See me, Feel me, Touch me, Hear me….
I admit to being a teenage vinyl junkie. The way the sleeves looked and felt, the way the vinyl sounded, and even smelt, made it a truly sensory experience that became almost a life long obsession. But in the late 80’s, like so many, I was lured by the portability and ease of use of...
The sound of the Harrod’s Sale
Harrod’s. The Bazaar for the rich and famous. Harrod’s Sale. Not like any other sale. So true. I popped in today to have a listen to the shop. Entered through the main entrance and came upon the Sale Room full of Perfumes. It was shock and awe on my sense of smell. Then the sense...
Surge of complaints for emusic and Sony raises the question: What is the value of music?
It looks like I spoke too soon about the benefits of emusic’s deal with Sony Music for the users. What wasn’t immediately clear was the impact on the price that users would have to pay for their downloads. Some of the most loyal users have seen a 40-50%Â increase in the price they are paying....
Sony Music seeks the power of recommendation
Yesterday’s New York Times announced that Sony Music will be making some of their back catalogue available via download store emusic in the US, which up till now has only carried music from independent labels. Although the major labels have never been keen on emusic’s pricing policy (an average 40 cents per track), the site’s...
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Sensory Marketing: A musician’s approach
Be it Dubai or Mumbai, London or Lisbon, citizensound is excited to find that more and more brands are investing in the power of the senses as part of the consumer experience. The old one dimensional approach to sensory marketing is moving out of the mainstream into the background, being replaced by strategies that consider...
Is this the future for music?
Those in the know have been waiting for new music service Spotify, which went live to a small group of invitees in early December, to finally became freely available to everyone. And yesterday the shout went out to UK web users “come and get it”. Spotify is an ad-supported streaming music service that lets you...
No record labels on iTunes
Is is just me or has anyone else noticed that out of the 37 categories that you can sort the music in your iTunes library by, not one of them is by the record label. While at the iTunes store things aren’t much better. At least it does tell you which label any specific track...
AC/DC in Walmart: For Those About To Shop…
So AC/DC, the scourge of the religious right in the U.S. and conservative parents everywhere, with albums such as Highway to Hell and Back to Black, have struck an exclusive deal with WalMart in the U.S. to distribute their music…and some of their hardcore fans are either furious or in shock. The issue of WalMart’s...
FACT or Fiction: Topshop gets it all wrong in their windows?
First of all, I love FACT magazine. Definitely one of the most interesting magazines in the U.K. The latest issue is not impressed with the UK clothes retail chain TopShop and NME the (once iconic) music magazine. Louise Brailey spotted a recent TopMan Window display with three mannequins in the window, each representing a different...
If music be the food of love, play on…
One of the big problems we all have when we go into a music store to browse, be it in the high street or online, is what do we want to buy? For many of us it might be what fits with our mood at the time. Music stores are generally rubbish at trying to...
Starbucks: smell the coffee and think small…
So have Starbucks given up on music or are they just refocusing their attention? When it was announced this week that they were to pull out of their record label Hear Music and hand over this business to their partners the Concord Music Group, an obvious reaction was ‘So what went wrong?’ This news was...
Small music retailers – Phoenix Rising?
Just came across an interesting article in Business Week It reiterates that, in the face of the online shopping onslaught, bricks and mortar music retailers are suffering. However, it also highlights the green shoots of online success that some smaller independent music retailers are experiencing. I’m with them on this. Sites such as Piccadilly Records,...