In economics, vendor lock-in, also known as proprietary lock-in or customer lock-in, makes a customer dependent on a vendor for products, unable to use another vendor without substantial switching costs.
iTunes is a discontinued media player, media library, and mobile device management utility developed by Apple. It was used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating systems, and can be used to rip songs from CDs as well as playing content from dynamic, smart playlists. It includes options for sound optimization and wirelessly sharing iTunes libraries.
The iTunes Store is a digital media store operated by Apple Inc. which opened on April 28, 2003. As of April 2020, iTunes offered 60 million songs, 2.2 million apps, 25,000 TV shows, and 65,000 films. The iTunes Store is available on most home and portable Apple devices, as well as some platforms by other companies. The store opened as part of then-CEO Steve Jobs' push to open a digital marketplace for music; when it opened, it was the only legal digital catalog of music to offer songs from all five major record labels, which played a part in its success and influence in the music downloading business. While initially a dominant player in digital media, by the mid-2010s, streaming media services were generating more revenue than the buy-to-own model used by the iTunes Store; Apple now operates its own subscription-based streaming music service, Apple Music, alongside the iTunes Store.
FairPlay is a family of digital rights management (DRM) technologies developed by Apple Inc. for protecting videos, books and apps and historically for music.
Magnatune is an American independent record label based in Berkeley, California, founded in spring 2003. It only sold music for download through its website but added a print-CD-on-demand service in late 2004 and in October 2007 began selling complete albums and individual tracks through Amazon.com. In May 2008, Magnatune launched all-you-can-eat membership plans. From March 2010 Magnatune dropped the CD printing service and moved exclusively to all-you-can-eat membership plans. Magnatune was the first record label to license music online and as of May 2015 had sold over 7,000 licenses in its twelve years of existence.
eMusic is an online music and audiobook store that operates by subscription. In exchange for a monthly subscription eMusic users can download a fixed number of MP3 tracks per month. eMusic was established in 1998, is headquartered in New York City with an office in London, and is owned by TriPlay.
Napster, commonly known as “Napster 2.0”, was a music streaming service and digital music store, launched by Roxio in 2003 under the purchased name and trademarks of former free peer-to-peer file sharing software Napster in the aftermath of the latter's 2002 bankruptcy and subsequent shut down after a series of legal actions taken by the RIAA. Roxio purchased Napster and a music streaming service called PressPlay in 2003, to create a new legal online music service that lets users access music through a subscription or on a fee-per-song basis. Napster was later acquired by Best Buy. The service was acquired by rival Rhapsody in 2011.
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.
SpiralFrog was a very early music streaming service based in New York City that launched in the United States and Canada on September 17, 2007. SpiralFrog offered free and legal music downloads, all supported by advertising, and was the largest site of its kind in North America. On March 19, 2009, SpiralFrog terminated operations due to loan recalls. While SpiralFrog was not successful in the end, it nonetheless helped shaped the digital music industry shift from the purchase to streaming models, and its ultimate revenue recovery
Digital music stores sell copies of digital audio, for example in MP3 and WAV file formats. Unlike music streaming services, which typically charge a monthly subscription fee to stream digital audio, digital music stores download songs to the customer's hard disk drive 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, Amazon Music, Bandcamp and 7digital.
inMusic was a Canadian music news portal and an online music store. The music store had over 2 million tracks in English and French from various genres. Samples of 30 seconds for each song were offered at no charge. Purchases and downloads could be transferred to a CD or compatible digital music device.
Simply Audiobooks is a privately held e-commerce company that offers audiobooks for rental, downloading, and sale. Their primary product line is a subscription-based rent-by-mail model for books on CD, similar to Netflix's DVD-by-mail model. Although a Canadian company, based in Burlington, Ontario, the majority of Simply Audiobooks' customers reside in the United States.
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. DRM technologies govern the use, modification and distribution of copyrighted works and of systems that enforce these policies within devices. DRM technologies include licensing agreements and encryption.
Moozone.com was a cloud-based online music storage service and digital music store. It was owned by Multimedia Online Services, Inc. The beta version of the web site was launched in September 2009. At the moment of the launch the service had over 6 million indie tracks on sale in Mp3 (320 kbit/s) format. It is now closed.
UltraViolet was a cloud-based digital rights locker for films and television programs that allowed consumers to store proofs-of-purchase of licensed content in an account to enable playback on different devices using multiple applications from several different streaming services. UltraViolet also allowed users to share access to their library with up to five additional people. UltraViolet was deployed by the Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem (DECE), an alliance of 85 companies that included film studios, retailers, consumer electronics manufacturers, cable television companies, internet service providers (ISPs), internet hosting vendors, and other systems and security vendors, with the notable exceptions of Walt Disney Studios, Google, Amazon and Apple.
Didiom was a digital media company that specialized in the development of streaming media applications and wireless content delivery platforms. Built on peer-to-peer placeshifting technology, the company's flagship product allowed customers to stream their home computer's audio collection to their phone wirelessly, eliminating the need for data cables and memory cards. With two million songs under its management, Didiom previously launched an on-device music store that allowed customers to name their own prices for music downloads. In February 2011, Didiom was acquired by SnapOne, Inc.
Amazon Drive, formerly known as Amazon Cloud Drive, was a cloud storage application managed by Amazon. The service offered secure cloud storage, file backup, file sharing, and Photo printing. Using an Amazon account, the files and folders could be transferred and managed from multiple devices, including web browsers, desktop applications, mobiles, and tablets. Amazon Drive also let their U.S. users order photo prints and photo books using the Amazon Prints service.
This is a comparison of online music storage services, Internet services that allow uploads of personally owned or licensed music to the cloud for listening on multiple devices.
Groove Music is a discontinued audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11.
