Ad: Manage updates with the Download App
  • CNET
  • All coolfer posts

coolfer

The future of music retail

Coolfer has an interesting post this morning, responding to Peter Kafka's suggestion that it's getting too hard to buy music because fewer retailers are stocking CDs. I think Kafka's confusing cause and effect--if retailers were still making lots of money on Britney and Rihanna, CDs would be sold front and center. But regardless of the chicken-and-egg question, Coolfer makes the very good point that most music purchasers don't seek out music and aren't willing to sift through the racks at their local record stores, but rather pick up a CD as an impulse buy on … Read more

Why most digital distribution start-ups will fail

Music industry blog Coolfer has an interesting post this week about online tools for do-it-yourself musicians in which he points to a relatively new service called Speakerheart. I checked out the service, and while I agree with his assessment of the interface--it's based on Adobe's Flex (an offshoot of Flash) and is very slick and easy to use--I think that Speakerheart, like most other digital distribution start-ups, is going to have a very hard time.

The process is pretty straightforward: Artists sign up with Speakerheart to sell their songs through a digital storefront on the site. Artists have … Read more