Steve PMHOnline music stores typically provide musical supplies and resources from a digital location. The most common physical supplies that you can find in an online music store include musical instruments and equipment.
Some of them extend their offering to also act as online shops where customers can access a variety of musical items and custom products, depending on the specific need of the client. They could sell you sheet music to accompany your guitar, violin, piano, trumpet, flute, drums, or other instruments.
Moreover, there are many online stores that provide flexible ways to get the best offers, in places like zZounds, Musician’s Friend, Sweetwater, Gear4music, Guitar Center, Music123, Sam Ash, among other digital stores.
Let’s now explore each online music store and see the products and services they offer, their pros and cons, how to select a suitable music store for your needs, and the best overall option that you can settle for.
zZounds – A General Online Music Store for Local Deliveries
Most customers prefer online music stores that have an extensive portfolio. They can satisfy the needs of most customers that visit the store. Therefore, if you want an online music store that provides all categories of supplies, zZounds is your one-stop for all music needs.
The zZounds online music store also provides branded musical supplies, including JBL music monitors, Gibson guitars, Peavey PA speakers, Roland synthesizers, Yamaha keyboards, among many other big brands. You may very well find your preferred brand in the category of supplies that suits your needs. Zzounds is also a certified supplier for these brands, which means that the customer will enjoy buying directly from the manufacturer.
Such benefits include more extended periods of warranty and assurance of quality. It, therefore, may qualify as a reliable online music store.
Pros:
The pros of using the zZounds online music store include:
- A guarantee for the lowest price.
- Delivery within two business days.
- More transparency in pricing and shipping.
- A lenient return policy.
- Focused on providing the cheapest supplies – an outstanding advantage for customers.
- Maintain the best quality of supplies.
- Accept the return of goods for customers that find cheaper options within 45 days of their purchase.
- Customers also receive customized attendance in testing and reviewing the products bought from the zZounds online music store.
Cons:
The cons of this online music store include:
- A limited delivery plan that does not make international shipping.
- Lack of a dedicated line of original products, which makes it unappealing to clients who want to control the customization process.
Despite these drawbacks, the store still stands out as one of the most reliable online music stores.
Check the Products and Prices of Zzounds
Musician’s Friend – A Subsidiary of an Online Music Store for US Products
If you prefer an online music store with an excellent reputation, Musician’s Friend is a well-known international online music store with a great history. It does not link to any retail locations. The company has an extensive portfolio of guitars, and one can also find a variety of musical instruments in other categories.
It operates as a subsidiary of Guitar Center and has moved to specialize more on guitars and a limited range of other instruments. The store offers products made in the USA as its primary marker of quality and makes deliveries within 6 to 8 days. Customers that use Musician’s friend have a high likelihood of preferring Guitar Center, which is the reason for its acquisition.
Pros:
The pros of Musician’s Friend include its excellent reputation and the high quality guaranteed for guitars. The main benefits include:
- Most customers that opt for this store probably know its long-term reputation as one of the earliest online stores or intend to purchase guitars with a more extended warranty period.
- It allows a 2-year warranty for guitars and percussion instruments.
- The company offers price-matching and premium products in the guitar category, too.
- It also focuses on expanding the variety of products that customers may access at the store based on the complementarity of the supplies.
Cons:
The cons of this online music store include the fact that:
- It does not have a broad portfolio of branded products, and its offers have minimal customization.
- The store lacks major brands that many customers may look for when making purchases in a large music store.
- Many of the products that it features belong to brands that may not suit clients who trust big brands.
However, the drawbacks of using Musician’s Friend do not impede it from emerging as one of the best online music stores as it also partners with Guitar Center, which has longevity in the market.
Check the Products and Prices of Musician`s Friend
Sweetwater – The Largest Online Music Store
Sweetwater was operational as early as 1999. The original website is even older as it was launched in 1995. Therefore, it stands out as a well-established online store and the largest retailer for music supplies in the US.
The company behind the Sweetwater online music store was established in 1979 by a musician known as Chuck Surack. It has a solid foundation and a strong background as the founder has experience in tuning and playing a variety of instruments.
