Other Music was a music retail store that sold

CDs The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

records A record, recording or records may refer to: An item or collection of data Computing * Record (computer science), a data structure ** Record, or row (database), a set of fields in a database related to one entity ** Boot sector or boot record, ...

and cassettes online and at their

brick-and-mortar Brick and mortar (also bricks and mortar or B&M) refers to a physical presence of an organization or business in a building or other structure. The term ''brick-and-mortar business'' is often used to refer to a company that possesses or leases r ...

location in the

Noho NoHo, short for North of Houston Street (as contrasted with SoHo), is a primarily residential neighborhood in Lower Manhattan in the New York City borough of Manhattan. It is bounded by Mercer Street to the west and the Bowery to the east, ...

neighborhood of

Manhattan Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...

New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...

. The store specialized in the sale of closely curated underground, rare and experimental music. The physical store was located at 15 E 4th St, New York, NY 10003 from 1995 to June 2016. In January 2007, Other Music announced that it planned to sell high-quality

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 ...

files for download without using any type of

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted works. ...

. This announcement follows similar moves made by other small online music retailers, including

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotland, Wales and North ...

-based Rough Trade, New York-based

Insound Insound was a discounted, online music store. Insound carried CD, vinyl, hard to find items, music accessories and merchandise. The company was located in New York, New York. History Insound was founded in 1998 by Christian Anthony, Matt Wishn ...

and New York-based Anthology Recordings. The announcement also coincided with the closing of

Tower Records Tower Records is an international retail franchise and online music store that was formerly based in Sacramento, California, United States. From 1960 until 2006, Tower operated retail stores in the United States, which closed when Tower Records ...

Lower Manhattan Lower Manhattan (also known as Downtown Manhattan or Downtown New York) is the southernmost part of Manhattan, the central borough for business, culture, and government in New York City, which is the most populated city in the United States with ...

location. According to Other Music co-owner Josh Madell, this closing signifies the growing hardship of selling music out of a physical store, especially considering his store's location just across the street from Tower. In August 2012, Other Music launched the record label Other Music Recording Company in a partnership with the

Oxford, Mississippi Oxford is a city and college town in the U.S. state of Mississippi. Oxford lies 75 miles (121 km) south-southeast of Memphis, Tennessee, and is the county seat of Lafayette County. Founded in 1837, it was named after the British city of Oxf ...

-based record label

Fat Possum Records Fat Possum Records is an American independent record label based in Water Valley and Oxford, Mississippi. At first Fat Possum focused almost entirely on recording previously unknown Mississippi blues artists (typically from Oxford or Holly Sprin ...

. Among the label's first releases was an album by Japanese musician

Shintaro Sakamoto Shintaro Sakamoto (born September 9, 1967) is a Japanese musician, singer/songwriter, and producer. He was a founding member and the frontman for the underground Japanese psychedelic rock band Yura Yura Teikoku. After the band's breakup in 2010, ...

. In May 2016, Other Music announced its plans to close on June 25. Co-owner Josh Madell cited rising rents and the changing face of the music industry as the reasons for the closure.NYC record store Other Music says goodbye after 20 years
''MSNBC''. June 22, 2016 Writing about Other Music's closure for ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...

'', Amanda Petrusich said, "In 1999, if you were the type of person who was looking for something a little different (more challenging, more sophisticated, more esoteric) from the schlock being peddled to the herds of dead-eyed automatons browsing the Tower Records up the block, then here was the store for you!"Petrusich, Amand
Why Record Stores Mattered
''The New Yorker''. June 22, 2016

References

External links

Wired News, January 22, 2007

The Village Voice, January 26, 2007
Famous Blind Singers & ComposersOther Music Website (still active)Spotify Music PromotionAnthology RecordingsRough Trade Digital
Online music stores of the United States Music retailers of the United States {{music-website-stub