Recently, there’s been a surge of discount brokers entering the Singapore market. We have seen something similar happened before in the music and book industries. Let me refresh your memory. #1 – Music My first exposure to pop music was through radio and cassette tapes. Not sure how many of you can relate to the latter. Soon, music albums were sold in compact discs (CDs) which offer higher audio fidelity. Remember those portable CD players – Discman, anybody? Stores like Popular’s CD-Rama, Sembawang Music, Gramophone, HMV and Tower Records were a staple at shopping malls. They were key distribution nodes for the sale of music records, fans patronise these stores and monetarily support their idols mostly through the sales of CDs. Then iTunes came along. It disrupted the original distribution system which had 2 major flaws; Cost ineffectiveness: Music albums are often a bundle of chart-topping hit songs with several...