Woolies: download launch within weeks; chain enters download scrum with 'easy-to-use' pitch

Music Week, September, 2004 by Sonia Soltani

Woolworths is putting the emphasis on "user-friendly" as it prepares to capitalise on its market-leading High Street status with the launch of a digital download service.

The new service, Downlo@d at woolworths.co.uk, is due to launch "in the next few weeks", and will target the Woolworths and MVC chains' extensive customer bases with a service that will offer not only downloads but physical CDs and ringtones.

"What we want to do is to make it easy for our customers to just click on the rifles they want and be able to buy it as a download, a ringtone or have a compact disc shipped to their home--all this in one transaction," says Woolworths and MVC head of commercial Jim Batchelor.

The retailer promises that "hundreds of thousands" of tracks will...