, one which I figured my readers (the eventual ones) might be able to make use of if they knew how to do it. I call it Brick and Mortar Online. Here's the train of thought. Take of it what you will and hopefully someone will be able to put it together into a more coherent and workable (maybe even profitable) idea.

So, obviously, brick & mortar stores that sell CDs and such are things of the past. Digital Music is what's here. But, why not combine the two and take the advantages of both and put it into one.

Close your eyes and imagine this scenario. You walk into a BMO store. There are no racks of CDs, no cashiers, no shelves filled with useless crap. Instead, lined up against the wall is a bar protruding from the wall. Built into the bar every 10 feet or so, are touch screen computers that are linked up to the internet. A USB port is built into the front of each terminal. On top of the bar, next to each screen is two headsets. Each computer terminal displays BMO's website. Customers sit down at their bar stools and use the touchscreen to search for songs they wish to download. When they have made their selections, the computer asks them to link up their MP3 player. They hook it up and the songs begin downloading from the BMO website directly to their MP3 player. Nothing gets saved to the hard drive so that new customers can't just go on and download the prior customers songs. The customers can preview any song they want and even let a friend listen. A database of the most popular songs downloaded from customers is on the front page of the site as well as recommendations of the day and all that sort. Sounds like iTunes and all those other places right? Exactly, but it also brings the social atmosphere of the brick and mortar stores.

Now, the unique part comes. Since a lot of people own a MP3 player, its almost worthless to give them a CD for a gift. So the new thing is to give a gift card to one of the online music stores. However, only a select few actually offer gift cards and even then, there can be fees or limitations in the card. On top of all that, if the person receiving the gift owns an iPod and gets a gift card for Zune Marketplace or owns a regular MP3 player and gets a gift card to iTunes, the card goes wasted cause iTunes can only be played on iPods.

In steps the unique idea offered by BMO. You know your friend likes 5 particular songs from different bands. You go into BMO and buy a gift card but it's actually a modified flash drive. The customer goes to one of the BMO terminals and finds the songs he wants to download, inserts the modified flash drive into the terminal and downloads the songs. The customer then gives it to his friend as a gift. The friend hooks up the modified flash drive directly to the mp3 player and the mp3 player syncs up with the drive and downloads the songs. The songs on the flash drive are rendered useless after download and the friend now has the songs he wanted.

This answers a few problems. I have a feeling that eventually, more and more people will just abide by the rules and pay for their music. Of course you will always have the renegades who don't want to pay but most law abiding citizens will pay to download music. The music industry doesn't want their music pirated so they have ensured that law abiding companies protect their property with DRM. That's all fine and dandy and I am sure you know all about this. Basically, a customer can't just go to a online music store and send a song as a gift to a friend. He can't download it and then give it to him because that is technically pirating unless he destroys all copies and doesn't keep one for himself. And of course his friend can't just give it to the next person who may enjoy it. This idea eliminates those worries and allows a friend to give the gift of music without the worries of the law.

So, I know I probably missed a few aspects and the idea could probably be expanded a bit more but that was my general train of thought. I haven't had much time to contemplate it so please give me that when evaluating the idea. So, what do you think? Doable? Is it a load of crap that I should just toss out the window?

Thanks again for reading.

Regards,

Bob

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