Coke cans its music download service

Mycokemusic.co.uk will soon be nobody's-coke-music.co.uk. The mega brand's foray from caramelised sugar water into music downloads will be history as of July 31. In a statement posted on its site, the company explained the download service, at one point Britain's most popular, will close due to lack of demand. The statement never mentions Apple iTunes, though it really doesn't need to in order to get across the obvious point: even a brand with a massive marketing budget like Coke is fighting a losing battle against the market dominant iTunes.

Here's how Coke explains it:

"When we launched mycokemusic, it was because our consumers told us that this was something they were really interested in. In 2004, the digital music scene was just developing and the only way for Coke to offer access to music downloads was to open our own store. That's not true today and there is no need for Coke to continue to run a store."

Download credits – which were obtainable via Coke promotions such as under-the-cap sweepstakes or could be bought with credit cards – will expire on July 31. It's not possible to buy any more downloads, though there is a mention that credits can be transferred to another download site run by digital music provider OD2. Coke operates the download service in six other European territories including Ireland, Northern Ireland, Greece, Switzerland and Italy. The closure, as of now, appears to be only for Coke's Great Britain service.

The demise of Mycokemusic caused some in the nascent market to ponder its significance. The inimitable Paul Myers, founder of Wippit, put in some parting shots in a brief statement, saying:

"In November 2005 MyCokeMusic was in fourth place in the UK market just behind Wippit according to xtn Data. Two years ago, before the launch of the Apple music store it was in the number one spot. And now sadly, has passed over to the other side.

"We mourn MyCokeMusic. It was yet another site that made us look good. Hampered by high pricing and DRM'd WMA files that famously timed out inexplicably, MyCoke's initial success caused our sales to jump as we acquired customers of theirs that jumped ship once they realised their files were not going to play on their MP3 players and after the initial free download with a can of Coke they were asked to pay much more per track than we charge. We were happy to sit in their slipstream and pick up their deserters."

I think we got the message, Mr Myers. Stick to carmelised sugar water.

Comments

[Froppo]

It's no wonder to me that Coke's digital music store is not going to hold up. Coke is good at producing beverages. It just isn't in the music business and doesn't have the experience that many of these other online distributors have. I doubt anyone will miss it!