Scratch another iTunes Music Store competitor off the list — Coca-Cola has announced plans to shutter British music download site mycokemusic.com after two and a half years in business.
Created in January 2004 through a joint venture with Loudeye Corp., Coca-Cola opened the site to help raise its brand profile with digital music download fans. It got off to a roaring start, quickly becoming the biggest music download service in the U.K. The music sold on mycokemusic.com is encoded with Microsoft’s Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.
Within six months Apple opened the U.K. version of its eminently popular iTunes Music Store and quickly overtook mycokemusic.com in sales. Since then mycokemusic.com has also been overtaken by other rivals, including Napster.
In a statement announcing the mycokemusic.com’s impending closure — scheduled for July 31, 2006 — Coca-Cola said that at the time of the site’s opening, the only way for the company to offer access to music downloads was to open its own store.
“That’s not true today and there is no need for Coke to continue to run a store,” said the statement.
Users who have credits on the service have until July 31, 2006 to use them.
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