Digital music store 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 ...

s sell copies of

digital audio Digital audio is a representation of sound recorded in, or converted into, digital signal (signal processing), digital form. In digital audio, the sound wave of the audio signal is typically encoded as numerical sampling (signal processing), ...

, for example in

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany under the lead of Karlheinz Brandenburg. It was designed to greatly reduce the amount ...

and

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced or ) is an audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on personal computers. The format was developed and published for the first time in 1991 ...

file formats. Unlike

music streaming service A music streaming service is a type of online 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 s ...

s, which typically charge a monthly subscription fee to stream digital audio, digital music stores download songs to the customer's

hard disk drive A hard disk drive (HDD), hard disk, hard drive, or fixed disk is an electro-mechanical data storage device that stores and retrieves digital data using magnetic storage with one or more rigid rapidly rotating hard disk drive platter, pla ...

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 Amazon Music (previously Amazon MP3) is a music streaming platform and digital music store operated by Amazon. As of January 2020, the service had 55 million subscribers. It was the first music store to sell music without digital rights manag ...

Bandcamp Bandcamp is an American online music distribution platform founded in 2008 by Oddpost co-founder Ethan Diamond and programmers Shawn Grunberger, Joe Holt and Neal Tucker, with an office and record store in Oakland, California. Acquired by Epic ...

and

7digital 7digital Group PLC is a British company that offers access to music, tracking and reporting for clients. London-based, 7digital provides end-to-end music services for the fitness, social media, DSPs, and gaming industries with brands such as B ...

. Different platforms may offer a different selection of digital audio, for example, some may only sell music that is of a particular genre, or some may only feature

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in Pennsylvania, United States * Independentes (English: Independents), a Portuguese artist ...

content.

Comparison of digital music stores

Defunct retailers

MSN Music ''MSN Music'' was a part of MSN's web services. It delivered music news, music videos, spotlights on new music, artist information, and live performances of artists. The website also served as a digital music store from 2004 to 2008. History ...

closed on November 14, 2006. Its DRM servers were originally scheduled to shutdown August 31, 2008, but they later relented and committed to keeping the DRM servers active through the end of 2011. * Yahoo! Music Unlimited ceased operating on September 30, 2008. Users' purchases were transferred to Rhapsody. * BuyMusic was a digital branch of

Buy.com Rakuten.com/shop was an e-commerce marketplace based in San Mateo, California. Previously known as Buy.com, it was founded in 1997 by Scott Blum. In 2010, it was purchased by Japanese company Rakuten, and rebranded as Rakuten.com.Claire Cain Mil ...

, launched around 2003, was later merged into the music section of Buy.com, and then shut down in late 2009. *

Walmart.com Walmart Inc. (; formerly Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) is an American multinational retail corporation that operates a chain of hypermarkets (also called supercenters), discount department stores, and grocery stores in the United States and 23 other ...

operated an online music store, but discontinued it in 2011. *

Puretracks Puretracks was a Canadian online music store, which launched officially on October 14, 2003. It became a division of Somerset Entertainment, owned by Fluid Music. Puretracks had U.S. and Canadian licensing agreements with a number of music labels, ...

operated an online music store, but discontinued it in 2013. * Pono Music closed in July 2016. *

GhostTunes 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 Brook ...

closed on March 3, 2017. * Microsoft's Zune Music Marketplace was rebranded as

Xbox Music Groove Music (formerly Xbox Music and Zune Marketplace) is a discontinued Audio player (software), audio player software application included with Windows 8, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 and Windows 11. The app is also associated with a now-disco ...

in 2012. In 2015, Xbox Music purchasing was folded into the Windows Store and Groove Music app. The Windows Store was rebranded as

Microsoft Store The Microsoft Store (formerly known as the Windows Store) is a digital distribution platform operated by Microsoft. It was created as an app store for Windows 8 as the primary means of distributing Universal Windows Platform apps. With ...

in 2017, but then the Microsoft Store removed music sales from its store on December 31, 2017. * Technics Tracks, a reseller of 7digital's services in the UK and Germany, closed on June 30, 2018. *

NoiseTrade NoiseTrade was a global online audio and book direct-to-fan distribution platform. It was based in Nashville, Tennessee. It enables its users to upload original music and books and give away for free without digital rights management to anyone ...

's website was closed in 2019, and instead a NoiseTrade section appeared on Paste Magazine's website, until its removal in 2023. * Onkyo Music, a reseller of 7digital's services, closed worldwide on October 6, 2019. *

CD Baby CD Baby, Inc. is a Portland, Oregon based online distributor of independent music. The company was described as an "anti-label" by its parent company's Chief Operating Officer Tracy Maddux. It was established in 1998 and offered distribution fo ...

closed its retail store on March 31, 2020. *

Google Play Music Google Play Music was a music and podcast streaming service and an online music locker operated by Google as part of its Google Play line of services. The service was announced on May 10, 2011; after a six-month, invitation-only beta period, i ...

began to shutdown its music store in September 2020 and completed its shutdown worldwide by December. * Acoustic Sounds shutdown its Super HiRez digital downloads service on December 31, 2020. *

TIDAL Tidal is the adjectival form of tide. Tidal may also refer to: * ''Tidal'' (album), a 1996 album by Fiona Apple * Tidal (king), a king involved in the Battle of the Vale of Siddim * TidalCycles, a live coding environment for music * Tidal (servic ...

closed its download store on October 20, 2022. *

Magnatune 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 September 2007 began selling c ...

announced it was no longer trading in 2024, however its site would remain active with some free music for visitors to listen to.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Music stores comparison Comparison ITunes Online services comparisons Online content distribution

Comparison of digital music stores

Defunct retailers

See also

Notes and references