Event 2 review: Mediaport

• Posted by Steve Spencer

Article posted on Apr 23

I want to thank everyone who came out to our April Utah Tech Spotlight event. This month we spotlighted Mediaport, makers of a a digital content distribution kiosk, or “music ATM.” As many of us have seen recently, the parking lots of Blockbuster or Holywood Video continue to become more and more empty (although they still never seem to have the movie you’re looking for), while redbox units are popping up all over the place. So the question is, as music sales continue to decline, will music stores continue to become more and more empty, just like the video stores have been? Perhaps, but Mediaport offers an exciting solution to not only help bolster up music sales for struggling music stores, but to offer a wider selection of music and other media in locations where a full-blown store is impracticle.

Due to the large amount of data that can be held on a decent sized disk array, a Mediaport unit can hold far more music than all of the shelf space in the rest of the store. This combined with the fact that the vast quantity of music still being purchased is 4 years old or older, allows a store to instantly offer the selection that they couldn’t before. Think about it… how often have you walked into a music store, ready to buy, but walked out empty handed?

It all sounds good, but is it just a theory, or have the proven it? Well, the stores where the units have been placed have showed that roughly 10% of all revenue coming through the store is coming through the kiosk.

There is no question that media purchasing and consumption will go through some major changes over the next several years. I think there is no question that 5 years from now we will all be streaming media over the airwaves to our cell phone/ media player combos. But there is an interim step… not everyone adopts that fast, and technology never seems to become ubiquitous as quickly as it seems. Mediaport is currently the lead player to capitalize on the “redbox” step of music and many other forms of digital media (podcast, movies, etc.) If they play their card right in that transition, they could definitely be in the mix for wherever media is headed.

They’re here, they’re hip, and they’re hiring, and I for one am happy to have a Utah based company at the forefront of such an exciting industry.

Want to learn more? Check out the podcast to hear an interview with John from Mediaport. Thanks again for attending.

• Posted in Cool Utah Tech, Past Events