inMusic (formerly known as Sympatico/MSN Music) was a Canadian music news portal and 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 ...

. The music store had over 2 million tracks in English and French from various

genres Genre () is any form or type of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially-agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other for ...

. Samples of 30 seconds for each song were offered at no charge. Purchases and downloads could be transferred to a CD or compatible digital music device.

History

Bell Sympatico Bell Internet, originally and frequently still called Sympatico, is the residential Internet service provider (ISP) division of BCE Inc. As of May 3, 2012, Bell Internet had over 3 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec, making it the larg ...

and

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation, multinational technology company, technology corporation producing Software, computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at th ...

partnered to launch the Sympatico/MSN Music Store on July 31, 2006. Powered by Hip Digital Media Inc., the store initially offered 850,000 songs, but with ongoing support, this has risen to over 2 million. The store was designed as

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 I ...

's portal in Canada, and featured various Microsoft integrations such as

Bing Bing most often refers to: * Bing Crosby (1903–1977), American singer * Microsoft Bing, a web search engine Bing may also refer to: Food and drink * Bing (bread), a Chinese flatbread * Bing (soft drink), a UK brand * Bing cherry, a variety ...

and

Hotmail Outlook.com is a webmail service that is part of the Microsoft 365 product family. It offers mail, calendaring, contacts, and tasks services. Founded in 1996 by Sabeer Bhatia and Jack Smith as Hotmail, it was acquired by Microsoft in 19 ...

. The Sympatico/MSN Music Store was tightly integrated with the Sympatico/MSN Entertainment Portal. When initially launched, the Sympatico / MSN Music Store offered their catalogue of songs on a pay-per-download basis (similar to that of iTunes). In July, 2007 the store added a subscription service called All Access Music, allowing users unlimited access to their All Access Music Library for a monthly or an annual fee. In October 2007, the Sympatico / MSN Music Store further expanded its offerings with an MP3 catalogue, providing music in the

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, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Orig ...

format, thereby catering to the

iPod The iPod is a discontinued series of portable media players and multi-purpose mobile devices designed and marketed by Apple Inc. The first version was released on October 23, 2001, about months after the Macintosh version of iTunes ...

market.

Music store

The music store is discontinued. inMusic now directs visitors to purchase songs on iTunes.

Downloads

inMusic sold music by the song and by the album. While the service used a WMA format with

digital rights management Digital rights management (DRM) is the management of legal access to digital content. Various tools or technological protection measures (TPM) such as access control technologies can restrict the use of proprietary hardware and copyrighted work ...

(DRM) during its Sympatico/MSN branding, the provider eventually discontinued such sales in favor of the MP3 format when it was rebranded as inMusic and used Puretrack's engine. Individual songs were sometimes sold at 79¢ each, although the 99¢ price point was more common.

Subscription

When the service was branded as Sympatico/MSN Music, it offered a

subscription The subscription business model is a business model in which a customer must pay a recurring price at regular intervals for access to a product or service. The model was pioneered by publishers of books and periodicals in the 17th century, and ...

based service at launch with two plans: All Access Music and All Access Music To Go. The former plan was $14/month and only accessible from any computer, while the latter was $16/month and added the ability of transferring music to a compatible digital music device.

Windows Media Audio Windows Media Audio (WMA) is a series of audio codecs and their corresponding audio coding formats developed by Microsoft. It is a proprietary technology that forms part of the Windows Media framework. WMA consists of four distinct codecs. The ...

was the file format used for the service's songs, and all such files were encrypted with

Microsoft PlaysForSure Microsoft PlaysForSure was a certification given by Microsoft to portable devices and content services that had been tested against several hundred compatibility and performance requirements. These requirements include codec support, Digital rig ...

DRM. This limited the playback of music to three authorized computers while offline, although music can be streamed from any computer with an active Internet connection. The DRM also prohibited the burning of song files to an audio

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a digital optical disc data storage format that was co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. In August 1982, the first compact disc was manufactured. It was then released in Octo ...

Bell Internet Bell Internet, originally and frequently still called Sympatico, is the residential Internet service provider (ISP) division of BCE Inc. As of May 3, 2012, Bell Internet had over 3 million subscribers in Ontario and Quebec, making it the larg ...

(then known as Sympatico) customers received a $4/month discount for subscribing to either plan, and the service could be charged directly on their

Bell Canada Bell Canada (commonly referred to as Bell) is a Canadian telecommunications company headquartered at 1 Carrefour Alexander-Graham-Bell in the borough of Verdun in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is an ILEC (incumbent local exchange carrier) in t ...

monthly bill. After the Sympatico/MSN Music brand was phased out DRM-based subscriptions were no longer available.

Other

inMusic offered exclusive content to its users such as special recordings from artists at the Live @ Orange Lounge as well as articles and

playlist A playlist is a list of video or audio files that can be played back on a media player either sequentially or in a shuffled order. In its most general form, an audio playlist is simply a list of songs, but sometimes a loop. The term has sev ...

s from featured and recommended artists.

Gift card A gift card also known as gift certificate in North America, or gift voucher or gift token in the UK is a prepaid stored-value card, stored-value money card, usually issued by a retailer or bank, to be used as an alternative to cash for purcha ...

s were also available.

References

External links

* {{Official website, http://musicstore.sympatico.msn.ca
Bell Launches Ultimate Music Destination

Bell Adds DRM-free iPod & Mobile Phone Compatible Tracks to Sympatico/MSN Music Store
Online music stores of Canada