CIMS Shares Why They Closed ThinkIndie Music Download Store
(UPDATED) "As CIMS approaches two years of selling digital music on thinkindie.com it has become evident that we cannot compete with the proliferation of pirated downloads or with the corporate interests controlling the legitimate digital market," Michael Bunnel, the Executive Director of the Coalition of Independent Music Stores told Hypebot regarding the February 15th shutdown first reported here yesterday.
"Our initial goal was to empower the independent music merchant by enabling them to participate in the digital marketplace and, despite having what we believe is a great model to accomplish this, we have been unable to gain enough traction to make this a sustainable venture," continued Bunnel. "The CIMS Board has decided to close the thinkindie.com site to continue focusing on our core businesses, which remain healthy."
^ I think you mean, “CIMS Shares Why the ThinkIndie Music Download Store Closed”
Or something to that effect.
A completely content-free clarification, awesome. Doesn’t address reasons at all. Most of what was on their is NOT on the PirateBay, plus, what specifically was the pain point that made it bad business? That never gets addressed here.
Unless they actually have metrics on money lost to downloading, which is pretty difficult to believe…this was fluff.
I think it may be more obvious than you think… Whatever other “business” they are still staying involved in, it’s more worthwhile for them to continue. We can only assume from making an educated guess that thinkinde.com was not only not making enough money to keep in business, but taking away valuable time on their other ventures which are fruitfull for them. I can think of at least a few big reasons why thinkindie.com is not successfull.
– Many companies just CANNOT compete with Apple’s recognition, revenue stream, and marketing including thinkindie.com
– More and more people are becoming aware of downloading torrents of music for free
– Most of the reasons why people supported independent stores in the first place no longer apply. Cheap prices… Big chains can sell it cheaper. Rare and hard to find albums, singles, and imports… the Internet has most if not ALL of it. Talking and discussing music with other fans… the Internet has that, too.
No, this makes COMPLETE sense that thinkindie.com is closing shop. The only indie music stores I know of that are still in operation are those that sell only vinyl or they sell way more other stuff along with a little music.
The same thing has been considered by the comic book industry that has survived for the past 30 years by selling through indie stores. If every major company starts selling downloads of new releases, what about the indie stores? The answer has been tossed around to set up indie online shops, but in the end that poses too many headaches and loss of revenue when the publishers of the material can just sell it through their own service cutting out the middleman.
It doesn’t matter anyway, because at the rate we’re headed in the next ten to twenty years the majority of the population will be downloading content for free. Every type of industry that produces content that can be viewed and consumed online will have to switch to a business model that can still turn a profit while existing in this reality.
Free album download at http://www.chancius.com
Unfortunate news. This seemed like a great idea in theory, the indie CIMS stores band together to sell digital downloads, just like they had with CDs. The accounts gained attention from the major labels in exclusive content. It finally got the physical retailers involved with digital downloads. It was great that each CIMS account had their own digital store front but I’d be curious to see how much the accounts marketed their store, or if it would have been more successful as a streaming service.
Kudos to CIMS for stepping out of the box and trying something new with physical retail. I’d assume the royalties for recorded acts began wearing on profitability. Long live the Electric Fetus.
I had execution copies to build a store on my desk and aborted. iTunes is it folks.
How does the CIMS announcement square up with the recent Hypebot essay proposing that we need more online music retailers to sell more music? (Serious, non-snarky question.)
From my long-tail consumer perspective: I was startled to see that the new release by an obscure Spanish “bagpipe babe” was being offered for MP3 download by amazon.com. I had thought that would be something I’d have to find at some sort of world music boutique. But right now it feels like almost everything I want can be purchased online from Amazon, iTunes or cdbaby. I haven’t dug deeply into the online classical boutique sites, though.
(The artist is Mercedes Peon, if you are curious, and calling her a “bagpipe babe” is horribly unfair. But catchy 🙂 )