PhilMur's thoughts on biz/tech/money/life

According to an article in the Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal, Minneapolis-based Target is partnering with iTunes to promote music on iTunes.

I think this is a fairly interesting development, as Target begins to leverage its brand outside of the brick-and-mortar space.  Sure, target.com has been a favorite destination for women (and men!) for years now — and yet, it’s not yet often that you see a traditional retailer join forces online with another online company to encourage purchases that otherwise COULD have come through them (via physical cd’s through their website or in their stores).

This clearly demonstrates Target’s commitment to change with the times, and acknowledges the fact that cd sales are quickly dropping away.  It is widely known, in fact, that Apple surpassed Wal-Mart in 2008 as the largest music retailer in the United States.

It is astounding to me, however, that Target is to my knowledge the first major retailer to take the obvious step to partner with the leader in online music sales. A trip to the music section of Best Buy’s website promotes the revamped Napster heavily– and who can blame them, when they paid $121 million to buy Napster last year? Of course, they do sell iTunes gift cards online, although this is virtually pointless except when buying them for a gift — who wants to pull out our credit card, buy an iTunes gift card at BestBuy.com, wait for it to come in the mail, then go to the iTunes store and wip out the gift card and enter the card number?

Barnes & Noble has recently gotten wise on the rise of e-books and jumped on the bandwagon by launching their own e-book store at the same time they launched a Blackberry and iPhone reader app — as well as indicating they will be selling a reader device very soon. This, of course, in response to Amazon’s Kindle device and in realization of the virtual disappearance of physical books, for the most part, coming upon us in the very near future.

Target is wise to take a similar strategy with music — they are getting a piece of the online music action before it can take a bigger piece out of their sales.