About OTOTOY

Read, listen, buy... A digital music store.

OTOTOY is not a simple store, it is also an online magazine about music.

We've already published interviews and reviews about more than 20,000 different artists. We strive to inform you about the vibrant Japanese music scene and its most unique artists. Our readers are able to listen to an extract of every work discussed about in these articles and buy them.

The albums are available to buy in a variety of formats, all DRM-free: from the simple MP3 and AAC, to WAV, FLAC, ALAC in CD-quality or High-Resolution —24bit/44.1kHz and higher—, to DSD (Direct Stream Digital) files.

About audio formats

From a broader perspective, music's main point is about communication between people.
Everybody wants to share their happiness with other human beings. When discovering new great music, sharing it with someone makes you enjoy it twice as much.

On one hand, preserving rights is important. To enjoy the music, it goes without saying that you have to compensate artists for their work. When you get your hand on a copy —physical or digital— of an album, you pay a small sum for the medium —that has become smaller because the means of reproduction and distribution have become cheaper— and with the rest, the artists are paid through a system of copyright that remains as yet unchanged.

Focusing too much on the latter even at the expense of the ease of use gave birth to DRM (Digital Rights Management), a way to control and limit copying. It hindered the aforementioned communication, thus limiting the spread of music to an extent that is hard to quantify.

This is why OTOTOY only sells DRM-free music.

• Whether on Windows, macOS, or any other OS, you are not required to use any specific music player
• You can burn the files to CDs
• You can transfer your files to iPhone, iPod, or any portable music player
• You can encode —compress— the files to the format of your choice

These are simple consumer rights you are guaranteed to have when buying on OTOTOY.

Furthermore, we also offer high resolution files —otherwise called Hi-Res— starting from 24bit/44.1kHz and DSD files at 2.8/5.6/11.2MHz, depending on the source given by the label.

However, please remember these rights are limited to personal use, as stated by copyright laws.

From OTOTOY to you

Tracks that you bought or acquired for free on OTOTOY can be downloaded directly to your computer, but are also available on a few services:

Regular download:

Downloading the files directly from OTOTOY to your PC. You can then use any program for playback, such as iTunes.

Partner services:

By entering your OTOTOY account information into these services, the music you bought will be automatically synchronized and available for playback. These are the smartphone apps KORG “iAudioGate for iPhone” and NePlayer, the NAS dedicated to music Melco.

Collections:

You can listen directly from your browser on the dedicated page.

OTOTOY Official app – Hi-res playback:

You can stream music on your smartphone with the dedicated apps, on iPhone and Android. Besides, you can subscribe to the Hi-res playback option for a better streaming experience (depends on your device). (note: Hi-res playback option is now included in the OTOTOY PREMIUM subscription.)

Making music, looking to sell music?

• On OTOTOY, anybody can easily sell music tracks
• We handle the billing, and all that goes around it
• For every item sold on OTOTOY, we take a processing fee (usually 30%), but don't ask for any kind registration fee when you upload your music.

Operating company

More info about our company on this page:
https://ototoy.jp/about/company