In a bold move sure to remind us of 1999, Tower Records has announced that they too will be selling music....get this....ONLINE!! Just like iTunes! Allofmp3! CDBaby! They've even gone the extra mile of making their site VERY ugly- something reminiscent of a demilitarized zone from the great Mustard/Ketchup Wars.

Not content with a cringing me-too play, Tower further embarasses itself by only offering content in Microsoft's WMA format at a fixed bitrate - 192Kbps. For those readers unfamiliar with bitrate jargon, "192K" translates into "pretty damn close to CD quality." Further, they make the (ridiculous) claim "We sound better than most of our competitors who sell songs encrypted in 128 kbps."

So, is there a competitor whos 128K files sound better than your 192's?? Oh, Tower, you're cute when you're in denial.

And Tower's clearly in denial because they ignored clear indications of what the market wanted. As an example, the SINGLE website on the hit list of RIAA/BMI/ASCAP is Allofmp3.com. Licensing legalities aside, the service of Allofmp3 is the bar by which all other online music shops should be judged. AllofMp3 lets me select my own encoding rate, charging me a premium for the larger filesize/higher bitrate. Why can't Tower let me choose which encoding is right for me? Why can't I choose the encoding type, too....MP3, WMA, OGG...why would Tower possibly care?

Another hit point: the service isn't really even Tower's - they partnered with a Canadian company Puretracks, which sells branded download portals to companies too lazy and desperate to develop their own strategies. Hey, doesn't that front page look...familiar??

Russ, Tower's marketing guy, said: "...consumers are now going online to download music, and we feel it's the right place for us to be.." Yes, Russ, consumers are going "online" to download music, but they're not going to Tower Digital. The market's already saturated with more competent (and better priced) players. If Tower's hope is that the white elephant Allofmp3.com is going to be shut down, leaving no option but the continued overpricing of music, they'd better have a Plan B, because customers have already spoken: They want AllofMp3.

Photo by El Oso.