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Buying and selling music online
What is an online music store?
An online music store is an online business which sells audio files on a pay per track but generally on a subscription basis. There is an alternative, which has legal implications, and that is 'file sharing'.
Napster and online music
Napster, a music and file sharing service created by Shaun Fanning made a major impact on the World Wide Web during the turn of the year 2000.
Music Corporations sell music online
As a result of the early success of Napster the big music corporations, such as Sony, soon realised that this was a big market. Sony's first voyage into the realm of selling music online was a disaster. They named their website 'The Store'. Customers found the website difficult to navigate and the pricing associated to downloading a Sony owned song was excessive; as much as £2.50 per track. The smaller online music sellers, such as eMusic, sold music of independent labels.
Buy music online from iTunes
To date, the biggest online music store is iTunes. This is mainly due to Apple's distinct digital audio (mp3) player, the iPod. This is because you can only download music to iPods from iTunes. eMusic also commands a large percentage of the selling of online music.
