The products available at the moment are being supplied by Thump Records, best known for putting out collections like Lowrider Oldies and Old School, but the service is looking to expand and is inviting artists and labels to try it out for themselves. If you're getting visions of weird Midwestern truck stops and their rotating rack of Jimmy Buffett CDs, you're dead on, but this is the first time a partnership as big as 7-Eleven has been made.
For its part, Mall Jamz is essentially a turnkey seller, providing the display and the market research to best fit a particular store. With this recent 7-Eleven partnership, the company has discovered that oldies collections seem to be selling the best, although they do claim they look at neighborhood demographics to get a feel for what regular shoppers might be interested in.
We'd be a bit weary of utilizing market research to sell music if it wasn't for the fact this is 7-Eleven we're talking about here where pretty much anyone with change in their pocket is welcome and ready to walk in. While the genre classifications are a bit laughable, it's the sales that matter, and that certainly seems to be working.
Non-traditional sales accounted for 36.3 percent of sales in 2010 and while most of that was probably iTunes, places like Starbucks and, you guessed it, 7-Eleven were certainly helping it along. While the rest of the world is transitioning into digital, there is still a (shrinking) market for CDs. It's difficult for us to imagine purchasing an album at a 7-Eleven, but for some, it might be the perfect chance to pick up some new freestyle hits.