The store caters to all musical needs, including instruments, live recording, studio recording, plug-ins, and software, among many other provisions. An advanced customer will benefit from this online music store’s services as it ensures that the essential products and services appear clearly and early enough during the client’s online experience.
Pros:
The pros for using the largest online music store focused on musical supplies include:
- Unlimited access to a large variety of products in each category.
- Assurance that the supplier can ascertain the quality of products
- Access to engineering services.
- Access to technical support.
- Free shipping.
- A 2-year warranty for all products.
- A client that does not know precisely what they want to buy will have access to an entire category and technical support from a team of engineers and salespeople.
- The store has partnerships with reliable manufacturers and brands. Therefore, it provides branded products by such large companies as Yamaha, JBL, Rode, Behringer, Shure, Newmann, AKG, Zoom, Audio-Technica, and Furman, among other well-known international manufacturers of musical supplies.
Cons:
The cons of this online music store are that:
- It has a less-lenient return policy as it only allows up to 30 days for returning most purchases. As such, purchases that turn out to be above another retailer’s selling price will exclusively remain eligible for return in one month, significantly less than the previous stores reviewed here.
- The store provides a month for returning defective items, and also applies stricter criteria for examining intentional damage.
Overall, the largest online music store can still satisfy most of your needs – if you consider the level of support that you get from such a store.
Check the Products and Prices of Sweetwater
Gear4music – A European Online Music Store
Gear4music is an online music store in Europe with an excellent reputation and high capacity for customizing its services. The company also has a long history as it launched more than two decades ago, in 2003.
It provides all types of musical instruments and strives to capture clients across all markets by partnering with the most significant general retailers in the global digital space. It boasts of being a publicly-traded company and has enjoyed the reputation since 2015.
It means that a vast number of people hold it accountable for things that could hinder its efficient and effective operations. The company’s product portfolio is quite broad and includes all categories seen from previous online music stores. It is also unique for providing two specific types of orchestral supplies, home production, and lighting.
Pros:
The pros of using Great4music as a favorite online music store include:
- Flexible options for getting an extended warranty.
- Flexibility in delivery with robust system that provides customers with options for varying delivery dates and times, tracking deliveries, and following an automated tracker.
- The online music store can ship through Amazon and other reliable services.
- It also provides direct access to reviews on Trust Pilot on the online store.
- The other significant advantage of using this music store is that it enhances accessibility with language support for over 15 languages. A user can select a country and language for automatic translation of the text on the online store.
- Its platform attracts international clients, who can also make purchases and know their exact time of delivery.
Cons:
The cons of using the Great4music online music store include:
- It has non-standard prices for deliveries as the cheapest plans are expensive. Therefore, it fails to harmonize the pricing of the delivery options to offer a few simple options that cater to the needs of ordinary users of online stores.
- It only suits a client that wants flexibility in delivery timelines with the ability to review complicated plans.
- It also disallows using PayPal for click-and-collect purchases. Such purchases provide benefits for clients that can avoid delivery charges, but many shoppers rely on PayPal, which means that they’re denied this opportunity.
Guitar Center – The Largest Specialized Online Music Store
Guitar Center focuses on specialized supplies and is excellent for customers that want to avoid a clutter of products in irrelevant categories. It’s the largest music store specializing in guitar sales. Guitar Center is also the oldest store of this kind that has a substantial online presence.
The company behind this online music store started to operate in 1959. However, the online music store launched in 2015. The company has gained a lot of ground by acquiring Musician’s Friend and complementing its product offerings with those that this subsidiary may offer.
Pros:
The pros of Guitar Center include the fact that:
- The company provides additional support through physical stores.
- It also facilitates financing to enhance affordability for most of its clients.
- It provides rentals, which means that customers can acquire most instruments by hiring them. It’s an excellent store for rentals as it caters to the needs of performers that need a full set of instruments
- Customers can also procure music lessons to facilitate their musical experience.
- It has over 260 store locations in the US, and customers could make an online purchase based on the proximity of a given store and expect to receive it within minutes or hours.
- It’s also a specialized store where musicians can meet other creators, and the company facilitates the sale of vocal samples and other exciting activities for musicians.
