Tower to Open Digital Music Store

Music retailer Tower Records will unveil its digital music download service on Tuesday, complete with 1.2 million tracks priced at 99 cents per song. Powered by Puretracks, tracks would be provided in Windows Media Format, Reuters reports.

As with the company's brick-and-mortar stores, Tower's digital store will provide a range of music across many genres not commonly found in other retail chains. Additionally, the company plans to offer the files encoded at a higher bitrate to increase sound quality.

Any player that can support protected Windows Media files would be able to use the service, which means users of the iPod cannot playback Tower's tracks on their players. Songs would be downloaded from the Tower Web site, and would be burnable to CD.

Tower plans to prominently market the download service to its customers in its 82 retail stores, such as offering deals that would bundle CD purchases with digital downloads. Other discounts would also be offered, the company says.

The new store joins an ever-growing lineup of Windows-based music services that are fighting for a small chunk of the digital music market. According to data from the NPD Group, Windows Media-based services make up less than a fifth of total sales. Apple's iTunes currently leads the market by a wide margin.