GhostTunes was an

online 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 withou ...

and

digital library A digital library (also called an online library, an internet library, a digital repository, a library without walls, or a digital collection) is an online database of digital resources that can include text, still images, audio, video, digital ...

founded by American

country music Country (also called country and western) is a popular music, music genre originating in the southern regions of the United States, both the American South and American southwest, the Southwest. First produced in the 1920s, country music is p ...

singer

Garth Brooks Troyal Garth Brooks (born February 7, 1962) is an American Country music, country singer and songwriter. His integration of pop and rock elements into the country genre has earned him his immense popularity, particularly in the United States, ...

, Randy Bernard, and Chris Webb. It launched in September 2014 and featured singles and albums from a variety of artists, including Brooks' entire catalogue. GhostTunes varied from other online music stores such as the iTunes Store by allowing the individual

record label "Big Three" music labels A record label or record company is a brand or trademark of Sound recording and reproduction, music recordings and music videos, or the company that owns it. Sometimes, a record label is also a Music publisher, ...

s to choose their selling format, such as entire

album An album is a collection of audio recordings (e.g., music) issued on a medium such as compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl (record), audio tape (like 8-track cartridge, 8-track or Cassette tape, cassette), or digital distribution, dig ...

s or singles (all 320 kbit/s

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 ...

s), as well as prices, with an emphasis on fair and proper

royalty payment A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or ...

s. Its digital library could be synced across multiple devices, creating a multi-platform collection encompassing all user-downloaded music, regardless of the store used to purchase. On March 3, 2017, GhostTunes was absorbed into

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 ...

History

Following widely covered disagreements with

music streaming 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 ...

founded GhostTunes in 2014 to coincide with his return to live performing and album releases. Its

beta Beta (, ; uppercase , lowercase , or cursive ; or ) is the second letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals, it has a value of 2. In Ancient Greek, beta represented the voiced bilabial plosive . In Modern Greek, it represe ...

version launched on September 4, 2014, with the full version rolling out two months later. While GhostTunes' original purpose was to exclusively showcase Brooks' music, Brooks made a push to allow many other artists to sell their music in the online store, allowing it to evolve into an

e-commerce E-commerce (electronic commerce) refers to commercial activities including the electronic buying or selling products and services which are conducted on online platforms or over the Internet. E-commerce draws on technologies such as mobile co ...

site containing more than 10 million songs available for purchase. Fittingly, the first albums available for purchase through the music service were Brooks' entire catalogue, available digitally for the first time, along with the exclusive release of his album, ''

Man Against Machine ''Man Against Machine'' is the ninth studio album by American country music artist Garth Brooks. It was released on November 11, 2014 by RCA Records Nashville and Pearl Records. Brooks confirmed the album in July 2014 while announcing his comeba ...

''. GhostTunes remained the only online means by which to purchase Brooks' albums until his 2016 partnership with

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology company * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek myth ...

. The service's name, "GhostTunes", was derived from founder Brooks' first name, Garth, and his " hosting" of the site ("G-host"). Brooks announced on October 19, 2016, in an interview with ''Billboard'', that he was moving his music to the "Music Unlimited" streaming service from

, stating that he was unsure what the future held for GhostTunes. On March 3, 2017, GhostTunes ceased operations and began to redirect to Amazon Music.

Clients

Desktop

GhostTunes featured an online music store and library. The library consisted of all songs and albums purchased via the GhostTunes store, available for listening immediately after download within the application. Purchased and downloaded music could also be synced directly with a user's

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

, creating a cross-platform library.

Mobile

GhostTunes was available via

iOS Ios, Io or Nio (, ; ; locally Nios, Νιός) is a Greek island in the Cyclades group in the Aegean Sea. Ios is a hilly island with cliffs down to the sea on most sides. It is situated halfway between Naxos and Santorini. It is about long an ...

and Android on mobile devices. The GhostTunes application allowed for music purchases to be made within the Android application, and downloading songs and albums directly to the device. It also syncs with the user's local music library, combining internal downloads with GhostTunes purchases for offline listening.

