Idolator

The folks at New York's Other Music are held up as an example for other businesses looking to enter the online world in a big profile in BusinessWeek that focuses on the shop's digital-download store, which launched last year and now accounts for about a quarter of its overall sales. Sellouts! Ha ha, just kidding. In a terrific synergy of listicling and turning an article into a photo gallery for maximum clicks, the editors at BusinessWeek have compiled a list of eight lessons one could learn from Other Music's success, all illustrated with "arty" shots of the store's shelves and signage. But! "Go online so that people intimidated by the clientele and/or employees of your store feel more at ease spending their money" was somehow not on the list, perhaps because they couldn't find an appropriately surly counter-guy photo to illustrate said lesson. [Business Week]

Other Music Digital—the online version of the downtown-NYC record store—finally launched yesterday. We've only given it a quick perusal, but most of the albums appear to be priced from $9.99 to $12.99, with individual songs going for $1.11; the tracks themselves are all DRM-free, 320kbps MP3s, which is a better quality rate than those offered on eMusic. More »