Online Music Alliance Set To Splinter
Echo, a consortium of major retailers funding a proposed online music shopping standard infrastructure, is reportedly being abandoned.
Billboard reports that the major backers of the project, including Best Buy, Borders Group, Hastings Entertainment, Tower Records, Trans World Entertainment and Virgin Entertainment, are each pursuing their own music retailing strategies with individually-selected partners.
The Echo project was founded to take advantage of economies of scale in developing consumer music shopping and delivery tools.
According to the Billboard report, the consortium was formed as a reaction by brick-and-mortar retailers to the launches of Pressplay and Musicnet, which early on were touted to revolutionize music retailing with online catalogs and delivery. Both services, however, were hobbled by confusing rules regarding consumer rights of use for the music purchased through them.
With the launch of iTunes, Pressplay, Musicnet and Echo were all dealt heavy blows as Apple unveiled a system that was hailed as visually elegant, user-friendly and had fewer stipulations on music file use than its predecessors.
At this point, Tower has paired-up with Liquid Audio for its online music offering, while Virgin is developing its own branded system. FYE is working with a unit of Buy.com, and Best Buy has aborted its nascent online store, opting to stick with Rhapsody kiosks in their stores.
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