Have you recently taken the New York subway, let’s say, to 23rd, 66th, 86th, or 103rd street?

If you exit at any of these stops you’ll notice some of your favorite entertainment stores vanished. Shut down. Closed for good.

At 23rd and 6th Avenue Barnes&Noble, gone! At Lincoln Center Tower Records‘ flagship store, gone! Over at 86th and 2nd Avenue Circuit City, vanished. And at 102rd and Broadway Blockbuster Video closed its doors, too.

Be it for books, music, movies, or consumer electronics (for anyone 30 years or older), those were among the brands you would likely turn to first - to discover, buy and play your entertainment retail. 

Turns out, over the past years and months, these once-marquee retailers all shut shop entirely or at least a good number of their stores. 

To be sure, this post is not a battle cry for or against physical retail. It is what is it.

But as brick-and-mortar entertainment stores disappear one after the other, how does this impact anyone’s entertainment discovery and purchasing decisions?

Let’s say, previously, at the  local record store, you probably ended up buying entire albums. Now, as you are purchasing music online, you’re more likely to buying songs individually, hand-picked, “by the glass”. The benefit: You only pay for what you really wanted and in turn come back for more.

On the other hand, if you are a DVD collector enjoying both movies on discs plus the colorful booklet, well, say good-by to that idea as online versions of your favorite movies only come ex glossy packaging. Yet you gain the ability of perfectly transparent markets. Shopping online for the best possible price  is infinitely much easier than walking from store to store trying to find the optimal deal.

And as to books? In this new online world of ours, traditional hardcover print editions are being replaced by digital versions often read by the author him or herself. On the upside, you now have none less then Bill Clinton or Barack Obama read to you in person “anywhere, anytime” as you pack your iPod, Zune, or any other portable player across the street. Admit it, a President of the United States offering you your own private reading was rather unlikely to happen at a brick-and-mortar book store.

Still not certain why this has traditional entertainment stores close one after the other? 

For one, not many (if any?) entertainment or consumer electronics retailers recently moved literally billions of units in a relatively short period of time. Yet online, sales and video views moving at increments of a “thousand million” gradually seems to become the norm:

• 1 billion downloaded apps into its iPhone success, Apple single-handedly turned the traditional cell phone category on its head. Much more than a portable phone with Web access, the iPhone instead matured into a genuine entertainment platform! 
• With 6+ billion song downloads - via 75 million credit card-linked user accounts - Apple celebrates six years of iTunes offerings at a size and scale that would make most brick-and-mortar retail brands blush. (Oh, and along the line, Apple(re)-invented the singles market and unshackled online music from copy-right protection).
• Although official sales figures have yet to be announced, Amazon’s Kindle-branded portable ebook reader generally appears to be a break-through success. Coupling digital books, newspapers, city guides and other useful information with always-on connectivity (via its 24/7 Sprint Wispernet), Amazon has made the Kindle way more than just a book gone digital. 
• Over at Comcast, the #1 US cable co recently touted its 11 billionth! VOD viewing session - four time the number of BigMacs sold in the US (3 billion), and 30 times the total number of Harry Potter books sold across the globe.

Essentially, beyond these gargantuan long tail statistics sits the fact that these new digital entertainment distributors actually accomplished much more than siphoning off from physical sales in favor of “liquid” digital distribution. They in turn provide a significantly enhanced entertainment user experience completely different from, well, your friendly neighborhood store. 

From stationary collecting and archiving (our favorite books, vinyls, and VHS tapes), to sharing and communicating about our entertainment picks anywhere, anytime (now all in a single format - digital), Apple et al fundamentally altered the business model of how we find, purchase, and consume entertainment content and devices, period.

Sounds like a good-buy to the resident electronics geek or music connoisseur at your neighborhood electronics or video store? Probably. Turns out, the wisdom of crowds may be an equal if not better gauge for what song, book, or movie is cool to get these days.

On the flip side, if this new digital entertainment experience of ours is one driven by joining hardware and content sales under a single brand (currently mostly Apple that is), consumer choice may find itself diminished.

That brings up the issue of what gatekeeper role anyone in this industry is looking to occupy.

What happens if you, let’s say, object to higher pricing for your favorite (online) music - without a “neighborhood store” to turn to, to shop for better pricing?

Is this “the (retail) king is dead. Long live the (digital) king”?