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An online music store is an online business which sells audio files, usually music, on a per-song and/or subscription basis. The realization of the market for these services grew widespread around the time of Napster, a music and file sharing service created by Shawn Fanning that made a major impact on the Internet scene during the year 2000. Some services have tethered downloads, meaning that playing songs requires an active membership. Image File history File links Information. ... Online means being connected to the Internet or another similar electronic network, like a bulletin board system. ... Second version (revised 2001) of Napster logo: Cat wearing headphones. ... File sharing is the activity of making files available to other users for download over the Internet, but also over smaller networks. ... Shawn Napster Fanning (born November 22, 1980, Brockton, Massachusetts[1]) developed Napster, the first popular peer-to-peer filesharing platform, in 1998. ...

Overview

In 2000 Sony became the second company to make music from one of the major labels available for sale on the internet, with 'The Store'. However, it was not the first online music sharing company, because the first one was shut down in a lawsuit under the DMCA. The big record companies were apprehensive to license their catalogs to outside companies and refused the late 90's requests of MP3.com, Cductive and eMusic (then called Goodnoise) to sell digital song downloads. They eventually decided to start their own services, which they could control directly. MP3. ... Cductive was a pioneering online music store that was founded in 1996 by Thomas V. Ryan, John Rigos, and Alan Manuel. ... eMusic is an online music store that operates by subscription. ...

Sony's service turned out to be an ill-conceived affair. Not only was the service difficult for consumers to navigate and use, Sony's expensive pricing of US$3.50 per song track turned off many early adopters of the service. Furthermore, as MP3 Newswire pointed out in its review of the service, users were actually only renting the tracks for that $3.50. After a certain point the files expired and could not be played again without repurchase. The service quickly failed. MP3 Newswire is one of the earliest news sites focused on digital media technology. ...

Undaunted, the record industry tried again. Universal Music Group and Sony teamed up with a service called Duet, later renamed PressPlay. EMI, AOL/Time Warner and BMG teamed up with MusicNet. Again, both services struggled, hampered by high prices and heavy limitations on how downloaded files could be used once paid for. In the end, consumers chose instead to flock to the free file sharing programs, which were far more convenient to use and also free to use. pressplay was an online music store created by as a joint venture between Universal Music Group and Sony Music Entertainment. ...

Non-major label services like eMusic, Cductive and Listen.com (now Rhapsody.com) sold the music of independent labels and artists to keep in the game, however digital music downloads began to gain popularity after the launch of the iTunes Music Store and the creation of portable music and MP3 players. This enabled music fans to take their music with them, wherever they went. eMusic is an online music store that operates by subscription. ... Cductive was a pioneering online music store that was founded in 1996 by Thomas V. Ryan, John Rigos, and Alan Manuel. ... Electronic music is a loose term for music created using electronic equipment. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into ITunes. ... A digital audio player (DAP) is a device that stores, organizes and plays digital music files. ...

Recently, there has been a boom in "boutique" music stores that cater to specific audiences. For example, Beatportand Bleep cater to the electronic music community. Magnatune, Amie Street, and Mindawn are other examples of sites that cater to specific audiences. Another trend in music download sites include Fonogenic which combine the ideas of the slective editorial nature of an MP3 blog with online music stores which provide instant access to buy and download songs. Beatport is a U.S.-based online music store based in Denver, Colorado that specializes in dance music and remixes. ... A bleep censor is used to filter out inappropriate audio content during a live United States the Federal Communications Commission has the constitutional right to regulate indecent broadcasts. ... Magnatune is a small Berkeley, California–based independent record label, founded in spring 2003 by John Buckman, then-CEO of e-mail software company Lyris. ... Amie Street is a music website created in 2006 by Brown seniors in Providence, Rhode Island. ... Mindawn is an online music store that, unlike most major services of its type, offers its songs in lossless FLAC format without copy protection of any kind. ... Fonogenic is an online music store founded in 2004. ... An MP3 blog is a type of weblog in which the creator makes music files, normally in the MP3 format, available for download. ...

As of May 2006, the largest online music service is iTunes Music Store with 61% of the market followed by eMusic with 12%.^[1] It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into ITunes. ... eMusic is an online music store that operates by subscription. ...

Compared to file swapping

Much controversy surrounds this issue, so many or perhaps all of these points are disputed.

Advantages

• More respectful to copyright law as interpreted by groups like the RIAA.
  • Decreases chances of legal disadvantages.
  • Avoids some social stigmas and moral regrets that some people have.
• More consistent and higher quality meta-data, because the entering of the meta-data is more centralized and done by groups with financial interests.
• Companies sometimes behave more accountably to users than other users.
• Centralized repository of music makes it easier to find the songs you want.
  • Notably Apple Computer CEO Steve Jobs claimed in his introduction of the iTunes Music Store that file swappers get paid less than minimum wage for the work required to download audio.

The RIAA Logo. ... Steven Paul Jobs (born February 24, 1955) is the co-founder and CEO of Apple and was the CEO of Pixar until its acquisition by Disney. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into ITunes. ...

Disadvantages

• Some stores cannot be accessed on a computer running GNU/Linux.
• Many major online music stores only offer music in one audio format.
• Most online music stores sell music encoded in a poor quality lossy format, such as 128 kbit/s [aac] used by the iTunes Store, which degrades the music quality considerably.
• Users do not have a "hard copy" of purchased music, such as a CD, for archiving although music can usually be backed up to a CD or portable music player.
• Some stores do not provide artwork or liner notes.
• Stores have limited catalogs, because of more attention paid to copyright concerns.
  • Because file sharing costs nothing, any pay service essentially costs infinitely many times more than file swapping.
• Some stores use Digital Rights Management, which limits use of music on certain devices (for example, most iTunes Store tracks can only be played on computers and iPod digital audio players). The restrictions vary between different services, and sometimes even between different songs from the same service.

Unix systems filiation. ... Digital rights management (DRM) is an umbrella term referring to technologies used by publishers or copyright owners to control access to or usage of digital data or hardware, and to restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work or device. ... The iTunes Store is an online business run by Apple Inc. ... iPod (fifth generation) in Apple Universal Dock, iPod nano (second generation) and iPod shuffle (second generation) iPod is a brand of portable media players designed and marketed by Apple and launched in 2001. ...

Related Pages

• Comparison of online music stores

This article or section does not adequately cite its references or sources. ...

External links

• Priced to Lose? Labels Sell Music Online - August 3, 2000 MP3 Newswire article on the major label's first paid download efforts.
• http://www.museekster.com/legalmusic.htm
• Review of New Online Music Sites
• Song List - mapping of songs to multiple online music stores.