There is probably no product or retail category that has
witnessed so much technological change in such a relatively short
space of time as the recorded music market. Changes from vinyl to
cassette and CD were fairly innocuous compared to the revolution in
accessing music triggered by the internet, to the extent that
physical products are well on the way to being completely replaced
by digital products.
This section considers the impact of the digital switchover on
retailers and assesses what the future holds for store-based, as
well as online, retailers and uses analysis of consumer consumption
of music and entertainment products to gauge how fast change is
taking place.