Will music kiosks change the retail landscape? – Yahoo! News

Still, Kiosk business is at an all-time high, with some providers readying U.S. deployments numbering in the thousands, an executive at startup kiosk provider MediaPort says. Such major chains as Starbucks and McDonald’s have experimented with them

I have never found my self in McDonald’s wondering where I could get Britney/Jessica/Christina mix tape RIGHT NOW.

But seriously, I like the idea that people are trying to take advantage of digital technologies.

Music retailers also like kiosks because they make it possible to offer more titles than what is available on shelves, as well as offer custom CDs to digital-savvy consumers accustomed to burning their own music at home.

That’s cool, but that already exists on my computer at home. I don’t quite get why a machine in McDonald’s or Starbucks or the airport is going to get me to buy music when I can do it at home.

Maybe an impulse buy at the airport if I am bored, but I no longer carry a CD player when I travel, and the machines won’t load to my iPod. I guess I could rip it to my laptop, then put it on the iPod, but it might be easier to just buy a newspaper or Sports Illustrated to kill that 30 minutes at the airport.

Sometimes the big music labels remind me of the government. They have this great knack for taking what could be the seeds of a good idea and finding a way to mess it up.