Insound was a discounted,

online 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 ...

. Insound carried CD,

vinyl Vinyl may refer to: Chemistry * Polyvinyl chloride (PVC), a particular vinyl polymer * Vinyl cation, a type of carbocation * Vinyl group, a broad class of organic molecules in chemistry * Vinyl polymer, a group of polymers derived from vinyl m ...

, hard to find items, music accessories and merchandise. The company was located in

New York, New York New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the Uni ...

History

Insound was founded in 1998 by Christian Anthony, Matt Wishnow and Ari Sass. Wishnow and Sass had worked together at Elektra. The site took six months to build and first launched on March 1, 1999. The company gradually gained notoriety through its reviews, online

zine A zine ( ; short for '' magazine'' or '' fanzine'') is a small-circulation self-published Self-publishing is the publication of media by its author at their own cost, without the involvement of a publisher. The term usually refers to writ ...

s and promotion of then-small bands such as

Death Cab for Cutie Death Cab for Cutie is an American rock band formed in Bellingham, Washington, in 1997. The band is currently composed of Ben Gibbard (vocals, guitar, piano), Nick Harmer (bass), Dave Depper (guitar, keyboards, backing vocals), Zac Rae (keyboar ...

. Insound also gained visibility through hosting events at

CMJ CMJ Holdings Corp. is a music events and online media company, originally founded in 1978, which ran a website, hosted an annual festival in New York City, and published two magazines, ''CMJ New Music Monthly'' and ''CMJ New Music Report''. Th ...

and

South by Southwest South by Southwest, abbreviated as SXSW and colloquially referred to as South By, is an annual conglomeration of parallel film, interactive media, and music festivals and Convention (meeting), conferences organized jointly that take place in m ...

(SXSW). Insound became profitable in 2003. In 2008, more than half of the company's sales come from selling vinyl records, which have made a resurgence in the past decade. In January 2008, the retailer was acquired by

Alternative Distribution Alliance Alternative Distribution Alliance (ADA) is a music distribution company owned by Warner Music Group, which represents the rights to various independent record labels. ADA provides "independent artist and label partners with access to the resource ...

, an independent distributor owned by the

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp. ( d.b.a. Warner Music Group, commonly abbreviated as WMG) is an American multinational entertainment and record label conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the " big three" recording companies and t ...

. On March 19, 2015 ADA disbanded Insound but in October of the same year, the online music retailer was revived by the

and was selling a broad-range of music related products at a discounted price. By April 2020, Insound redirected to the Warner Music Group Official Store.

References

{{Reflist

External links

Insound.com (redirects)
Online music stores of the United States