Remember People’s Music Store? The UK startup launched in early 2009, and let music fans set up and run their own digital music stores. It signed a number of independent labels to offer their catalogues, and later added Universal Music Group.However, co-founder Ged Day has written to users explaining that the store will go offline this Friday. “Unfortunately, [co-founder] Ed and I have made the difficult decision to take our company in a different direction and so have decided to take peoplesmusicstore.com offline,” he writes.”This is something that has loomed over us for a while now, and I am happy to say that we really did hold on for as long as we could given the circumstances, but it has now reached the point where we must consider alternative routes.”We always liked the idea of turning fans into curators or storekeepers, and while People’s Music Store may have failed to make it pay off, we wouldn’t be surprised to see these ideas reappearing – maybe on something tied more closely into Facebook.You could also argue that social music retail has moved more in the direction of recommendations though, as seen in Mflow, Spotify’s mixture of recommendations and retail links, and now Apple’s Ping.Still, People’s Music Store was a good idea, so we’re looking forward to see what Day and his colleagues come up with next.
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Tools: Kaiber
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