One hot singing hound from Hot Topic

While we are dealing with hot topics one particular Hot Topic got our attention. This clothing and accessories based retailer, with rich taste for alternative music, has launched its first online music store called ShockHound which offers rich musical content including millions of mp3s and videos, bands merchandise and quality editorial content amongst other things.


On ShockHound you can find almost all major record labels standing next to independent ones. But things get even better. The word is that artists themselves will be able to upload and sell their own music directly from this service with no need for a middle man called record label. Nice.
One other unique feature of this service will be already mentioned editorial section. It will host editorial team controlled and music related news, reviews, interviews and videos amongst other things. Despite the known fact that Hot Topic mostly likes the alternative rock flavor on ShockHound you will be able to find music from all genres. This opens the new question. Will it compete with iTunes and Amazon store? Why not? It has a wide network of consumers, established name and one key advantage regarding musical content. Apparently all ShockHound songs are DRM free. Each song can be downloaded directly from the website for 99 cents.
Well although it seems like a promising service we cant avoid the fact that it is new and has a pretty late start comparing to well established and already mentioned giants in this field. We give it a Hot Wink to keep it warm for the market battles yet to come.