In 1980, 20-year-old Brett Blundy and a business partner he met from school bought two rundown record stores called Disco Stick.

They immediately closed one, combined the stock into the Pakenham store (situated in a small shopping arcade) and reopened as Jetts, selling vinyl records and cassettes.

[2][3][4] In 1990, Blundy's company Brazin Limited bought back the failed Jetts chain from the liquidators at a discount and began to progressively rebrand them as Delta music stores.

Like Delta, IN2 Music targeted a wider demographic than Sanity's focus on the youth 16-26 age group, giving Brazin more scope after the collapse of adult-orientated chain, Brashs.

IN2 Music expanded the next year after the company purchased a further 23 CC Records stores in South Australia and Queensland, and re-branded more Delta outlets.

Chaos.com and Leading Edge Music both made public threats to boycott Festival Mushroom's content, but HMV Australia (whose website did not offer downloading) followed through, removing all their CDs from their domestic stores, adding they were would do the same overseas.

But the next week, Festival Mushroom backed down, stating Sanity would simply be the wholesaler of their digital downloads for the next three years, requiring them to make all products available to other retailers at the time of release.

Brazin also made a commitment to restrict the size and proximity of its Sanity UK stores in order to ensure they do not pose a large competitive threat to Virgin's other music shops.

However, the program stalled as Brazin battled internal disruptions and struggled to separate the target markets for Virgin and its chain of more than 200 Sanity stores (at the time).

As a result, the company's entertainment division posted a $27 million loss in financial year, 2002–03, and by mid-2004, Brazin had only managed to open 12 Virgin Megastores.

Earlier that year, Brazin experienced many delays in rebranding the Our Price stores due to landlords, heritage listings, and negotiations with Railtrack.

[19][20] In June 2003, with Brazin's shareprice languishing at $0.55, some business analysts criticised the company's strategy of aggressive expansion in the Sanity brand – which they said may be cannibalising sales from sister stores – instead of concentrating on lifting the performance of existing outlets.

He blamed heavy discounting in the DVD market, where large chains such as Kmart, Target and Big W accounted for more than one-third of the industry's sales.

(In August 1996, Sainty's general manager, Daniel Agostinelli, told Billboard that each CD sold in the 60-store chain then made 27.5% gross profit before subtracting 24% in costs.)

The Sanity name lived on in the UK for a very short while as rebranding was yet to occur, until Primemist immediately struggled to operate the chain due to difficulties with credit and stock purchasing, thus, entered administration in December 2003, progressively shutting 99 outlets as buyers for the entire business or individual parts of it could not be found.

However, most HMV stores in Australia had very high overhead costs due to their large footprints and expensive locations, thus most were gradually closed upon the end of rental leases.

[39] In February 2006, Brazin rolled out in-store kiosks where customers could select their own songs to either burn on a CD or download directly into an MP3 player.

However, it was reported that allegedly Brazin attempted to make ARIA pay an annual fee between $200,000 and $300,000 for their data through Sydney-based research firm, GFK.

[42][43][44] In November 2006, after more than a year of a falling shareprice while average S&P/ASX 200 prices had gone up 21 per cent in the same period, Brazin's founder and majority shareholder, Brett Blundy, used his fully owned private retail investment company, BB Retail Capital, to buy the remaining 37.6 per cent of the company he did not already own and make it private.

[4][45][46] In March 2008, after months of delay and development, Sanity responded to the expanding Internet media environment by launching an online music subscription service in partnership with Microsoft called, LoadIt.

With Sanity reduced to 21 per cent market share, against JB Hi-Fi's 50 per cent, the chief strategy seems to be targeted towards rationalisation and increased competition from the Melbourne-based retailer, by gradually closing down large footprint stores within capital city CBDs, inner suburbs and airports (where JB Hi-Fi have a greater hold over these markets, and rents are more expensive), the three exceptions being Sanity opening stores in direct competition to JB Hi-Fi in Robina Town Centre (April 2010), Mackay (May 2012) and Casuarina Square (August 2012) where they were already well established.

For much of its life, it featured a flip-printing style; one half of the magazine was dedicated to movies and DVD releases, the other side to music.