Music store

This included not only individual amateur musicians, but schools from elementary to college level, civic bands and orchestras, churches, and entertainment ensembles that performed at events of the community and its organizations.

In service of this diverse clientele, store owners might focus on some specialty or niche market (pianos, sheet music, percussion).

More commonly, music stores offered some variety, depending upon the tastes and resources of the owners and the desires of their clientele (whether actual or sought-after).

This might include some mixture of fretted instruments (electric guitars, acoustic guitars, mandolins, ukuleles); brass, woodwind, and violin-family instruments; drums and percussion; pianos and organs; consumable items (strings, reeds, drum sticks); accessories (metronomes, music stands); and sheet music.

In more recent decades, stores began to include instrument amplifiers, guitar effects units, electronic keyboards, microphones, sound recording equipment and digital audio software.

Recorded musical instruction became a niche, beginning with LPs and evolving through formats of cassette tape, VHS video, compact disk, and DVD.

Mainstream electric guitars stores sell well-known brands like Gibson, Fender and Ibanez.

Music for guitarists or electric bass players may be in tabulature notation, which depicts where on the instrument the performer should play a line.

Stores that primarily sell used equipment may carry new merchandise, minimally guitar strings, patch cords and microphone cables.

Some online music stores have a single photo of the item, the product name and price, and a few bullets about the features.

On the other hand, some online music stores have interactive Web 2.0 features, such as 360-degree virtual reality-style images of the products, in which the viewer can "turn" the product around to see the back and sides, online comments sections where customers can review their purchases and additional music-related content, such as articles on musical instruments or sound gear written by store staff.