News

Magnolia Audio, the upscale west-coast subsidiary of Best Buy, has signed an agreement with ReadyTo Play, a Palo Alto, CA–based digital music company, to offer in-store and point-of-sale promotion of RTP's CD ripping service to Magnolia's customers.

The service, which will reach stores in late June, will convert CDs to the file formats used by digital music players and also load the converted files onto consumers' players or home music servers. Jeff Tedesco, RTP's CEO and founder, said, "Magnolia clearly recognizes that ripping services help sell digital music products and drive overall customer satisfaction with those products. This is a significant step forward for ReadyToPlay and Magnolia."

ReadyTo Play offers an "exclusive process called DataGroom™, which repairs errors in the album, artist, or track information so that consumers can search and retrieve their music more easily—a critical step for owners of large music collections." Assuming DataGroom is accurate, it might well be an enticement to consumers frustrated by the ad hoc nature of the listings offered by GraceNote, which rely on the accuracy of volunteer contributors to fill in the gaps in the company's database. Classical music lovers, as well as aficionados of the smaller labels so beloved by audiophiles, have been the most frequent critics of GraceNote's track listings.

Magnolia's agreement with ReadyToPlay will place displays in the stores and will provide for the insertion of ReadyToPlay literature into digital music products. Magnolia customers who employ ReadyToPlay's service will receive introductory discount pricing on the conversion of their CD collections.

A joint Magnolia/ReadyToPlay press release also mentions the possibility of an online CD ripping service, but includes no details at this time.