PCWorld reports that Motorola will be shutting down their online music store in India and Singapore next month. Currently, there doesn’t seem to be any apparent plans to shutdown their China operations.

Motorola plans to close its Soundbuzz music store in Singapore and its MotoMusic India service next month, according to messages posted on their respective Web sites.

“We regret to inform you that the Soundbuzz music store will be closing down in July 2009,” the message on the Soundbuzz Web site said, adding the store will shut and all user accounts will be closed on July 15. It advised users to download all of their purchased music and burn it to CD-ROM by that date.

A message on the Web site of MotoMusic India also announced plans to close the site on July 15. A similar site in Australia was closed on Feb. 1.

A Soundbuzz representative could not immediately be reached for comment.

Motorola acquired Soundbuzz in January 2008 for an undisclosed amount, hoping to make it the biggest online music store in Asia. The acquisition was meant to complement its MotoMusic service, which was only available in China at that point.

Besides Singapore, Soundbuzz had established operations in Australia and India. While the remaining Singapore and Indian music stores will soon close, the MotoMusic site in China appears to be unaffected.

Looks like the economy is so bad that brand retailers are now looking to sell their products at the lowest common denominated locations. The Pasar Malams. While this is definitely good for the consumer as we no longer need to travel so far to purchase their goods, this might actually be a bad thing for the companies. Not only is the brand value of the product going to be diminished, in order to compete with the other pasar malam store vendors, these retailers have to reduce the prices of their goods, pushing it closer to being an inferior good (in economic terms) that will be subjected to higher price sensitivity in the long run.

From Straits Times

BIG-NAME retailers Popular Holdings and John Little are stomping on new turf – night markets in the heartlands.

Several pasar malam are now hawking their merchandise – items ranging from children’s books from Popular’s distributor companies to toiletries, household items and other daily essentials from the department store giant.

These retailers began putting their goods within strolling distance of the suburban homes of their customers from about a year ago, expanding the variety of wares on sale. Many of these booths are open even in the day.