fantastically brilliant business idea #29

so i had another business idea epiphany last night. many of my amazingly good business ideas have to do with running a music store and how i would do it. i guess it’s sort of a dream i have to be able to share music i like with people and make money off it. if i ever get a venture capitalist or inherit a ton of money to open my own record store, i’ll already be set with how to run it.

so, erin and i were talking about coffee shops and how starbucks will move into a neighborhood, sometimes across the street, from an existing coffee shop to steal their business and shut the independent down. they tried to do this at 9th and 9th in salt lake, a small, sort of hip indie neighborhood, but the local coffee shop was too grounded in the community and never went under. something that *did* go under, however, was the indie record store that had been there for years. originally there were two, then one moved, then that one closed and another opened in its’ stead only to close itself later on. so i was thinking wouldn’t it be cool to open up a music store there. so then i started thinking about ways i could make it cool and/or different.

So now that I’ve got this ampache thing going, I was thinking about that and had brilliant business idea number 29 – record store listening station innovation. Record stores often like to have listening stations, but the listening stations are generally limited to a couple releases that are picked by the staff. They don’t generally like doing a listening station for any release in the store because that means a lot of opened product and opened product often means lost sales. I was thinking about independent record stores I’ve enjoyed going to and part of it is atmosphere, part of it is employees and how welcome I feel, and part of it is access to listening to music I wouldn’t otherwise have heard via staff picks and listening stations. So, my innovation is to have a server onto which each new album is ripped to mp3 and added to the ampache catalog. Then, you have several (severely locked-down) client stations that have ampache up and you can listen to any cd in the store. As far as I know, there shouldn’t be any legal issues either since the mp3s are being ripped for the purpose of actually selling the album and you’re not giving out the mp3s, you’re just sharing the music. Tadaa, give me my money.

current ampache playlist:
outkast – speakerboxx, the love below
queen adreena – the butcher and the butterfly
low – things we lost in the fire
lydia lunch – shotgun wedding
dali’s car – the waking hour
the birthday party – hee haw


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