2000s in the music industry Inc.), who surpassed Wal-Mart to become the US’s largest music retailer in April 2008. Sector leaders include: Many hundreds more stores operate worldwide, often prominent only in particular countries or specialist genres. A third kind of operator never retails directly to the public, instead offering branded whitelabel stores and portals for organisations including bricks-and-mortar music stores, mobile telephony operators and ISPs. Some services which initially only offered streaming of tracks now also offer a-la-carte downloads, either through third parties (e.g. Spotify) or fully integrated (Deezer, Juno Digital, Rhapsody etc.). In 2009 "Rolling Stone" reported a price war between iTunes and
Tidal power their apparent feasibility in 1977. The Snohomish PUD, a public utility district located primarily in Snohomish county, Washington State, began a tidal energy project in 2007; in April 2009 the PUD selected OpenHydro, a company based in Ireland, to develop turbines and equipment for eventual installation. The project as initially designed was to place generation equipment in areas of high tidal flow and operate that equipment for four to five years. After the trial period the equipment would be removed. The project was initially budgeted at a total cost of $10 million, with half of that funding provided by the