Musicmaker.com

MusicMaker.com was established in 1997 as an online retail custom CD service. Its initial catalog consisted of recordings from various independent labels. Exclusive to MusicMaker was the Fantasy catalog which included the Specialty and later-year Stax/Volt masters. The Fantasy catalog could not be mixed with any other labels' songs on the same compilation. In June of 1999, the EMI/Capitol catalog was added as Virgin Holdings Inc had made a five-year licensing deal in exchange for 50% of the business. An IPO under the HITS ticker symbol had garnered upwards of $19 per share. A month later, Virgin sold its shares causing the stock to plummet below a dollar. MusicMaker's strategy was to offer both custom CD's as well as downloadable music on a pay-per-track basis. Before it had a chance to establish itself on the digital download front, by early 2001 the company went into liquidation and was folded soon thereafter. This was due in part to the rise of Napster and similar file-sharing software emerging at the time.