By Jayson Jarmon, CEO, LuxWorldwide.com
I found myself standing in the parking lot of Tower Records on Sunset Boulevard last week, and my mind thought back to better days--better days, that is, for Tower Records, which recently declared bankruptcy and announced its departure from the music retail business with a graduating sale of its inventory.
Just as video killed the radio star, digital download has killed the compact disc - and, apparently, those who re-sell them. Last week, EMI Music Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Alain Levy told the London Business School that the CD was dead…that music companies will no longer be able to sell them without offering "value-added" material.
Musical download and streaming multimedia are but the initial calling cards for our expanded Internet revolution. An old acquaintance of mine, former Razorfish CEO Jeff Dachis, used to say, "what can be digital, will be digital" and his words are ringing more prophetic than ever.
Lux and many other companies try to develop content independent of platform or media type. Companies have a message to deliver and, in a digital age, the nature of that content should be device independent, platform independent, and media independent. Now more than ever, the adage "write once, use many" is making sense.
It was a lesson lost on Tower Records, I'm afraid, and I must admit I felt a little choked up standing there in Hollywood, in the shadow of Spago and the "Riot" House hotel… how the mighty are fallen.
