James Delahunty
10 Aug 2005 20:25
As it prepares to enter the online music download market, retailer HMV has said it will attempt to educate more consumers on how to download music from the Internet. The company said the program is aimed at women, older people and "music fans in general". The British Phonographic Industry (BPI) estimates that 96% of downloaders are male. Computers will be installed in 200 HMV stores and HMV's own music download service will be launched in September.
"Record stores have generally been a bit of a male preserve," an HMV spokesman said. "When more women are comfortable with downloading they may find it less intimidating to do that on their own computers, rather than go into a record store." Digital area's will be installed in stores that will have staff to explain and show people how to download music. The portable digital music players will also be sold in these areas.
HMV said it will sell millions of songs at prices similar to Apple's highly successful iTunes music store. It is expected that retailers such as HMV would attempt to tap the music downloading resource due to the massive surges worldwide in legal music downloads in the last year. The number of legal downloads tripled to 180 million worldwide in the first half of 2005, according to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI).
Source:
BBC News