Virgin Retail shut up shop in France

The Virgin France entertainment retail company is facing insolvency, with the record shop owner already terminating the lease on its Paris store and expected to meet with unions later today to discuss the fate of the firm's 1000 employees. And Spotify has confirmed it will stop selling downloads in Europe with the latest upgrade of the streaming service's player. The move, while interesting, is unlikely to have a major impact on the European downloads market, given that Spotify's sell-through MP3s service was always very low key, so much so many users wouldn't have even noticed it was there.