Where Have All The Good Times Gone
The iTunes Music Store celebrated its five-year anniversary last April. Countless competitors have appeared during those five years, and I've done business with quite a few of them. Here are the stores I've purchased from that are no longer around.
MUSICMATCH DOWNLOADS
The company was purchased by Yahoo!, who then created Yahoo! Music.
REALPLAYER MUSIC STORE
It's been replaced by RhapsodyMP3, using un-DRMed MP3s. RealNetworks thus ends the brand confusion by using the Rhapsody brand for both their services for buying and renting music.
SONY CONNECT
Totally gone, it hasn't been replaced, or re-branded.
THE RHAPSODY OF FIRE DOWNLOAD STORE
The download stores of individual Magic Circle Music artists have been folded into the label's own store.
VAI TUNES
Seems Steve Vai didn't feel his own download store makes sense. He has been releasing a series of CDs containing rare material.
MPERIA
Good riddance. Doesn't seem like there's much in the way quality control here. The tracks I purchased turned out to be 128K MP3s.
MUSE-WRAPPED
Began and closed in 2005. Restarted and closed again in 2007. They tried DRM in 2005, and DRM free in 2007. I don't think it will be coming back.
BuyMusic.com is no longer a separate website. It is now integrated into Buy.com. Contrary to reports in the press, Yahoo! did not close their download store. What they closed down was their music rental service.
© 2008 Ronnie “The Cruiser” Cruz
Monday, July 21, 2008
