John Trickett, CEO of Immergent, a new online digital record store, flipped the switch on the live site Sunday morning at the end his opening presentation at the National Assn. of Recording Merchandiser annual convention at the Chicago Hilton.
Now officially opened for business in a beta form, the store, which features 8 million songs from all the majors and most of the independents, mixes social media functions.
“We will allow people to share music with one another–legally,” Trickett said, although he didn’t provide details on that during his presentation
The site also allows visitors to build their own playlists as well as allowing friends to intermingle with one another and have conversations via each user’s own web cam.
Trickett also said that the store planned to have artists using that feature as well by setting up artists rooms that can hold up to 200 people at a time, who would be there in anticipation of their favorite artist showing up via webcam at an appointed hour.
Furthermore, Trickett said that independent artists can load their own music into the store themselves and get paid 70 cent a track for each sale. The site will also tell customers that the are interested in particular artists when they are playing live in their towns and prompt them to buy a ticket to the show, directly from the site, thanks to an affiliation with a ticket service.
Trickett said that the idea for the Immergent store grew out of his 10 years experience in running the Immergent label.
