In July 1997 a New York company called N2K began selling single songs as digital downloads. Its main business was Music Boulevard, an online record store, wrapped in fan sites like Rocktropolis and Jazz Central Station. N2K was run by music veterans, including Larry Rosen, co-founder of the jazz label GRP Records. It went public that October, betting that the record store of the future would live on the web.

Record Men Meet the Web

N2K came out of Telebase Systems, an online information company founded in 1984 that turned to music in 1994. Its leaders included Rosen and producer Phil Ramone, who had made records with Billy Joel and Paul Simon. The bet was that fans would buy where they read and listened. N2K built genre sites for rock, jazz and classical, all feeding shoppers into Music Boulevard's catalog of CDs.

Merged Into CDnow

N2K priced at $19 a share in October 1997 and listed on Nasdaq as NTKI. America Online bought shares at the same time. Online music retail turned into a costly fight, with Amazon entering the market in 1998. N2K and its rival CDnow agreed to merge that October and completed the deal in March 1999, under the CDnow name. Bertelsmann bought CDnow the next year.

Cover: At the Concert, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec. Art Institute of Chicago, public domain. Chosen for a concert audience (music on demand).