How it started
History
Bell Sympatico and Microsoft partnered to launch the Sympatico/MSN Music Store on July 31, 2006. Powered by Hip Digital Media Inc., the store initially offered 850,000 songs, but with ongoing support, this has risen to over 2 million.
The store was designed as MSN Music's portal in Canada, and featured various Microsoft integrations such as Bing and Hotmail. The Sympatico/MSN Music Store was tightly integrated with the Sympatico/MSN Entertainment Portal.
When initially launched, the Sympatico / MSN Music Store offered their catalogue of songs on a pay-per-download basis (similar to that of iTunes). In July, 2007 the store added a subscription service called All Access Music, allowing users unlimited access to their All Access Music Library for a monthly or an annual fee. In October 2007, the Sympatico / MSN Music Store further expanded its offerings with an MP3 catalogue, providing music in the MP3 format, thereby catering to the iPod market.
From Wikipedia’s article on InMusic, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.2