Digital Stores Moves Into Urban Music

4 x MOBO Nominated Chipmunk The First In A New Roster

21.09.09: – Digital Stores, the leading online retail service provider for entertainment brands in the UK, has announced a move into the urban music sector. With the likes of The Beatles, The Prodigy, Queen, Stereophonics and Placebo already forming a major part of its music portfolio, the company has made a conscious decision to build e-commerce for the new set of UK urban superstars that are waiting to break through.

First out of the trap will be Chipmunk, with Digital Stores building the Sony signing’s first ever direct-to-consumer online store. Grime scene forerunner Chipmunk will release his first album for Sony, ‘I Am Chipmunk’, on October 12th and the online store will feature tour merchandise and exclusive fan-only releases. The timing is prescient as Chipmunk has just been nominated for four MOBO Awards.

With other urban acts to follow, Digital Stores Commercial Director Simon Coates is confident that the move will reap its own rewards. Said Simon, “As far as the urban music sector goes, we’ve been interested spectators up till now. In my experience, it’s traditionally been quite a challenge to sell urban music online, as file sharing and the free exchange of music between peers has been the norm. In fact, in many ways, urban music has been ahead of its time.

“However, we now know that the time is right and e-commerce is now all about speaking directly to the fans. It’s also brilliant to become part of the team whose stated aim is to make Chipmunk into an international superstar.”

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ABOUT DIGITAL STORES:

Digital Stores is the UK’s leading direct-to-consumer retail services company, providing entertainment brands with complete end-to-end e-commerce, live-event ticketing, interactive marketing, data collection & fulfilment services.

The company builds and runs online stores for globally recognised, high profile entertainment and character brands including:

* The Beatles
* Queen
* Cartoon Network
* ITV

The state of the art e-commerce system allows fans to purchase a wide variety of products from clients’ stores in one single transaction, including:

* Tickets
* Digital Downloads
* Merchandise
* CDs & DVDs

The company also owns and operates the award winning, independent online retailer recordstore.co.uk.