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.
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.
Meebo was an instant messaging and social networking service provider. It was founded in September 2005 by Sandy Jen, Seth Sternberg, and Elaine Wherry, and was based in Mountain View, California. Initially the company offered a web-based instant messenger service, extending its offer in more general online chat and even social networking directions. In June 2012, Google acquired Meebo to merge the company's staff with the Google+ developers team.
Amie Street was an indie online music store and social network service created in 2006 by Brown University seniors Elliott Breece, Elias Roman, and Joshua Boltuch, in Providence, Rhode Island. The site was notable for its demand-based pricing. The company was later moved to Long Island City in Queens, New York. In late 2010, the site was sold to Amazon who redirected customers to their own website.
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
The online service imeem was a social media website where users interacted with each other by streaming, uploading and sharing music and music videos. It operated from 2003 until 2009 when it was shut down after being acquired by MySpace.
Shazam is an application that can identify music, movies, advertising, and television shows, based on a short sample played and using the microphone on the device. It was created by London-based Shazam Entertainment, and has been owned by Apple Inc. since 2018. The software is available for Android, macOS, iOS, Wear OS, watchOS and as a Google Chrome extension.
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.
Jango is an American free online music streaming service available worldwide.
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 456 million monthly active users, including 195 million paying subscribers, as of September 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.
SearchMe was a visual search engine based in Mountain View, California. It organized search results as snapshots of web pages — an interface similar to that of the iPhone's and iTunes's album selection.
Kevin Marlin Darrell Rivers is an American entrepreneur and founder of Black Ventures. Through Black Ventures, Rivers owns a majority stake social networking service Bluurp. In 2004, Rivers founded Black Ventures to build innovations through media, social, and digital entertainment. Since then, Rivers has led the company to establish brands that focused on distribution and Social Media. In 2009, Rivers was nominated for the OnHollywood 2009 Top 100 media companies list. Rivers was also interviewed by Vator to speak about his revolutionary business model. On January 13, 2010, Rivers established a new retailing deal with MediaNet, which garnered attention from Billboard. On April 6, 2010, Rivers launched the first full-fledged storefront for Facebook. Rivers has been featured on news including TechCrunch and Music Week. In 2012, Rivers launched Venzo Digital, an award-winning iTunes music distribution service that helped musicians generate over $2 million in revenue. On April 25, 2015, Venzo Digital was acquired by Lester Ventures.
Clicker was an Internet video directory and search company based in Los Angeles, California. Their website aimed to be the TV Guide for all full episodes of programs available to watch on the Web. It is owned by CBS Interactive.
SoundCloud is an online audio distribution platform and music sharing website that enables its users to upload, promote, and share audio, as well as a digital signal processor enabling listeners to stream audio. Founded in 2007 by Alexander Ljung and Eric Wahlforss, SoundCloud has grown to be one of the largest music streaming services in the world and is available in 190 countries and territories. Audience-wise, there are over 76 million active monthly users, with over 175 million global users that SoundCloud reaches, as of November 2021. While its competitors report having roughly 70 million tracks in their systems, SoundCloud has over 300 million. SoundCloud offers both free and paid memberships on the platform, available for mobile, desktop and Xbox devices.
iTunes Ping, or simply Ping, was a software-based, music-oriented social networking and recommender system service developed and operated by Apple Inc. It was announced and launched on September 1, 2010, as part of the tenth major release of iTunes. The service launched with 1 million members in 23 countries.
Path was a social networking-enabled photo sharing and messaging service for mobile devices that was launched in 14 November 2010. The service allows users to share up to a total of 50 contacts with their close friends and family. Based in San Francisco, California, the company was founded by Shawn Fanning and former Facebook executive Dave Morin.
Audiosocket is a music licensing and technology company founded by Brent McCrossen and Jennifer Miller with dual headquarters in Seattle, WA and New Orleans, LA.
DistroKid is a service by an independent digital music distribution service, founded in 2013 by American entrepreneur Philip J. "Pud" Kaplan. DistroKid principally offers musicians and other rights-holders the opportunity to distribute and sell or stream their music through online retailers such as iTunes/Apple Music, Spotify, Pandora, Amazon Music, YouTube Music, Tidal, Deezer, iHeartRadio and others.
