Apple to sell music through UK Bebo network
Apple is tapping into the popularity of social networking sites, as it announces a deal on Wednesday to embed its iTunes internet music download service into the Bebo website. — From Wednesday, Bebo's 8.8m users in the UK and Ireland …
Context & Ripple Effects
The deal marks iTunes' first move off Apple's own storefront and into someone else's audience: from Wednesday, Bebo's 8.8m UK and Ireland users can buy music without leaving the network. It lands weeks before the reported Beatles catalogue agreement earlier in 2007 had already signalled Apple loosening iTunes' distribution, and days ahead of the confirmed June 29 iPhone launch, which gives the expansion a double purpose.
paidContent.org picked up the story on the same day, indicating that distribution partnerships — not just catalogue wins — were becoming the metric for Apple's music business.
First-order effects
- Bebo gains a commerce layer it did not have, monetising its 8.8m-strong UK and Ireland user base through embedded iTunes purchases.
- Apple acquires a social-network channel into the British and Irish market at no cost to its own storefront traffic.
Second-order effects
- Rival social networks now face pressure to strike equivalent embed deals with download stores, since Bebo alone can offer users in-network music buying.
- Record retailers in the UK lose further ground as purchase points migrate from destinations into the feeds where listeners already spend time.
Third-order effects
- If embedding proves out, digital music retail shifts structurally from a destination-store model to distributed storefronts across social platforms — with whoever owns the catalogue and checkout, here Apple, capturing the margin wherever the listener happens to be.
The trend: Digital music distribution is moving from standalone download stores toward embedded commerce inside social networks, with Apple extending iTunes' reach ahead of the iPhone launch.