Subscribe to Australia

A bricks & mortar retailer has just launched a very attractive subscription-based music site in Australia. Sanity Entertainment, which has 220 physical locations in the format of Sanity, HMV, and Virgin Megastore, is now moving into the online realm. For just $26 ($29 Aus$) a month, subscribers can download a total of 300 songs per month out of a catalog of 1 million+ tracks. And Sanity has secured the licensing rights from all of the major record labels.

This is a really brilliant plan on Sanity’s part. They are obviously seeing the pending doom of bricks and mortar music retailers as evidenced recently by Virgin’s Megastore in Times Square slated to be closed later this year. Sanity is being pro-active in reaching their consumer in new formats. And the really great thing is they will be integrating this new technology into their bricks & mortar stores to assist in the transition.

This also places a new value on music in the mind of the consumer. A few weeks ago, I blogged about a new site seeking to charge $0.03 per song in China. At 300 songs/month, this Australian site will be charging $0.10 per song. So what does that do to iTunes who charges $1.47 ($1.69 Aus$) per track? It will definitely make people rethink about where they purchase their music.

And even deeper into the issue, this just continues to show that the value of songs is approaching $0. I know that is very sad and tragic news for the industry, but it is true. Many consumers are already on the $0 download option through bit torrent sites. This goes to show that artists will not be making much money from songs in the future, but rather from auxiliary items.

Stay tuned,
Erik
erikrostad.com