The Latin music scene has been slow to adapt the digital download model; that is all about to change. Univision Communications, the largest Spanish-language media company in the U.S., is about to launch a digital store.
They are planning to have it running by June 9, to take advantage of the World Cup traffic. The music base itself will be a minimum of 1.1 million tracks across all genres, with a core base of 55,000 Latin songs. There plans in the works to add thousands more.
Univision.com, already offers physical albums and ringtones so it was the next obvious step to take in their strategy. There is room for huge growth as there were 16.2 million digital albums sold in 2005 with only 124,000 of them being Latin, according to Nielsen SoundScan. Whereas 6 percent of all music sales in the U.S. overall were Latin for the same time period.
Bruno Lopez, vice president and general manager of Univision Online said that there are agreements currently in place with the four major labels and is working on more deals with the indie market.
The majority of tracks on univision.com will be offered for 99 cents, while most albums will retail for $9.99.
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