iTunes Store is a digital marketplace selling songs, albums, music videos, ringtones and alert tones. It was launched by Apple Inc. on April 28, 2003 for macOS, and on October 16, 2003 for Microsoft Windows. It launched as a mobile application with iOS on June 29, 2007.
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.
AllOfMP3, MP3Sparks and MemphisMembers are brands of online music store that were operated by Mediaservices, Inc., a company founded in 2000 in Moscow, Russia. The stores formerly sold music encoded in standard, non-protected audio formats at a significantly lower cost than other online music stores. In 2008, the original AllOfMp3 site was replaced by a blog.
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.
A longbox is a form of exterior paperboard packaging for musical compact discs in widespread use in the 1980s and early 1990s in North America.
A bootleg recording is an audio or video recording of a performance not officially released by the artist or under other legal authority. Making and distributing such recordings is known as bootlegging. Recordings may be copied and traded among fans without financial exchange, but some bootleggers have sold recordings for profit, sometimes by adding professional-quality sound engineering and packaging to the raw material. Bootlegs usually consist of unreleased studio recordings, live performances or interviews without the quality control of official releases.
Columbia House was an umbrella brand for Columbia Records' mail-order music clubs, the primary iteration of which was the Columbia Record Club, established in 1955. The Columbia House brand was introduced in the early 1970s by Columbia Records, and had a significant market presence in the 1970s, 1980s and early 1990s.
Hear Music was a record label that was founded in 2007 in a partnership between Concord Music Group and Starbucks. Hear Music began as a catalog company in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1990 before being purchased by Starbucks in 1999.
A promotional recording, promo, or plug copy is an audio or video recording distributed free, usually in order to promote a recording that is or soon will be commercially available. Promos are normally sent directly to broadcasters, such as music radio and television stations, and to tastemakers, such as DJs, music journalists, and critics, in advance of the release of commercial editions, in the hope that airplay, reviews, and other forms of exposure will result and stimulate the public's interest in the commercial release.
Key Sounds Label is a Japanese independent record label formed in 2001 as a brand of the publishing company Visual Arts. Key Sounds Label was formed to catalog and release music related to visual novels produced by the brand Key, also under Visual Arts, known for developing titles such as Kanon and Air. Excluding two albums and one single that were released by Key and Visual Arts' before the label's formation, the majority of releases on the label all have a basis from one of Key's titles. There are other albums and singles on the label not directly related to the visual novels, such as two singles by Lia and one album by Riya. Unlike typical record labels, Key Sounds Label does not license any of the artists featured on albums and singles released on the label.
Deletion is a music industry term referring to the removal of a record or records from a label's official catalog, so that it is out of print. This is usually done when a title becomes unprofitable to manufacture, but it may also occur at a record artist's request.
PassAlong Networks, also known as Tennessee Pacific Group, LLC, was a developer of digital media innovations and services located in Franklin, Tennessee. The company had a digital music library of three million licensed songs, two million of which were raw MP3 music files, and provided a series of products and services in the digital media marketplace.
Budget albums were low-priced vinyl LPs of popular and classical music released during the 1950s to 1970s consisting either of previously released material or material recorded especially for the line. Prices ranged from as low as 59 U.S. cents to $2.98. In the UK Pickwick Records' Top of the Pops record series, which operated between 1968 and 1985, was the most successful budget album range.
Amazon Music is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers.
Almighty Records is an English electronic dance music record label established in 1989. Almighty Records specialises in pop song remixes, dance-pop, and hi-NRG. The label's record producers, Almighty Associates, have remixed such performers as Rihanna, Cher, Katy Perry, Beyoncé, Jennifer Lopez, Diana Ross, Donna Summer, Elton John, Elvis Presley, Enrique Iglesias, Kelly Clarkson, Kylie Minogue, LeAnn Rimes, Nelly Furtado, Ricky Martin, Shakira, Shania Twain, Sheena Easton, Usher, Whitney Houston, Adam Lambert, S Club and Liza Fox.
In the first decade of the 21st century, the rise of digital media on the internet and computers as a central and primary means to record, distribute, store, and play music caused widespread economic changes in the music industry. The rise of digital media with high-speed internet access fundamentally changed the relationships between artists, record companies, promoters, retail music stores, the technology industry, and consumers. The rise of digital music consumption options contributed to several fundamental changes in consumption. One significant change in the music industry was the remarkable decline of conventional album sales on CD and vinyl. With the à la carte sales models increasing in popularity, consumers no longer downloaded entire albums but rather chose single songs.
Personics was the company that invented the music recording retail system with trade name "Personics System" that was introduced in record stores starting in 1987. The system allowed customers to enter a music store, use headphones to preview and select individual songs on a console, then specify a custom list of songs to be recorded to a Compact Cassette tape. The songs available were also listed in magazine format available at the stores. The record stores had a machine from Personics that contained 120 custom Compact discs recorded in CD Digital Audio Redbook format with custom Dolby AC1 (DP85) tracks which were also pre-encoded with Dolby B Type Noise reduction prior to compression. These two drives each had jukebox disc changing systems and provided access to thousands of songs for fast in-shell cassette recording.
Dusty Groove is a Chicago-based online record store specializing in new and vintage jazz, funk, soul, hip-hop, world, rare, collectible, and vinyl records and CDs.
Virgin Megastores was a retail chain that operated in the United Kingdom from 1971 to 2007. The company was established by Richard Branson, originally as a small record shop, and became a national chain. In 2007, the company was sold to management, and was rebranded as Zavvi. Zavvi entered administration in 2008 and subsequently closed.
A re-recording is a recording produced following a new performance of a work of music. This is most commonly, but not exclusively, by a popular artist or group. It differs from a reissue, which involves a second or subsequent release of a previously-recorded piece of music.
