Entertainment Retailers

This is a new Power Player category this year, replacing the more narrowly-focused booksellers grouping. Though it might, at first glance, appear to be a hodge-podge of diverse specialty stores, there is more overlap and convergence than the companies’ traditional realms would indicate.

Nothing embodies this more than Borders’ current concept stores, which bring together
digital and Internet options with the hands-on approach to books, CDs and DVDs. Borders is
opening 14 of these prototype stores this year, combining 170,000 book, music and movie titles on the shelves with digital centers where customers can download e-books, mix and match songs on CDs and create electronic photo albums, family histories and the like.

Apple’s iTunes Store is now the largest seller of music, surpassing Wal-Mart, Amazon.com, Best Buy and Target. And iTunes broke the news in May that it would sell movie downloads, beginning the same day the titles are released on DVD.

Blockbuster, once viewed as a dinosaur lumbering toward extinction, has rejuvenated itself to the point where rentals constitute only half its revenues. Blockbuster’s Total Access program enables it to compete with Netflix and other electronic retailers, while video games constitute a growth area for store merchandise. With the release of the highly-anticipated “Grand
Theft Auto IV” earlier this year, for example, Blockbuster enjoyed a 4.5 percent share of the sales, compared with the 1 to 1.5 percent share it usually captures in game sales.