A Barking Dog

Mark Cuban has posted another compelling piece on the future of music retail. Cuban has been on a tear lately in the realm of not only online/digital music but also as the owner of one of my favorite theater chains, Landmark Theaters, a predominant chain of art house movie theaters. I live roughly between the Egyptian and the Harvard Exit. What Cuban is doing with Landmark leads me to believe he may make a play in the online and/or digital music distribution business. Over the next couple of years, Cuban plans to introduce digital distribution and projection to each Landmark screen. While the migration cost is substantial, 59 theaters and 170 plus screens at US$100,000 per screen, in the long term it will be possible to recoup in distribution cost scaling for film prints. Prints and a big part of the distribution budget for a film. Digital will allow the exhibitors to scale to meet demand and eliminate the need to physically shuttle media.

That’s neat Dave, what’s all this have to do with music?

If someone were to build out a mega distribution network for film, that same network might also be able to be used for the point of purchase digital music kiosk at local stores. (of course you need to read that Cuban blog post to see where I’m going with this) Cuban’s premise is that the days of CDs and traditional retail are numbered. I’d agree, but they’ll be around for a while. Not everyone is an iPod toting techno wonk like me. While this kiosk is a great idea, the missing link is distribution. As long as the major players control distribution getting any other means accepted for wide scale retail is a long shot. Just as in digital theatrical film distribution, digital distribution of music at the retail level will offer a huge cost advantage. You can do it now with an online service, but that requires a PC, an account at a service and a connection suitable for download. In other words, something that many who otherwise might buy music don’t have. Particularly the account part. Mom and dad might have computers and perhaps DSL or broadband, but there are are tons of teenaged kids that don’t have those kind of things. And they buy music. It’s going to take someone that is tenatious with suitable means to make any inroads in retail digital music distribution.

Someone like Mark Cuban.