Streaming media is multimedia that is delivered and consumed in a continuous manner from a source, with little or no intermediate storage in network elements. Streaming refers to the delivery method of content, rather than the content itself.
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 gaining ownership. Customers pay either for each recording or on a subscription basis. Online music stores generally also offer partial streaming previews of songs, with some songs even available for full length listening. They typically show a picture of the album art or of the performer or band for each song. Some online music stores also sell recorded speech files, such as podcasts, and video files of movies.
The open music model is an economic and technological framework for the recording industry based on research conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It predicts that the playback of prerecorded music will be regarded as a service rather than as individually sold products, and that the only system for the digital distribution of music that will be viable against piracy is a subscription-based system supporting file sharing and free of digital rights management. The research also indicated that US$9 per month for unlimited use would be the market clearing price at that time, but recommended $5 per month as the long-term optimal price.
Amazon Prime Video, or simply Prime Video, is an American subscription video on-demand over-the-top streaming and rental service of Amazon offered as a standalone service or as part of Amazon's Prime subscription. The service primarily distributes films and television series produced by Amazon Studios and MGM Holdings or licensed to Amazon, as Amazon Originals, with the service also hosting content from other providers, content add-ons, live sporting events, and video rental and purchasing services.
JioSaavn is an Indian online music streaming service and a digital distributor of Hindi, English, Malayalam, Bengali, Kannada, Tamil, Telugu, Bhojpuri and other regional Indian music around the world. Since it was founded in 2007 as Saavn, the company has acquired rights to over 8.0 crore music tracks in 15 languages. JioSaavn is a freemium service; basic features are free with advertisements or limitations, while additional features, such as improved streaming quality and music downloads for offline listening, are offered via paid subscriptions.
Deezer is a French online music streaming service. It allows users to listen to music content from record labels, as well as podcasts on various devices online or offline.
Spotify is a proprietary Swedish audio streaming and media services provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. It is one of the largest music streaming service providers, with over 433 million monthly active users, including 188 million paying subscribers, as of June 2022. Spotify is listed on the New York Stock Exchange in the form of American depositary receipts.
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 digital copyright restricted songs on-demand from a centralized library provided by the service. Some services may offer free tiers with limitations, such as advertising and limits on use. They typically incorporate a recommendation engine to help users discover other songs they may enjoy based on their listening history and other factors, as well as the ability to create and share public playlists with other users.
Groove Music is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.
Mixcloud is a popular British online music streaming service that allows for the listening and distribution of radio shows, DJ mixes and podcasts, which are crowdsourced by its registered users.
iTunes Radio was an Internet radio service by Apple Inc. that let users listen to automatically generated playlists based on direct input as well as collected data on music preferences. It was launched on September 18, 2013, as part of iOS 7 and was available in the Music app on iOS devices and Apple TV as well as in iTunes 11.1 on OS X and Windows. It was only available in the United States and Australia.
The following is a list of on-demand music streaming services. These services offer streaming of full-length content via the Internet as a part of their service, without the listener necessarily having to purchase a file for download. This type of service is somewhat similar to Internet radio. Many of these sites have advertising and offer non-free options in the style of a digital music store.
Beats Music was a subscription-based online music streaming service owned by the Beats Electronics division of Apple Inc. The service combined algorithm-based personalization with expert music suggestions from a variety of sources.
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 Brooks' entire catalogue. GhostTunes varied from other online music stores such as the iTunes Store by allowing the individual record labels to choose their selling format, such as entire albums or singles, as well as prices, with an emphasis on fair and proper royalty payments. Its digital library could be synced across multiple devices, creating a multi-platform collection encompassing all user-downloaded music, regardless of the store used to purchase.
Tidal is a Norwegian-American subscription-based music, podcast and video streaming service that offers audio and music videos. Tidal was launched in 2014 by Swedish public company Aspiro which is now majority-owned by Block, Inc., an American payment processing company.
Apple Music is a music, audio and video streaming service developed by Apple Inc. Users select music to stream to their device on-demand, or they can listen to existing playlists. The service also includes the Internet radio stations Apple Music 1, Apple Music Hits, and Apple Music Country, which broadcast live to over 200 countries 24 hours a day. The service was announced on June 8, 2015, and launched on June 30, 2015. New subscribers get a one-month free or six months free trial with the purchase of select products before the service requires a monthly subscription.
Electric Jukebox was a digital media player developed by The Electric Jukebox Company. Designed as a dongle, and a "Nintendo Wii style" motion-sensitive controller with a built-in microphone for voice search, the device played music audio content on a high-definition television and home audio system by directly streaming it via Wi-Fi from the Internet.
YouTube Music is a music streaming service developed by YouTube, a subsidiary of Google. It provides a tailored interface for the service, oriented towards music streaming, allowing users to browse through songs and music videos on YouTube based on genres, playlists, and recommendations.
Spotify, a music streaming company, has attracted significant criticism since its 2006 launch, mainly over artist compensation. Unlike physical sales or downloads, which pay artists a fixed price per song or album sold, Spotify pays royalties based on the artist's "market share"—the number of streams for their songs as a proportion of total songs streamed on the service. Spotify distributes approximately 70% of its total revenue to rights holders, who then pay artists based on their individual agreements. Multiple artists have criticised the policy, most notably Thom Yorke and Taylor Swift, who temporarily withdrew their music from the service.
