Capital Music Group (CMG) has set up shop in the virtual world of There. They will be setting up a nightclub where fans can listen to music and meet band members, but that's all been done before. The unique take here is to sell actual music through the virtual venue as well.
"It's an opportunity to see if this is a really good opportunity for merchandise to be sold," said Syd Schwartz, svp of digital strategy at CMG. "Like anywhere on the Web, you have to make it one click away."
As it turns out, the actual implementation doesn't quite match up with this ideal. When clicking on the in-world object, you'll be redirected to an e-commerce website. It will be interesting to see if this model succeeds or fails, and to discover the reasons behind it. If a significant amount of sales are generated this way, the sale of downloadable content directly from a virtual environment can't be far behind.
You're probably going to get really annoyed with all my corrections of what is "unique", but I'll just note that Sony BMG was selling music inside of Second Life almost a year ago. I'm not talking about linking to a website where you can buy a CD (they did that too), but actually selling hit songs for L$ that one could play for oneself and one's friends inside of Second Life. The SL technology was clunky of course (splicing together wav files) but it was a cool step for a conservative music company.
You also used the term "unique" in your article on Trilogy the other day. For what it's worth, I'd be careful in general of using "unique" and "first". This space is so big and varied, I always assume that someone has done something before. That's OK -- what's important is not to be first but to be great.