Liberal Talk Radio

I knew they were getting big, but did you know that iTunes is the seventh largest music retailer in the U.S.? They’re bigger than Sam Goody, Borders and Tower Records. That’s wild.

What’s also interesting is that the top 6 companies are internet retailers (Amazon.com), big-box stores (Wal-Mart, Target), and electronics stores (F.Y.E., Circut City, Best Buy). Now, we’ve known for a while that the mom-and-pop record store has been on the decline. But what’s interesting about these results is that the media store itself is going away. As movies, music, and even books start to go digital, media is ceasing to become a physical object. So it makes sense that the idea of a physical store to stock and sell these physical objects would also be threatened.

It appears people would rather buy their entertainment as a pure digital entity (like iTunes) or as an accessory for their new DVD player (at Wal-Mart or Best Buy).