The other day, I was discussing it over with my brother on how we are hardly realizing the value of digital music.

Digital retailers:

Digital retailers have a huge advantage over physical music (or media) retailers such as Virgin Megastore, HMV, and Tower Records etc with an unprecedented library of music. Adding on the convenience factor where end users can a) access this ’store’ anytime anywhere, b) choose to purchase music as a single, an album, in a bundle, c) choose the method of payment (linked to the bank, credit card, Paypal, phone bills).

YET, in my opinion, digital retailers are unable to effectively ‘replicate’ the marketing and promotion techniques employed by various physical music (or media) retailers. I ponder sometimes whether the overwhelming success of iTunes or any digital retailers (restricted to the U.S. and the U.K.) is correlated with the number of giant sized physical music retailers. Are we ‘discovering’ our music outdoors before purchasing them at a ‘better’ value online?

At startup, ‘digital retailers’ such as AllofMP3.com - albeit being based in Russia, their target markets are really the U.S. and the U.K., why?

How closely are digital retailers working with the record labels? Without going into the percentage issue and the complexity of licensing content; Do record labels even understand what digital music IS? How much input do record labels have in terms of perfecting a digital marketing & promotion strategy with the digital retailers? My belief is that record labels are merely content creators now and are ‘pushing’ the responsibilities of marketing & promotion of new artist and new music to the digital retailers.

The year of 2005/06 was clouded with talks of Web2.0 where social interaction is the key, and social media will take centre stage in 2006/07, but will it be the answer or the revolution we are all seeking?

Is it weird of my brothers and I to be listening to English-, French-, Dutch-, Malay-, Chinese- (Mandarin and Cantonese), Indian-, Japanese-, Spanish-, and Korean- language music…enjoying the genres of techno, dance, pop, classical, rap, rock, metal etc? In a sentence - and seriously, how many Il Divo fans out there would have imagined enjoying the classical music 3 years ago?

To be continued…