1-800 MUSIC NOW was a short-lived venture by

MCI Communications MCI Communications Corporation (originally Microwave Communications, Inc.) was an American telecommunications company headquartered in Washington, D.C. that was at one point the second-largest long-distance provider in the United States. ...

to open a music store operated through automated

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prompts. It also introduced the first ever serious attempt at an

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music store. The service was run out of MCI's Consumer Markets Headquarters offices in Arlington, Virginia (Pentagon City).

History

The telephone service allowed

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users who dialed the

toll-free A toll-free telephone number or freephone number is a telephone number that is billed for all arriving calls. For the calling party, a call to a toll-free number is free of charge, unless air-charges apply for mobile telephone service. A toll-free ...

number 1-800-687-4266 to enter the name of a performing artist by

touch-tone Dual-tone multi-frequency (DTMF) signaling is a telecommunication signaling system using the voice-frequency band over telephone lines between telephone equipment and other communications devices and switching centers. DTMF was first developed ...

, then select one of that artist's albums (available on CD or

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) from the catalog and hear clips from that album before buying by credit card. Users could sample and buy music and could shop by artist name, album name, genre, song title, Top 10 lists, etc. Once users made selections on the automated service, they were transferred to a call center where an operator established an account (for first-time buyers), collected payment and shipping information, assisted in ordering, and completed the order. Subsequent ordering could be accomplished through the automated system without human assistance. The online service was located at ''http://www.1800musicnow.mci.com''. It was the first to offer free music sampling for most of its catalog—initially in RealAudio 1.0 and eventually in RealAudio 2.0. The online store shut down in early 1997. The service began in 1995 (the same year

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opened, and three years before it started selling music) but was taken down by the end of 1996. The promotion totaled about $40 million (at the time, advertisements for the service were quite regularly played on

MTV MTV (an initialism of Music Television) is an American cable television television channel, channel and the flagship property of the MTV Entertainment Group sub-division of the Paramount Media Networks division of Paramount Global. Launched on ...

and advertised heavily as part of

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episode); meanwhile, its top-selling CD sold only 400 copies. Ultimately, over 1 million pieces of music were sold within the year. One survey noted that many of those who called the number did not sign up to make purchases, some citing shipping fees, but most saying it was because they didn't have credit cards. 1-800 MUSIC NOW was originally called 1-800 MY MUSIC. It was created by Steven Saslow and his partners at Diamond Creative Partners. As of today the number is no longer in service.

References

{{reflist Defunct online music stores 800-Music-Now Defunct digital music services or companies MCI Communications Defunct online companies of the United States