… because it carries a “parental advisory” sticker and the huge retailer doesn’t stock such titles.
That’s just one of many interesting points in Ethan Smith’s Wall Street Journalarticle Friday titled: Can Music Survive the Big Box?
Other great points:
1. Big Box music retail marketshare jumped from 20 percent to 65 percent in ten years. “A tidal wave.”
2. Sticker bans at Wal-Mart prevent the sale of Green Day, the Strokes, and Mos Def. Mos Def?!
3. Best Buy stocks 8,000 to 20,000 titles vs. the old Towers with 100,000.
4. Music is officially a commodity, says Best Buy.
(This is the opposite of a study I read about the relative inelasticity of music. It has an elasticity value of 6.3, meaning that a 1 percent price increase loses 6 percent of the market’s consumers. People can take music or leave it, it ain’t gasoline.)
5. Final wisdom: Keep it cheap and clean, majors. Indies, keep it cheap and dirty as a counterpoint.
