Digital music store A digital music store is a business that sells digital audio files of music recordings over the Internet. Customers gain ownership of a license to use the files, in contrast to a music streaming service, where they listen to recordings without ...

s sell copies of

digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical samples in a continuous sequence. For example, in CD audio, sa ...

, for example in

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

and

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Win ...

file formats. Unlike

music streaming service A music streaming service is a type of streaming media service that focuses primarily on music, and sometimes other forms of digital audio content such as podcasts. These services are usually subscription-based services allowing users to stream d ...

s, which typically charge a monthly subscription fee to stream digital audio, digital music stores download songs to the customer's

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating platters coated with magnet ...

of their device. The customer will have the copy of the song permanently on their disk, provided the track is not deleted by the customer, the disk does not get physically damaged, or suffers from being corrupted. Major examples of digital music stores include

iTunes Store The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. It opened on April 28, 2003, as a result of Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,00 ...

Amazon Music Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and online music store operated by Amazon. Launched in public beta on September 25, 2007, in January 2008 it became the first music store to sell music without digital rights man ...

Bandcamp Bandcamp is an American online audio distribution platform founded in 2007 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with headquarters in Oakland, California, US. On March 2, 2022, Bandcamp ...

and

7digital 7digital Group Plc is a British publicly listed company that offers access to music, tracking and reporting for clients. London-based, 7digital provides end-to-end music services for the fitness, social media, DSPs, and gaming industries with b ...

. Different platforms may offer a different selection of digital audio, for example, some may only sell music that is of a particular genre, or some may only feature

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

content.

Comparison of digital music stores

Defunct retailers

MSN Music ''MSN Music'' was a part of MSN's web services. It delivered music news, music videos, spotlights on new music, artist information, and live performances of artists. The website also served as a digital music store from 2004 to 2008. History I ...

closed on November 14, 2006. Its DRM servers were originally scheduled to shutdown August 31, 2008, but they later relented and committed to keeping the DRM servers active through the end of 2011. *

Yahoo! Music Unlimited Yahoo! Music Unlimited was an on-demand online music service launched on May 10, 2005 and provided by Yahoo! Music. The service was discontinued on September 30, 2008. Service Users paid a subscription fee to access a library of over two millio ...

ceased operating on September 30, 2008. Users' purchases were transferred to

Rhapsody Rhapsody may refer to: * A work of epic poetry, or part of one, that is suitable for recitation at one time ** Rhapsode, a classical Greek professional performer of epic poetry Computer software * Rhapsody (online music service), an online m ...

. *

BuyMusic BuyMusic was a paid online music store run by Buy.com. History The store was launched in July 2003 with 300,000 tracks available and was designed to compete with iTunes Music Store because at the time of launch, Apple's store was limited to Ma ...

was a digital branch of

Buy.com Rakuten.com/shop was an e-commerce marketplace based in San Mateo, California. Previously known as Buy.com, it was founded in 1997 by Scott Blum. In 2010, it was purchased by Japanese company Rakuten, and rebranded as Rakuten.com.Claire Cain Mil ...

, launched around 2003, was later merged into the music section of Buy.com, and then shut down in late 2009. *

Walmart.com Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores from the United States, headquarter ...

operated an online music store, but discontinued it in 2011. *

Puretracks Puretracks was a Canadian online music store, which launched officially on October 14, 2003. Puretracks works as a behind-the-scene music partner. Now a division of Somerset Entertainment, owned by Fluid Music, Puretracks has U.S. and Canadian li ...

operated an online music store, but discontinued it in 2013. * Pono Music closed in July 2016. *

GhostTunes GhostTunes was an online music store and digital library. Founded by American country music singer Garth Brooks, Randy Bernard, and Chris Webb, it launched in September 2014 and featured singles and albums from a variety of artists, including Brook ...

closed on March 3, 2017. * Microsoft's Zune Music Marketplace was rebranded as

Xbox Music Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music or Zune Music Pass) is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10. The app is also associated with a now-discontinued music streaming service, Groov ...

in 2012. In 2015, Xbox Music purchasing was folded into the Windows Store and Groove Music app. The Windows Store was rebranded as

Microsoft Store Microsoft Store (formerly known as Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It started as an app store for Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps ...

in 2017, but then the Microsoft Store removed music sales from its store on December 31, 2017. * Technics Tracks, a reseller of 7digital's services in the UK and Germany, closed on June 30, 2018. * Onkyo Music, a reseller of 7digital's services, closed worldwide on October 6, 2019. *

CD Baby CD Baby, Inc. is an online distributor of independent music. The company was described as an "anti-label" by its parent company's Chief Operating Officer Tracy Maddux. The CD Baby music store was shut down in March 2020 with a statement that "C ...

closed its retail store on March 31, 2020. *

Google Play Music Google Play Music is a discontinued music and podcast streaming service and an online music locker operated by Google as part of its Google Play line of services. The service was announced on May 10, 2011; after a six-month, invitation-only be ...

began to shutdown its music store in September 2020 and completed its shutdown worldwide by December. * Acoustic Sounds shutdown its Super HiRez digital downloads service on December 31, 2020. *

TIDAL Tidal is the adjectival form of tide. Tidal may also refer to: * ''Tidal'' (album), a 1996 album by Fiona Apple * Tidal (king), a king involved in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim * TidalCycles, a live coding environment for music * Tidal (servic ...

closed its Download Store on October 22, 2022.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Music stores comparison Comparison ITunes Online services comparisons Online content distribution

Comparison of digital music stores

Defunct retailers

See also

Notes and references