Music on demand

Music-On-Demand is a music distribution model conceived with the growth of two-way computing, telecommunications and the Internet in the early 1990s. Primarily, high-quality music is made available to purchase, access and play back using software on the Apple Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, set-top boxes and mobile devices from an available distribution point, such as a computer host or server located at a telephone, cable TV or wireless data center facility.

In 1992, computer modem speeds were limited to less than 28 thousand bits per second (28 kbit/s), compared with uncompressed music on compact disc (CD) that required 150 thousand bytes per second. As a result, additional bandwidth is required to accommodate delivering audio at CD quality standards: 16-bit frame, 44.1 kHz sampling rate, stereophonic (two channel audio). This prompted telephony, CATV, cellular and satellite providers to consider changing standards, assisting in creating the information superhighway, in terms of building higher capacity for existing telecommunications infrastructures.