Best Buy Sounds Out Music-Download Scene

Best Buy (BBY) has quietly launched an experiment that could change how people buy music, TheStreet.com has learned.

With consumers downloading greater amounts of free, file-shared music from the Internet and buying fewer audio CDs, record companies and music retailers dependent on CD sales have struggled on two fronts: preventing people from getting unauthorized copies of music from the Internet, and encouraging them to listen through authorized services such as MusicNet, pressplay and Rhapsody.

The Best Buy experiment, which debuted in a handful of Midwest stores within the past week, represents a new approach to authorized downloads, and hints at how bricks-and-mortar retailers such as Best Buy -- one of the nation's largest retailers of music and consumer electronics -- might participate in the business.

Unlike the authorized services already in operation, Best Buy's new "Digital Hits" venture takes advantage of Best Buy's real-world presence and sales force. And the experiment keeps the bricks-and-mortar retailer in the loop of online delivery of music -- a transaction that might otherwise take place between record company and music consumer, bypassing the music retailer in the middle.

Though the new venture is far from perfect, it represents a step forward for the music industry, says Aram Sinnreich, a Los Angeles-based online music researcher studying at the USC Annenberg School for Communications.

"There's no question that if brick-and-mortar retailers are going to retain their business, they've got to become involved as middlemen in the digital distribution of music," Sinnreich says. One plus of physical stores, says Sinnreich, is that they perform educational and informational functions in ways a Web site can't duplicate. Using in-store aids for online music such as informational kiosks, says Sinnreich, "is a forward-looking approach and has great potential for the consumer experience and for the health of the music industry overall."