The road to the inevitable digital lifestyle is a rocky one. Retailers are rightfully fearing for their lives while sellers are stuck in the middle between retailers wanting exclusives and online shoppers demanding more access to content. The most interesting battle in this arena is actually happening with comic books. Publishers are finding rapidly growing success with digital books on tablets and smartphones, but the customer base isn’t yet big enough to support the publishers so they still have to appease brick and mortar retail.

This battle was lost years ago by music publishers. Record labels fought hard, but the truly dynamic and reigning method for acquiring music now is via iTunes, the Amazon Mp3 store, and streaming options. That’s not to say CDs don’t still sell because they do, but that business has lost its attractiveness and feels like a necessity now to make sure music is available to those that haven’t quiet jumped online yet. The statistics may still show a majority of sales happening in “classic” CD format, but it’s a given that the nail is in that coffin.