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Small entertainment retailers must "specialise and innovate" into niche market areas in order to compete with larger companies offering cheap music and video internet downloads, the Entertainment Retailers Association (ERA) said yesterday.
The firm also predicted that new technologies and online forums such as independent download service 7digital, will allow smaller retailers to compete on the online marketplace.
Such white label retailers have already gone a long way towards levelling the playing field and a series of other players are waiting in the wings with technology platforms which will allow smaller retailers to compete even more.
Steve Redmond, spokesperson for the ERA, said: "Smaller retailers will have to do what they have always done - address the niches and the new ideas which bigger players cannot address or are not yet ready to address.
"A good example is the recently opened Rough Trade store in Londons Brick Lane. Much of its stock is simply unavailable in high street stores."
Earlier this month, Apple announced that it would lower prices of individual iTunes downloads in the UK, bringing prices in line with the rest of Europe.
And last week the BPI, in association with the Official Charts Company, announced that music download sales reached almost three million in Christmas week 2007 – more than doubling total sales from the same period in 2006.
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