Never let it be said the music biz doesn't come up with some smart solutions to the hated world of digital distribution via the Net. Why take time to download a single track when Virgin Megastores can whizz you round a copy of the album in under 30 minutes?

That's what the retailer is claiming, anyway. It announced today a tie-in with PDQuick, a retail-to-home delivery service, in which punters can ring up or hope online, order a CD and have it sent straight round in, as Virgin's release tells us, "approximately 30 minutes".

The US-oriented service kicks off next Monday (18 September) with the release of Madonna's new long player, Music.

Over here in alternating gridlocked, fuel-famined Blighty, we're sceptical about Virgin's claim, but PDQuick claims a 13 year track record of delivery all sorts of items in around half an hour to "time-starved" customers. And presumably you'll get a couple of bucks knocked off the price if your order's late, a la Pizza the Hut.

"This partnership is part of our overall strategy to provide consumers with every means possible to get the music and entertainment products they want, when they want it," said Dave Alder, general manager and senior VP at Virgin Megastore Online, who presumably has begun to sense the collapse of high street retail empires, replaced by broadband Net-based entertainment services of the kind Sony plans to start rolling out next March. ®