Passionate music fans these days want their music when they want it, where they want it and how they want it, so Chris Ankrah, a music businessman has opened a well-stocked retail outlet at La in Accra, called The Media Store.

It that will allow customers to download music directly to their mobile phones and other portable players. The Media Store, located six blocks away from the City Phones shop on the Osu-La Road, started operation last week. It now stocks over 2,000 titles covering genres like highlife, hiplife, reggae, jazz, hip hop, rock, world music and blues on two floors.

“It is not officialy opened but people have been dropping in and we have been serving them. So far, those we have dealt with have been delighted about the large space for display of works, the big variety of stuff in here and the fact that there is the opportunity for in-store downloads.

We have a lot more stock to move in over the next couple of weeks,” Ankrah told Showbiz in the store last Friday.
He has been in the music business for about 21 years and has at various times represented major record labels like Warner Brothers, Gallo Music, Sony, EMI Africa and Universal in this country. His Citirock outfit at Osu houses a CD manufacturing plant and film production facilities.

“Media Store has been on the drawing board for about ten years. We knew long ago the cassette era was going to end so we put a CD plant in place. Technology has moved on and CD manufacturing is not a viable business now. So instead of manufacturing CDs we’ve decided to combine old media and new media.

“By old media I mean physical products like cassettes and CDs. The new media are the new storage devices whic play both audio and video. We intend to make Media Store a vital point for the collection of Ghanaian music recorded between the period just before independence and now. They can be downloaded here onto the new media but those who want to stick with the old media will have them here.”

Media Store covers 320 square metres of store space which Ankrah says should make producers happy because their products would be adequately displayed.

For highlife lovers, Media Store for the moment has material from artistes like Nana Tuffuor, Akwasi Ampofo Adjei, King Bruce, Amakye Dede, Rex Omar, Dan Davies, Ekow Micah, Pozo Hayes, Princess Cynthia, Joe Mensah and Akosua Adjepong.

There are also historically important collections like Akofena, the tribute album to the late Otumfuo Opoku Ware II featuring Gyedu Blay Ambolley, Pat Thomas, Jewel Ackah, Nana Tuffuor and Felix Owusu.

According to Ankrah, Citirock has a huge library of Ghanaian music that it was contracted to manufacture and not to distribute. He is in touch with rights owners who would want to re-issue some albums to be stocked in Media Store.

“We want to pay serious attention to the re-issuing of back catalogues because we have the means to pick up the masters and manufacture copies. There is so much wonderful music from the past that must be heard again and we seriously want that area of work to be our specialty.”

Media Store, however, does not intend to plug old stuff alone. It has plans to organise and host monthly press launches of new products by young artistes.

Digital music and portable devices have changed the way people all over the world consume and indeed get hold of music.

Chris Ankrah hopes his Media Store would set a pace in how our record shops perform in the iPod age.