A Barking Dog

Amazon currently has an MI/pro audio store in “beta”. Just one more step in the commoditisation of the entry level pro audio market. Like other Amazon partnerships, particularly toys and electronics, this is in partnership with established dealers in the channel. Musician’s Friend, (nee Guitar Center), arch rival Sam Ash, ZZounds, Full Compass and others. It also signals something I’ve seen many manufacturers fight over the years. The large scale integration of pro audio sales on the Internet. While many pro audio marketers are shopping at Wal-Mart, getting the best deal they can on their new car or house yet feel compelled somehow to isolate their products from the normal give and take of market forces and the changing shopping habits of the public in general.

The store is not quite ready. I suppose that’s why they have the “beta” moniker on it. It appears they need a merchandiser or some sort of product manager as the categorization is plain wacky in some cases. (a check of Amazon job listings shows no such opens for that store, but like openings in other Amazon stores) For example of the 23,000 plus items returned in the “sound and recording” feature product listing, many of them were not appropriately categorized. For example guitar, bass and keyboard amps as well as effects pedals and footswitches appear in the listings in addition to other items like DJ gear. It would be like listing a mop in the vacuum section of the appliance store. Most of the sub categories seem to return relevent searches so I would expect they don’t quite have it dialed in at all levels. In fact, digging down further into product descriptions or trying to buy routes you back to the electronics store on many items. I have found a few items that are being advertised and offered at the true street price (just like they should), instead of the inane, archaic practice of Minimum Advertised Pricing.

Notable brands include Midas, Shure, Crown, QSC, Allen & Heath, Soundcraft, Audix, Mackie, AKG, Sennheiser, Neumann and others. I think can be seen as a positive thing and once Amazon gets the kinks out, it should benefit customers in that they have easy access to shopping and comparison.

I must be having a deja vu (no not the club…) as I seem to remember more than one company trying this thing six or seven years ago…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 16th, 2005 at 2:27 pm and is filed under Barking Dog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.