DoCoMo To Buy Tower Records Stake

[Mulboyne]

Forbes: Japan's NTT DoCoMo to acquire 40% stake in Tower Records Japan - report

NTT DoCoMo has agreed to purchase a 40 pct stake in Tower Records Japan., making it the largest shareholder in the top retailer of music software, the online edition of the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported at the weekend, without citing its sources...In all, the investment will cost just over 10 bln yen, the report said...more...

FG Thread: Tsutaya Buys Virgin Stores

[Mulboyne]

Kyodo via crisscross: Nojima to buy Tower Records Japan music store unit
TOKYO — Nojima Corp plans to acquire a 100% interest in Wave Co, a wholly owned music store chain subsidiary of Tower Records Japan Inc, as early as January for an estimated 2 billion yen, the Nihon Keizai Shimbun reported Thursday. A major volume retailer of consumer electronics, Nojima will expand its sales network in the Tokyo metropolitan area by selling cellular phones and audio products at Wave stores.

[Mulboyne]

Reuters: Japan's DoCoMo plans music download service

Japan's largest mobile phone operator, said on Thursday it would launch a music download service later this year to compete with rival KDDI Corp.'s popular version. Two of its 10 new handsets unveiled on Thursday will allow users to download full music tracks from its i-mode Internet sites, DoCoMo said in a statement. Details, including the timing of the launch of the service, have not been decided, a DoCoMo spokeswoman said. The Nihon Keizai business daily on Thursday that DoCoMo would charge about 300 yen each for a song, similar to the price charged by KDDI's "au" mobile unit. Downloading music to mobile phones has proved to be more popular in Japan than Apple Computer Inc.'s iTunes music store, and KDDI's mobile users have downloaded a total of 40 million songs since the service started in late 2004, the paper said. When DoCoMo said last November it would become the main shareholder of music retail chain Tower Records Japan Inc., the companies said they were considering a partnership to offer a music download service.

[Mulboyne]

Yahoo: The music's over for Tower Records

Tower Records has played its last tune. On Friday, after a 29-hour auction, most of the bankrupt music retailer's assets were sold to liquidation firm Great American Group, which bid $134.3 million...The sale sounded a bitter final bar for Tower, which operated 89 U.S. stores. Once the dominant music retailer in the country, the 46-year-old company attracted consumers to its spacious stores with flashy merchandising and a focus on deep catalog in a breadth of musical categories. Its store on Hollywood's Sunset Strip was a legendary music-biz hangout. But Tower's fortunes waned in the late '90s as severe price competition from big-box merchants, the growth of Internet sales, piracy and some ill-advised international expansion eroded sales...more...

[Mulboyne]

Working on the assumption that people are still willing to buy CDs and DVDs, Tower Japan plans to roll out a new "Tower Mini" store format in and around major stations. The first will be in the Keio department store shopping mall near Shinjuku station's west exit. The main Tower store is a few hundred yards away next to the south exit and customers will also be able to order goods from that store's inventory in the new outlet. It opens on the 11th December.