The purpose of this FAQ is to help people who have never purchased music from an online music store understand the process, the options, and the variations they are likely to encounter. It may also help give a glimpse into the music business and how it is trying to adapt to sales on the web.
Selection and Price. If you live far from a large music store, you can increase your selection by a factor of at least ten. Convenience can also be a factor especially during a busy shopping season.
Yes, for a single title order of an inexpensive album, but these days many albums can cost $10-$15 and shipping is about $3 per CD. Usually there is no sales tax and you can find discounts of up to 33% on popular titles. You may find some dealers that will ship for free if the order exceeds a certain amount or a certain number of albums, say about ten. The shipping cost per album will also decrease when multiple titles are ordered at music sites. For example, each additional album will typically cost $.50-$1.00. Several big companies have a $5.00 maximum shipping charge.
It can be hard to tell, unless it is a popular album that has been well reviewed or described in detail on the web. There are a number of sites devoted to supplying music reviews. Many other sites have bestseller charts of titles for several genres of music. Others like firefly.com encourage listeners to post personal evaluations in a system of collaborative rating. Finally many merchants post detailed information about their albums online including the full track list, album notes, a bio of the artist and sample audio clips. If you install the special RealAudio software on your computer you can actually listen to samplings of selected album tracks.
It depends. It is important to always ask the seller in advance for their returns policy for opened merchandise. Most U.S. dealers will give the number of days you have to evaluate the album. Some dealers do not allow returns unless they shipped the wrong title or it arrived in damaged condition, so be careful. Others may allow you to return an opened album if you pay a restocking fee. The returns policy for some major U.S. music sites are shown on a comparison chart listed at the end of this FAQ.
Just how happy are onlinecustomers?
One way is to check with a rating service like BizRate Guide They publish an on-line chart of the top 25 user picks each week. Music store sites are commonly found on the list.
One that has no "real" inventory. These music brokers pass your order on to a fulfillment center at one or more huge wholesale distribution centers. The number of titles claimed in web site advertising is the count of titles in the music store's database, not necessarily those on hand.
Delivery. If you are in a hurry to get the music, use an online store that has real inventory.Very small young companies can look very professional and impressive if they create a snazzy website. Be sure you see a phone number and an address posted somewhere on the site. It is extra nice if that phone number is toll-free and someone actually answers. If you can't call them now and get someone to answer, what will you do when you have problems of any kind. Some virtual stores expect you to place your order over the internet and will not take phone orders.
This is a highly exaggerated concern. If you still worry about this, choose a music store with a secure server and be sure to use a browser with built-in encryption, like Netscape Navigator 2.x or above. With Netscape Navigator you can tell if you have a secure link by examining the padlock or key icon in the lower left corner of your browser window. If the bar that crosses the key disappears or the hasp closes, the link is secure. If you don't see a key or padlock or similar icon, the browser may not support the Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). In all likelihood, a transaction payment sent in this way to a large company will never be seen by any human eyes. There will be no low paid clerks, telemarketers, carbons, bookkeepers or others in the middle necessary to process your credit card number and expiration date. This is actually enhanced security, not less security than normal.
Some sales sites publish statements vowing not to ever use the personal information obtained from customers outside their own site. One organization allows sites to display its Trustmark logo if the enrolled site meets privacy guidelines.
For outright fraud be sure to contact The National Fraud Information Center at:
A number of big online music stores have so-called partner programs that enable enrolled music sites to earn a small percentage off the sale of any album that results from a direct referral. The enrolled site links to the large site at the last moment and the large site takes the credit card information and ships the album. The exact details of such programs vary widely. Such programs are controversial and have made many people very mad. For a discussion see:
Since you are really buying direct from the larger of the two companies, your credit information is never seen by the smaller of the two. You are governed by the sales policies of the actual seller. If a price was quoted at the partner site, be sure to verify that it is accurately reflected at the purchase site. Prices can change unexpectedly and smaller sites may be unaware of the changes.
Quality varies a lot from site to site. Many music store sites are not designed for online sales. They are simply electronic calling cards that list the hours, the e-mail address and perhaps a map of how to find the store along with the address and phone number. If you want anything from them you will have to contact them directly and perhaps wait quite a while for a reply. Some have a little form to fill out where you enter the title and artist of the album you want and your e-mail address so they can get back you. I pointedly ignore such sites unless I am desperate. There are plenty of full featured on-line sales sites available. When you look at a site with on-line ordering decide whether you will be ordering frequently or occasionally. Many sites require you to set up an account with a password. This can be nice if you are there a lot and a nuisance if you have to keep track of the password. and forget it from lack of use. It is a bad idea to use the same password from site to site or for other multiple purposes.
This varies a lot from site to site. It is important to distinguish between the word browse and search. Browse means to follow links and scroll your browser window on each page until you find what you want. You may want to speed through long pages by using the Find command on your browser Edit menu to look for a specific item on a page, but be sure the page has finished loading before you try the Find or you may not get an accurate result. Search means to use a search engine supplied by the site. Some sites confuse these words to the frustration of all. The best sites often have a way to browse genres or to search for titles and artist.
