Tesco: Every little (effort to kill Amazon, Spotify) helps
Supermarket titan to flog ebooks, stream music
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With a £64bn turnover and £3.9bn operating profit, Tesco was always going to make a big splash when it dived into the online media delivery market. We're just going to have to wait a bit longer to find out what it will be doing.
The supermarket announced some new appointments and its new branding - but much remains under wraps. Tesco acquired 80.25pc of UK video-on-demand service Blinkbox in April 2011 for £3m and will use the brand to flog digital books (Blinkboxbooks) and digital music (Blinkboxmusic). The retailer snapped up music streamer We7 and ebook retailer Mobcast last year. Blinkbox itself will continue as an a la carte TV and movie streaming service with no subscription required.
Mark Bennett moves from Sainsbury's to head up Blinkbox music while Facebook's face to the retail sector in Europe, Gavin Sathianathan, becomes manager of Blinkboxbooks. Blinkbox’s Director of Advertising Scott Deutrom to lead Clubcard TV venture
So what of Tesco's plans to piggyback onto Ultraviolet, Hollywood's ambitious cloud service? Tesco already has a buy physical, get digital initiative for 16 million UK Tesco Clubcard holders, but this uses its own licensing arrangements rather than UltraViolet.
Last summer, Tesco's Rob Salter described UV as "too complicated" - although he didn't elaborate on which bit was confusing whom exactly.
"We're part of the UltraViolet consortium, and we've got the vision they've got - giving people access to movies they've bought, nothing has changed there," a Blinkbox spokesperson told The Reg.
Tesco has the clout to negotiate some serious deals with Hollywood, and with so many Clubcard members, Tesco can perform all manner of interesting experiments. When, that is, it eventually gets round to revealing the new services. ®
COMMENTS
Life moves so fast...
...I can remember the old days when Tesco specialised in horse meat lasagne.
Re: more Tesco digital stuff
"Actually Waitrose price-match Tescos specifically "
To judge by the eye-watering expense when I reluctantly reach the tills in Tesco, it's Tesco who price match to Waitrose. Personally I try and do as much of my shopping as possible at Aldi.
But, on a more important note, have you seen? This very day I've sublimed from a copper vulture to a stainless steel one! Which puts me on a par with Eadon, and thus devalues the honour. A bit like getting a knighthood, and realising what a despicable combination of crooks, incompetents, and civil service time-servers make up the others.
Re: Half-hearted.
same old story with all of these services... the content available on smart TVs and consoles is always a fraction of what's available on PC.
When will the industry learn that restricting access to their content (while at the same time spending a fortune on marketing) simply drives people to piracy.
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