Fresh spin on record sales wins EBay award

They’re the type of guys you’d expect to see in a store that sells rare vinyl records — young, hip and shaggy music lovers.

But Pat McNally, 25, and Matt Oehmen, 23, don’t work in a conventional record store. The pair sells records through an online store on EBay, and business is good.

So good, in fact, that the owners of Honest Red’s Records were named EBay Canada’s young entrepreneurs of the year.

A year ago, Oehmen came to Ottawa with a truckload of old records and no job. He had been doing online sales for a record store in Halifax, so to make some money, he began auctioning off his records.

His first sale, the Beatles’ Abbey Road, sold for $1,000, and the business grew from there. Now, they’re averaging 100 records per month to buyers around the world.

“It’s actually a lot of work,” said McNally. “We spend a lot of time looking around for records.”

“You have to be willing to just buy a whole stack and hope there’s something good in it,” Oehmen added. “It’s a lot like gambling.”

Their recent award netted the duo $2,000 in prize money, which Oehmen said they will use to augment their stock of 1,500 records and 1,000 45s.

Despite their success – or maybe because of it – they have no plans to open a real store.

“Online is definitely the way to go. You don’t have to pay rent. We store all our stuff in the basement. It’s just way easier,” Oehmen said.

[Metro News]

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The Future of Digital Downloading - HIGH-FIDELITY Shopping

Soundbuzz Starts High-Quality Online Music Store

Singapore-based digital-music services provider Soundbuzz on Dec. 18 launched what it claims is the first online music store in Asia to offer high-fidelity downloads.

Soundbuzz says the store - at www.soundbuzz.com/sls - uses a technology called Scalable-to-Lossless (SLS), which was jointly developed by Soundbuzz and Singapore-based Exploit Technologies, the marketing arm of the Singapore government's Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR).

Standard-quality files recorded at a rate of 256 kilobytes per second are available on the site for $2.50 Singapore ($1.72) each, while high-fidelity MPEG4 audio tracks sell for $3.00 Singapore ($2.06). Users can also upgrade standard-quality downloaded tracks to higher-fidelity versions by paying an additional $0.80 Singapore ($0.55).

The service also includes a "synch to mobile" function that lets users transfer to their mobile handsets tracks they have downloaded to their PCs from the Soundbuzz hi-fi online store.

"Exploit Technologies is pleased that we have successfully commercialized A*STAR's technology in digital media, and offer a Singapore company like Soundbuzz a competitive edge in this growing market," said Exploit Technologies executive chairman Boon Swan Foo in a statement.

Said Soundbuzz Asia GM Yen Ong in a statement: "It is critical with any new digital music offering that we give consumers a number of flexible and simple options so they can tailor the experience to their own tastes. With A*STAR's technology, consumers can now purchase incredibly high-quality songs that they can enjoy on the most sophisticated home entertainment system, but can also transfer easily to their mobile handsets if they want to take their music with them."

Source [Billboard]

Soundbuzz has been an Australian online music retailer for 7 years now, with operations in Australia, Singapore, United States, India and Hong Kong. Soundbuzz is Asia's largest online and mobile music company, with its 50 plus collective stores attracting the majority of online and wireless purchases. The company operates its own store, soundbuzz.com, as well as providing content and/or technology infrastructure to partners such as Telstra BigPond Music, Singtel, Windows Media Player 10, Creative Technology, Optus Zoo and SONY BMG.