A search engine is software installed on a site that provides a way to look through a large number of titles and return a short list based on your exact needs as you specify them. AltaVista and Yahoo are two very different sites that use search engine technology. Using a search engine involves filling out a form and either pressing the return key or a clicking on a special button. If there is an opportunity on the search form to fill in more than one text box simultaneously to specify the searched for item, then a button will be necessary. The button will be conspicuous and labeled something like "Submit" or "Go!" or "Search" or "Find" or whatever. The boxes to fill out may enable you to specify the artist, title, genre, label or keyword. If may be possible to fill out some combination of these simultaneously. For example, you can look for an album with "fudge" in the title and with an artist whose last name is "Smith". Some sites will contain both a page with a one-line form for a simple search and another with a multiple line advanced form for complex searches. Many sites also have a separate search form for locating classical music. Normally you do not need to spell out the entire name of an artist. It is possible to just use the first few letters.
The Spars code allows you to learn more about how the album was mastered. It is composed of the letters A and/or D in a three character sequence. Thus a code of ADD mean that the album was recorded on analog equipment, mixed on digital equipment and mastered digitally.
The CDs and databases used by music sites contain album data that varies widely in what information is included for any given title. At a minimum the a CD title may have no artist and only an abbreviated version of the title. So if you want to find an album and know the exact title, use the basic form of that title in your first attempt. Compilations, soundtracks, tribute albums, collaborations, etc. may not have an identifiable artist anyway. You may find small differences in spellings and abbreviations from site to site such as "seven" vs "7" or "and" vs "&". Sometimes a lookup will fail because the title is too generic, like "Greatest Hits", then using the name of the artist is the best way to start your search.
For a small number of titles any scheme that is intuitive and "makes sense" to the user will probably work out all right. But for massive databases of hundreds of thousands of titles, these schemes fall apart because the number of titles in any given category can become totally unmanageable and may number in the thousands. Large genres like jazz are a major problem if you want to browse by genre. Another aspect is that many titles are never assigned a genre and thus will not be seen at all in a simple browse.
Before the advent of computers there were used music sellers that used this term to mean that they would use their music trade connections to try to find a copy of a hard-to-find or out-of-print title for you if they did not have it in stock themselves. Now the term is likely to cause confusion to the beginner, but it is still in active use. Using the term music search service instead of music title search helps make an important distinction between the traditional meaning and a more confusing ill-defined meaning.
Small simple sites may have you phone or FAX in an order, once you find the price of an item that you want. Large sites have installed electronic shopping cart systems where you type in the shipping and credit information needed. They may set up an account for you with a password. This is usually a bad idea, because so many people will just lose the password. Passwords can help users check on the status of order directly. Normally when an album is shipped e-mail is sent out with a tracking number and you can use the carriers online tracking system from then on.
Go somewhere else. Many sites are under construction and there is nothing you could possibly do to order an album. Others are very poorly designed. First, carefully look for an underlined word or icon labeled "Help", "FAQ" or perhaps "How to order" and press it. On large sales sites the ordering does not take place until you have gone through the process of actually selecting a title to buy. This is usually done at the detail screen. At that point you may be presented with an opportunity to place the title in an electronic shopping cart. Then and only then can you go to the electronic checkout stand and complete the purchase.
After you locate the title you want on a list at a large site with a shopping cart system, you can usually click on the title to view a detail screen. A detail screen is available for each album giving at a minimum the title, artist and price. Depending on the site you may also see a jacket shot, a list of the tracks, release (or street) date, label, catalog number, rating, UPC, mono/stereo, the play length and whether it was produced live or in studio. Some of the more deluxe sites will have reviews and other special features.
Not a cent. Even if you pretend you are going to buy an album just to see now the system works, you can always change the quantity on your order to zero at the end or just type in a new URL and go somewhere else. You can learn a lot just by experimenting.
Try used music dealers first. Then try the deep discounters who list their full inventory online. There are shopping agents you can try to save time, but there is no assurance, they actually have the lowest price. In fact, they probably do not. You have to decide what your time is worth.
The same way some meta search engines on the web like AskJeeves can look for information in several different places, a music shopping agent will check several different online music stores for music you want and let you know what it finds out.
These are a marketing ploy to gain repeat business. They seldom have any real significance if you shop around. They are used to inspire vender loyalty. They might allow you to a get notification of availability which is freely available elsewhere.
If you read the language well or the distant site has an English version of the site and you have a credit card acceptable to the seller, you can have them shipped directly from abroad. The shipping may be cheaper, however, if you buy from a specialty music distributor in your own country, especially if you might want to return it. The returns policies abroad can be very restrictive and if allowed may take a long time to process..
These are computer files that contain digitized audio. The files can be sent to your computer and played through its speaker if you are set up for it. Audio clips are a very new concept. Not very many titles are available for older albums compared to recent releases. Some sites will offer you the abillity to sample part of a song by clicking on a link such a speaker icon or a note to hear the audio clip. These icons typically appear on the detail screen. There will probably be an explanation somewhere on the site as to how to set up your computer for listening to autio clips if they are offered. Sites use RealAudio format to reduce the amount of time needed to download and decompress the audio file.
There are companion pages to this one like Best BIG Online Music Stores. Sites that are part of a partner program are not listed unless there is a compelling reason to do so. People in a hurry might like to see the big stores compared in convenient chart form. The stores listed are online music sites which with rare exception have their entire inventory listed online.Best BIG Online Music Stores:<http://www.shoppingagents.net/music.html>
Store comparison chart: <http://www.shoppingagents.net/musicstore.html>
If you have any suggestions for questions that arenot answered here or corrections to statements made, drop us a lineat info@shoppingagents.net
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