New York's legendary music boutique, Other Music, is launching an online store that will sell hand-picked MP3s (no DRM, natch!). Like San Francisco's Aquarius, Other Music is the kind of place where the eclectic selection and incredibly knowledgeably staff combine to give you an experience better than you can get from any online music store — until now. See Eliot Van Buskirk's interview with Josh Madell (co-owner of Other Music) in Wired News.
WN: How does Other Music plan to price the MP3s? And how will the revenue from digital sales be split among the store, labels and bands?
Madell: We will be selling high-quality files without DRM copy protection (our music is encoded at 320 Kbps rather than 192, the iTunes model, so the sound will be much better). All our pricing is not set yet, but we will definitely have to be a little more expensive than iTunes — probably $10.99 per album rather than $9.99. I hope we can more than make up for the price with our selection, service, knowledge, features and, of course, the quality files. As for the label deals, this business works on percentages; you split revenue with the label for sales, and typically labels make 65 to 70 percent of the retail price.
