All Things Digital

Guess AC/DC and Garth Brooks have something in common after all. They’re both Wal-Mart-only artists. When AC/DC’s new album, “Black Ice,” arrives at market on Oct. 20, it will be sold exclusively in the U.S. at Wal-Mart and Sam’s Club.

The deal is an interesting one, and for a number of reasons. Unlike Brooks–or The Eagles or Journey, who have similar pacts with Wal-mart–AC/DC is still under contract to Sony (SNE) BMG’s Columbia Records. By inking such a deal, Columbia almost certainly risks alienating other retailers, who can’t be happy to see AC/DC’s first album of all-new material in eight years become a Wal-Mart exclusive. Among those retailers: Apple’s (AAPL) iTunes Music Store, where AC/DC has so far refused to distribute its music.

The deal also comes at a time when Wal-Mart and other big retailers are reducing their CD shelf space. It’s been estimated that Wal-Mart, Circuit City (CC) and Target (TGT) have cut between 5 percent and 23 percent of their CD inventory in the last two years. Which means that retail exposure, which was once a given for many bands, is becoming increasingly dear. So much so that it’s a negotiating point, and–in Wal-Mart’s case–enough of one for big-name acts to justify allowing the retailer to sell their new releases on an exclusive basis.

“Shelf space has shrunk so much over the last five years that for anyone to give you shelf space and exposure is a big deal,” Terry McBride, chief executive of Nettwerk Music Group, recently told the New York Times. “Should the labels be worried? There’s been a move away from the labels for a number of years now. And it’s not necessarily their fault. The shelf space to have those records sell just isn’t there. That’s the market reality.”

About the best thing to be said about Amazon Unbox, the mediocre, odiously restrictive, video download service the retailer launched last year, is that it was … er … Windows-only, I guess. Which, obviously isn’t saying much. Amazon (AMZN), of course, knows this better than anyone. Which is why the company is enhancing Unbox with a new video store that its customers may actually want to use. Called Amazon Video on Demand, the store streams movies and television programs just like a cable video-on-demand service. “For the first time, this is drop-dead simple,” Bill Carr, Amazon’s vice president for digital media told The New York Times (NYT). “Our goal is to create an immersive experience where people can’t help but get caught up in how exciting it is to simply watch a movie right from Amazon.com with a click of the button.”

Ah, one-click cinema. Seems that Amazon’s finally realized that there simply aren’t enough media junkies to support the download model it embraced with Unbox. “The people who pay to download video are extreme media-philes,” Forrester (FORR) analyst James McQuivey told Variety last year. “They are not the tip of an iceberg. They may grow their own spending, but there aren’t many people like that left. In the video space, iTunes (AAPL) is just a temporary flash while consumers wait for better ways to get video. They’re already coming.”

How will Rupert Murdoch, head of the world’s largest media empire and soon-to-be-owner of Dow Jones improve The Wall Street Journal?

• Make it better in what it does now. Financial news.

• Add more national and international news.
• Kill the New York Times? “Yes, that would be nice.”
• Expand the culture section.

How will he improve MySpace?

• Renew co-founder Chris DeWolfe’s contract for another two years.

• Roll out a “MySpace Platform” that will allow third-party developers to create applications for the social networking service.
• Kill Facebook?

Imagine that would be “nice” too.

U.S. officials fretting over the potential national-security risks that might accompany the foreign acquisition of disk-drive maker Seagate Technology can rest easy. The company’s not for sale.

Three days after the New York Times reported that an unnamed Chinese technology company was intent on acquiring Seagate, the hard-drive maker said that wasn’t really the case. “Seagate is not for sale,” said company spokesman Woody Monroy.

Seems the acquisition over which Seagate CEO Bill Watkins said “the U.S. government is freaking out” is largely a hypothetical one. “In general there has been speculation or discussion that there are some Chinese companies that would be interested in buying an American disk-drive company,” Monroy said. “I think Bill [Watkins] was speaking in general [terms to the New York Times]. There’s nothing, from our perspective, more to say about that other than to clarify that Seagate is not for sale. We haven’t had any offers or bids made for Seagate.”