One response to my column about Other Music's upcoming digital music store came from Dave Ullrich, who runs Zunior.com. His site takes an approach similar the one Other Music's will employ, with a few exceptions:
- The site only carries music from Canadian labels (the site is based in Toronto).
- The code for the site was "cobble[d] together [from] several open source tools."
- Ullrich pulls most of the album blurbs from online indie reviews (sources credited), but he writes some himself.
- 80% of the stock is available in both FLAC and 192 Kbps MP3. The remaining 20% is available in either FLAC or MP3.
- Zunior currently carries 778 music products from 40 labels, a few indie -- as in no label -- bands, and a few releases on Zunior Records. Notables include Broken Social Scene, The New Pornographers and Final Fantasy.
As for the name Zunior.com, it has nothing to do with the Microsoft Zune... or does it?
I asked Ullrich about the coincidence, and he responded,
Hmmm.... I can see how "Zune" and "Zunior" both existing in the still-rather-small digital music market might cause some degree of consumer confusion, and that even a judge might see it that way. Imagine what he could do with that site using a Microsoft trademark settlement as seed money.
(As an aside, the last company I heard about being named after someone's nickname was Napster. Can anyone think of others?)
