News

In the age of iTunes and Amazon.com, do brick and mortar music retailers have a future? Perhaps—if they downsize a bit.

Warner Music Group and Mediaport Entertainment have recently announced a new music distribution approach based on a network of unmanned kiosks called MusicATMs. The idea is certainly not new, with companies such as MusicPoint having unsuccessfully tried their hands at the business as early as 1999.

However, since music fans are now able to carry their entire libraries with them on portable audio players, and with online services such as iTunes fostering a population of paying downloaders, perhaps the kiosk concept makes more sense today than it did a few short years ago.

Mediaport says that its MusicATM kiosks, now starting to appear at university campuses and retail locations, allow consumers to burn their own full-length CDs or create custom compilations from Warner's catalog. Additionally, the company says, consumers can download digital tracks from Mediaport's e-Music store and transfer them to portable players.

Mediaport's Helen Seltzer explains that the company currently has 9 music kiosks operating in Utah, "and we expect to have our first ones in Massachusetts in March at a university and a bookstore. In the next six months we'll have them in 38 different states." Mediaport says it is also planning to offer movies on DVD, audio books, software, and the ability to download music to cellular phones in the coming year.

Pricing is in line with iTunes at 99¢ per song. Other pricing options include $5 for an album by a local band or up to $12 for an album by a major Warner's act. Seltzer says, "The concept behind our company is simple: We bring music to consumers rather than forcing them to come to the music. Now, thanks to our agreement with WMG, consumers will finally have the ability to buy the music they want, when and where they want to."

Mediaport adds that it plans to target markets such as universities, military bases, travel centers, and mall-based "lifestyle retail stores," and expects to have point-of-sale burn- and download-on-demand MusicATMs available on a growing number of university campuses and in LoveSac retail stores in the near future.