You may have figured out that I was born and raised in Calcutta. Lived there from 1957 to 1980. For much of that time, the roads there were less than perfect. So much so we used to joke that, when confronted with a particularly poor road, the smart way to drive was to stay in the potholes, avoiding the little bits of road that loomed up every now and then.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
Which is why, when we have walled-garden approaches to digital music sales, people find a way to operate in the open spaces. Take a look at this article in today’s Wired News, where Josh Madell, one of the co-owners of Other Music, gets interviewed by Eliot Van Buskirk.
Here’s an excerpt from the interview:
Madell: We will be selling high-quality files without DRM copy protection (our music is encoded at 320 Kbps rather than 192, the iTunes model, so the sound will be much better). All our pricing is not set yet, but we will definitely have to be a little more expensive than iTunes — probably $10.99 per album rather than $9.99. I hope we can more than make up for the price with our selection, service, knowledge, features and, of course, the quality files. As for the label deals, this business works on percentages; you split revenue with the label for sales, and typically labels make 65 to 70 percent of the retail price.
If you want to stay informed of their plans, here’s the link. In case you missed it, an earlier story about MP3s and DRM by the same author is also worth a read. Link.
And if you have no idea what kind of store Other Music is, then take a look at this video.