Music blogs and social networking sites like MySpace are playing an increasingly important part in record companies’ marketing plans. Now they will also be able to sell songs from a major label that will play on the iPod from Apple.
EMI Music and Snocap are to announce today that Snocap will sell the label’s music in its MyStores, online shops that can be added to various sites on the Internet. Snocap’s MyStores would be placed on the Web sites of EMI artists like Korn, Suzanne Vega and Yellowcard, as well as on artists’ MySpace pages. Fans would also be able to place MyStores “widgets” on their own sites and MySpace pages, although Snocap would still control sales.
“It’s almost like you’re giving the label a vending machine,” Snocap’s chief executive, Rusty Rueff, said. “They can fill it up and people can take it and put it as many places as they want. This allows the artists and the fans to have a chance to engage in commerce on the most popular music sites, like MySpace.”
The price will be $1.30 a song for high-quality MP3 files that will work on any digital media player, including the iPod. Until now, Snocap had been selling independent label songs as well as Warner Music Group material in a format that did not work on the iPod.
Since MyStores can be added to a variety of Web pages, they will offer fans more places to shop for music. Over the last few years, as CD sales have fallen, music chains like Tower Records have closed, which has in turn fueled further declines. Snocap also planned to sell music at a variety of different price points, a feature the major labels want, but cannot get, from Apple’s iTunes store.
“My whole mantra has been, you have to make it easy for people to buy music,” said Barney Wragg, the head of EMI’s worldwide digital division. “You don’t have to have one big store which everyone has to come to; you can take this store and put it into pages all over the place.”
Snocap’s MyStores would also make it possible for customers to buy music where and when they first hear it. Since MySpace and various artists’ Web sites have become popular places to sample music in streaming audio, labels hope that fans will make more impulse buys.
In a survey by the analyst firm Jupiter Research, 20 percent of adults who were online identified themselves as impulse music buyers.
“MySpace has a big audience, which is interested in music, and a lot of people are listening to music on the site,” said David Card, a Jupiter Research analyst. “So if MyStores can deliver a graceful experience, I think they have a decent shot of being a big deal.”