is an online music and video store for the Japanese market operated by Sony Music Solutions, a part of

Sony Music Entertainment Japan , often abbreviated as SMEJ or simply SME, and also known as Sony Music Japan for short (stylized as ''SonyMusic''), is a Japanese music arm for Sony. Founded in 1968 as CBS/Sony, SMEJ is directly owned by Sony Group Corporation and is opera ...

(SMEJ). It is integrated into the Japanese version of Sony's

Music Center for PC Music Center for PC is a music player and transfer software for Microsoft Windows, developed by Sony and first released in 2017. Overview The software was created to replace Media Go and x-APPLICATION (Japanese: x-アプリ). Unlike those, Mu ...

software, and was also integrated into its predecessors such as

SonicStage SonicStage is a discontinued software product from Sony that is used for managing portable devices when they are plugged into a computer running Microsoft Windows. It comprises a music player and library manager, similar to iTunes, Windows Media ...

. It is now the official store for their

Walkman Walkman, stylised as , is a brand of portable audio players manufactured and marketed by Japanese technology company Sony since 1979. The original Walkman was a portable cassette player and its popularity made "walkman" an unofficial term for ...

devices.

History

When Sony released its NW-MS7

Memory Stick The Memory Stick is a removable flash memory card format, originally launched by Sony in late 1998. In addition to the original Memory Stick, this family includes the Memory Stick PRO, a revision that allows greater maximum storage capacity an ...

compatible digital

player, Sony Music Entertainment Japan started offering digital music through a store called bitmusic in December 1999. Bitmusic was merged into mora in July 2007. In 2000, Label Gate Co., Ltd. was formed, a joint venture of 17 Japanese record companies including

Avex Group is a Japanese entertainment conglomerate led by founder Max Matsuura and headquartered in Tokyo, Japan. Founded in 1988, the company manages J-pop talents like Ayumi Hamasaki and internet sensation PikoTaro. It has also shifted into other busi ...

, and

Universal Music Japan , often referred to as just Universal Music Japan or UMJ, is a Japanese subsidiary of the Universal Music Group founded in 1990. It is the largest subsidiary for a foreign company in the country regarding music distribution. The company is resp ...

, which would then operate the bitmusic store. The mora store was launched on April 1, 2004. At this time Label Gate was funded by 18 companies while 29 record labels were participant. Originally, music purchased from mora was exclusively in Sony's proprietary ATRAC3 format with

OpenMG OpenMG is a digital rights management (DRM) system developed by Sony for managing and protecting digital music data on a personal computer. It was originally designed for audio files in ATRAC3 format; the compliant software, e.g. Sony SonicStage ...

DRM DRM may refer to: Government, military and politics * Defense reform movement, U.S. campaign inspired by Col. John Boyd * Democratic Republic of Madagascar, a former socialist state (1975–1992) on Madagascar * Direction du renseignement milita ...

. A partner store called was also in operation, using

Windows Media Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The or ...

(WMA) codec and

Windows Media DRM Windows Media DRM or WMDRM, is a Digital Rights Management service for the Windows Media platform. It is designed to provide delivery of audio or video content over an IP network to a PC or other playback device in such a way that the distributor ca ...

encryption, and integrated into the Japanese version of Microsoft's

Windows Media Player Windows Media Player (WMP) is the first media player and media library application that was developed by Microsoft for playing audio, video and viewing images on personal computers running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as well as on ...

11 as the "recommended store" in Japan. On October 1, 2012, mora underwent a rehaul into a DRM free store, selling songs and music videos in

Advanced Audio Coding Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is an audio coding standard for lossy digital audio compression. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves higher sound quality than MP3 encoders at the same bit rate. AAC has been stan ...

(AAC) formats. The mora win service was also eliminated in the restructuring, with the DRM free store being integrated into the

Media Go Media Go is a discontinued free multimedia management application that runs on Microsoft Windows, developed by Sony Entertainment Network. Media Go manages content on Sony family products including Sony Mobile phones, the PlayStation Portable, Pla ...

service in Windows 8. One year later on October 17, 2013, mora began offering songs and albums as 24bit/96kHz

FLAC FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software p ...

files. Label Gate merged into Sony Music Solutions in 2021.

References

External links

* (In Japanese) Online music stores of Japan Sony Music Entertainment Japan Avex Group Universal Music Japan Mass media companies based in Tokyo {{Japan-company-stub

History

See also

References

External links