In-store digital music sales

I was at an InMotion store at SFO international airport earlier today looking for a fabulous device called InFlight Power. There was a wonderful piaono/violoncel music piece playing. I didn’t think of using Shazam to figure out what is was. Instead I asked the sales guy what is was. He told me it was Melos by Anja Lechner & Vassilis Tsabropoulos. I memorized it (well… part of), then tried to pull it out from iTunes (not available there, but available at Amazon.com).

This got me wondering: shouldn’t InMotion get a share of that purchase? after all, they pay the rent, CD inventory and the salary of the store manager.

Why not providing a free Wi-Fi service at InMotion that would allow a user to get the playlist, say in the format of an OpenTape, then purchase it from iTunes or Amazon on the spot. I guess 5% of $.99 from iTunes is not enough. Amazon MP3 10% affiliate commission makes more sense but does not seem like it would be enough either.

I wonder what it would take for such a service to be profitable for InMotion. Maybe forcing the full album purchase with a convenience fee for the download service, roughly an average $15 price that would get the DJ/musician a $3 commission. Next an extension to iTunes that would publish automatically the playlist in OpenTape format with the download link would be a great way for DJs and musicians to promote their music in public spaces. 

iTunes not available in Brazil

Here is what you get when you try to connect to the iTunes Store in Brazil:

iTunes error -4

I discovered this while trying momentarily to authorize one of my friend’s computers to read a movie I had purchased on my computer.

Well, I researched the problem and found this petition. It looks like iTunes Store is not available in Brazil, my guess is for fears of piracy, but I’m not sure. The problem is that the use case above is perfectly legit, yet, impossible to support in Brazil.