The Digital Music Graveyard

Written by A. L. Friedman

Friday, September 28. 2007 at 04:43 PM EDT Post a comment

Digg   Del.icio.us   Reddit   Email This

no ratings

• Login to Rate

Earlier in the week, I proclaimed it a "big week for digital music," or at least digital music news -- a few sites launched, and a few shut their doors. I figured I would use that as an excuse to revisit our Music Download Storefront Guide. It ain't pretty.

Somewhere between our launch in June and now, no fewer than five other stores have closed their doors, changed their mission, or gone AWOL. Trax2Burn no longer exists, while Puretracks is now only available in Canada. PlayLouder (not clear if it's the same company or not) is now a U.K.-based ISP that bakes in a music subscription service, which isn't a bad idea. Lala dropped its financially questionable arrangement with Warner. AudioBubble now shows only a splash screen with a cheery promise to return soon with "a refined, much more useful service." I'm not holding my breath.

Who will be the next to fall? Will it be earBuzz, whose selling point seems to be how selfless it is in not taking a cut of its artists' profits? Will it be MusicGiant, who seems to think people want to download giant, DRM'd up versions of their favorite songs in pointlessly high definition?

For what it's worth, it looks like Virgin's decision to shutter its download store is a side-effect of a restructuring of the Virgin Music Store, although that business was no doubt having its own share of problems.