Digital Retail Experience: Browsing

Why are digital music sales flatlining?


One of the main issues with the purchasing process in digital music, is the retail environment of online stores. Although digital retailers, iTunes being the most predominant, have massive advantages over their brick & mortar predecessors, (or fire house red tile monoliths - if your town is still the proud owner of one of Tower’s unclaimed carcases) they still lack a few fundamental traits that I think consumers are beginning to miss. While iTunes meteoric and frankly unforeseen rise in 2003 reflects strongly on its advantages, its abrupt plateau in sales this year is most reflective of what was lost from in the shift from physical locations to Internet based retail outlets.

The clearest way to delineate the issues with digital retail experience in 2010 is to compare it to a physical store. Or rather than compare, let’s mimic a digital store if constructed outside the realm of 1’s and 0’s. For a second forget all the logistical restraints of size, inventory, staffing... etc. and imagine what it would look like to step into an iTunes brick and mortar store. What would the shopping experience be like inside?

Because physical record stores are nearing complete extinction, let imagine we were to reorganize its older, more stately brother, the book store. What would Barnes & Noble look like if rearranged to look and feel like the digital experience of iTunes? Essentially it would be packed with ceiling tall book shelves on each wall and possess an incomparable selection of books from floor to ceiling . Not only would it be overwhelming in its extensiveness, browsing would be dampened even more by its organization. Where most modern book stores increase the consumers experience by having displays, end-row highlights, and shelves organized so that some books face cover-out to grab attention, our imagined store's books would all be displayed spine-out. This change in organization automatically flattens the consumers ability to easily identify potential items of interest while browsing. iTunes attempts to create a browsing experience with features such as New and Noteworthy, Celebrity Picks, and Top Charts, but from most consumer’s I talk to, these do not go far enough for them to consider iTunes a retail experience that lends itself for browsing. Although I have not been able to find data to support my theory, I believe that if you were to measure average time spent in a physical store like Barns & Noble from entrance to check out it would be significantly longer than the equivalent time spent on Barns & Noble.com in its book section from page load to check out of purchase.

Essentially the joy of browsing and discovering something while meandering through a record store is not yet equated in today’s digital retailers. I’ve heard from many people, mainly but not exclusively older consumers, that they are overwhelmed on iTunes, or even on other digital retailer sites like Netflix. Because digital retailers have limitless inventory, you can find nearly anything you could ever want, but the issue is most consumer don’t know what they want. Walking down the aisle of a record or book store and having something catch your eye, trigger an interest, or help recall a recommendation or review read, was such a key component of the purchasing process that has yet to make the transition into today's digital retailers.

The greatest example of browsing offered online is Pandora Internet Radio which generates a free station of streamable music based on an artist or song of your choosing. It is a great discovery tool used by many consumers and casual freebie listeners, yet its downfall (at least for the record industry) is that it exists outside the purchasing platform of a digital retailer. I know that it has options to link you to digital retailers, but that extra step negatively effects consumers purchasing behavior. What if consumer’s went to iTunes or eMusic like they go to Pandora to browse for new music?

Basically what I’m getting at is this: Digital retailers need to make themselves the centers for music online. I don’t blame consumer’s for going to Pandora or Blogs (the topic of my next post), because they serve the needs of music fans. Digital retailers are not serving their needs. If they want to find success or dare I say save the record industry, they must becomes more than faceless depots of music content with a conveniently bottomless catalogue.