- Its support staff helps such clients to select the best instruments and equipment in a given category, as well as access to production services that can benefit these clients.
- The company also provides repair services for clients that need to fix their instruments at a reasonable market price.
- It creates a strong music community at the store as the clients can also utilize their warranty to exchange damaged instruments.
Cons:
- Poor service in some locations
- Tends to be pricier than the competition
Music123 – A General Online Music Store (Update: It now belongs to Musician’s Friend)
Music123 is unique for offering specialized services – including sheet music – which helps support clients that need more guidance in playing their instruments. The music store offers general music supplies in the top categories of guitars, woodwinds, brass instruments, and sheet music.
It then provides customers with other groups and accessories to help them complete their orders and meet their specific needs at a given time.
Pros:
The benefits of using this store include the fact that:
- When a customer seeks to make a guitar purchase in any category, they can access several products with the specifications they provide.
- Customers can also compare offers on sound recording systems, microphones with their stands, or other products that the store determines as relevant.
- It provides a guaranteed delivery in five business days.
- It offers a variety of services in the brass instruments or sheet music category, too, and oversees the installation of major equipment.
- The store also provides gift cards.
Cons:
Its cons include the fact that:
- It’s a smaller store compared to the other retailers.
- It fails to make deliveries to most countries, so customers that wish to purchase and deliver their products to a foreign destination may not benefit from this store.
Check the Products and Prices of Musician`s Friend
Sam Ash – A Family-Owned Online Music Store
Sam Ash is one of the online music stores with efficient and reliable management or structure of ownership. It’s excellent for loyal customers. The Sam Ash family owns this online music store, and it keeps the legacy of its founder.
The store’s uniqueness is the focus that it puts on refining the online experience of customers. It now utilizes most of the pricing features that advanced music stores use to improve the customer experience.
Pros:
Its pros include:
- The company offers products provided by major brands.
- It has unique categories for home audio.
- The store is keen on providing new books or audio services as the forms of support that help clients learn to play new instruments or refine their skills.
- It provides additional support through physical stores.
Cons:
The primary cons of using the store include:
- It has a relatively smaller size, compared to zZounds, Sweetwater, or other stores reviewed here.
- The store applies a lot of generalization in sorting products, which refers to most categories.
- It does not have adequate capacity for offering original custom products, e.g., handmade guitars.
- High-profile purchases or special deliveries may not benefit from customization. Musical instruments serve as fantastic gifts, and the lack of this service makes the store unsuitable for such clients.
The store may not compare favorably to the most massive stores, but suits a small budget client that wants simplicity and access to more points of support.
Check the Products and Prices of Sam Ash
The Key Criteria for an Online Music Store
The best online music stores should include a wide range of services, from specialized offers for audio engineering and set-ups, to supplies for all types of musical equipment and instruments.
The best music store should be one that you may contact to order a suite of recording equipment, acquire any musical instrument, get music software for synthesizers or specialized computer programs for workstations, or a variety of audio effects.
The benefits of using it should range from the minimal cost of the purchase to quality assurance. The online music store should provide you with specific benefits that apply to a client in musical supplies.
It should also provide the fastest delivery, most extended warranty, and extra services for customization or discounts.
Best Online Music Stores – Our Verdict
zZounds stands out as the best online music store for music supplies. It provides a wide range of musical supplies, a guarantee for the lowest price, delivery within two business days, and a very lenient return policy. A client can also access the cheapest musical supplies and still get the best quality.
Any customer can also compare prices before and after the purchase to determine whether there’s a more competitive offer in other stores. zZounds also accepts the return of goods for customers that find cheaper options within 45 days of their purchase. zZounds also provides specialized support to clients.
It employs professional musicians and audio engineers to guide your purchase. You can order any instrument from the retailer, procure audio recording equipment, contact their engineers to inquire about anything that hinders you in your musical experience, or return past purchases. The zZounds online music store therefore stands out as the best musical supplies retailer.
You may get an offer or additional customer services if you’re not satisfied at any point. As such, your best online music retailer will meet all the needs that emerge in your attempt to acquire musical supplies.
