It's designed to make the most of digital music's convenience, while making it less of a solitary experience.
The rise of digital music technologies, which make copying easy, is given as justification.
The fear of illegal downloading keeps the average price per track of digital music low.
The service potentially makes it much easier for people to build up a library of digital music.
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To be sure, Apple's lineup of digital music players could use a boost.
ReDigi case, though that case focuses on the second-hand sale of digital music.
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That's enough storage space to hold up to four hours worth of digital music or 40 minutes of video.
Apple wants to avoid fueling any threat to its standalone iPod business by the coming onslaught of digital music phones.
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Suddenly, an industry terrified of online piracy had a legitimate place to earn money from the sale of digital music.
Apple, under Chief Executive Steve Jobs, launched catchy new products ranging from all-in-one iMacs to the iPod line of digital music players.
The new upgrade allows users to play both new high definition audio and their current collection of digital music, all with one player.
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Inexpensive sources of digital music like Amazon's MP3 store have already done more to curtail illegal downloading than all the recording industry's lawsuits combined.
WE7 has a great team and a good technology platform from which we can launch a range of digital music services in the future.
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The inexorable rise of digital music, blamed by many for the collapse of high street retailer HMV, continues unabated in the UK, according to new figures.
Spotify is now the second single largest source of digital music revenue for labels in Europe (IFPI, April 2011), making sure that artists get a fair deal.
The early forecast by The Diffusion Group (TDG) is an indication that podcasting has captured the imagination of digital music player owners who demand to listen to more than just music.
"When we picked those 50, 000 titles we focused on having a substantial majority of our physical CD sales covered, " said Steve Boom, head of digital music at Amazon in a statement.
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The integration adds yet another feature to BeoSound 5, expanding its range of digital music with Spotify's massive music catalogue in addition to the owner's own digitalised tracks and 14, 000 internet radio stations.
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But today, thanks to an aging population and the accessibility of digital music, there has been a gradual decline in the number of Japanese jazz kissa, and the musical genre has found new life in live venues and bars throughout Tokyo.
But in the long run, argue the enthusiasts, the online downloading of digital music, which the big record labels have until recently regarded as a menace rather than a means of salvation, could breathe new life into music sales.
Is this slowdown due to a systemic, permanent shift (like the evolution of digital music or the e-book) or is the industry simply mimicking the overall business cycle (after all, job growth is down in many sectors of the economy today)?
Sony once dominated the portable-music market with its Walkman, but since the onset of digital music it has handed control of the market to Apple by refusing to support the MP3 format, the pirates' favourite, in its players, and pushing its own proprietary format instead.
"We are constantly striving to deliver the best possible customer experience for Cloud Player, and today we are offering our customers a significant set of new features, including scan and match technology and audio quality upgrade, " said Steve Boom, Vice President of Digital Music at Amazon.
Last month the group signed a deal with RealNetworks (nasdaq: RNWK - news - people ) to provide digital versions of their music on the Rhapsody digital music service, a catalog of more than 500 songs.
New York hip-hop artist Pete Miser composes his tunes out of thousands of digital snippets of music, from Shostakovich to the soundtrack of The Good, the Bad and the Ugly.
But the bulk of the digital music on the Net is copyrighted by a major recording studio.
Their high quality, high-performance Roomplayer system demystifies and simplifies the process of playing digital music throughout the home.
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And this was the man at the center of the digital music revolution.
Amazon has also become a powerhouse against Apple (AAPL) and Netflix (NFLX) with its catalog of streaming digital music and movies.
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