Royalties and pricing

Royalty payment A royalty payment is a payment made by one party to another that owns a particular asset, for the right to ongoing use of that asset. Royalties are typically agreed upon as a percentage of gross or net revenues derived from the use of an asset or ...

s has been a pressing issue in Brooks' career, and GhostTunes reflected these concerns. When announcing the service, Brooks remarked, "This is a site that treats music with the utmost respect, where our job everyday is to offer music the way the artists want to share it to the listeners who live for and love it." GhostTunes allowed individual

s the freedom to sell music without financial restrictions. Additionally Brooks, a long-time supporter of

sales (as opposed to singles), cited the ability of record labels to distribute with the flexibility of selling both singles and albums, or only albums. The music service had a distribution deal with many content owners, including

Universal Music Group Universal Music Group N.V. (often abbreviated as UMG and referred to as Universal Music Group or Universal Music) is a Netherlands, Dutch–United States, American multinational Music industry, music corporation under Law of the Netherlands, ...

Warner Music Group Warner Music Group Corp., commonly abbreviated as WMG, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational entertainment and record label Conglomerate (company), conglomerate headquartered in New York City. It is one of the "Record label#M ...

Sony Music Entertainment Sony Music Entertainment (SME), commonly known as Sony Music, is an American multinational music company owned by Japanese conglomerate Sony Group Corporation. It is the recording division of Sony Music Group, with the other half being the ...

, The Orchard, all of which pay 80 percent revenue back to artists and writers (as opposed to the traditional 70 percent). Freedom in pricing allowed for some albums to be sold at lower price on GhostTunes. For example,

Sam Hunt Sam Lowry Hunt (born December 8, 1984) is an American country music singer and songwriter. Born in Cedartown, Georgia, Hunt played American football, football in his high school and college years and once attempted to pursue a professional sport ...

's '' Montevallo'' sold for $6.99 (less than its standard

price of $9.99). Nonetheless, while such autonomy promotes lower prices in some cases, the majority remains the same across all selling platforms.

Critical reception

Harley Brown of ''

Billboard A billboard (also called a hoarding in the UK and many other parts of the world) is a large outdoor advertising structure (a billing board), typically found in high-traffic areas such as alongside busy roads. Billboards present large advertis ...

'' praised the service, noting its resembling "a cross between

Spotify Spotify (; ) is a List of companies of Sweden, Swedish Music streaming service, audio streaming and media service provider founded on 23 April 2006 by Daniel Ek and Martin Lorentzon. , it is one of the largest providers of music streaming services ...

and

eMusic eMusic is an Online music store, 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 headquart ...

". Jonathan Robles of '' Variance Magazine'' called GhostTunes "a win-win" for Brooks, praising the selling of full digital albums in an era of which singles take priority. ''R-tools Technologys John Cook said GhostTunes "is worth a look", calling it "one way to get your music a bit differently" than the competitors. On the contrary,

Zack O'Malley Greenburg Zack O'Malley Greenburg (born March 8, 1985, New York City) is an American writer, journalist and former child actor. He spent a decade as a senior editor at ''Forbes'' magazine, covering music, media and entertainment. He is also the author of fi ...

of ''

Forbes ''Forbes'' () is an American business magazine founded by B. C. Forbes in 1917. It has been owned by the Hong Kong–based investment group Integrated Whale Media Investments since 2014. Its chairman and editor-in-chief is Steve Forbes. The co ...

'' disagreed with the GhostTunes' lack of

streaming Streaming media refers to multimedia delivered through a network for playback using a media player. Media is transferred in a ''stream'' of packets from a server to a client and is rendered in real-time; this contrasts with file downl ...

, as well as Brooks' restricting his entire catalogue to the service, stating, "streaming is the future of the music industry". Glenn Peoples of ''Billboard'' remarked "consumer behavior" impacted a lack of interest in GhostTunes, citing the average person's objective to purchase music through a major, more familiar retailer (such as

). Despite many critical comparisons between GhostTunes and other online music stores, CEO Randy Bernard maintained the stance that GhostTunes was to serve as an alternative, not a direct competitor.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:GhostTunes Android (operating system) software Download websites IOS software Online music stores of the United States Retail companies established in 2014 Internet properties established in 2014 Software companies based in Tennessee Music streaming services Defunct software companies of the United States 2014 establishments in Tennessee 2014 establishments in the United States