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GREENSBORO — Shampoo, vitamins, a Beatles album.

Forty years ago, you could pick up all that and your prescription at the neighborhood pharmacy: 1971’s version of sophisticated marketing.

Now it’s all online, and “American Idol” star Phil Stacey has embraced the electronic equivalent with a new music marketing tool created at Greensboro’s Market America.

The consumer goods company seems to sell everything but auto parts — cosmetics, jewelry, vitamins and hundreds of other products — through a network of Internet sites and sales representatives.

Conquer Entertainment is Market America’s new musical venture, led by President and CEO Amanda Ridinger, the daughter of Market America co-founder JR Ridinger.

Stacey, a Nashville singer whose 2008 album “Phil Stacey” hit No. 8 on the Billboard country music chart, released a new album Tuesday on Conquer.

The album, “Faith,” is a slick production of contemporary Christian music, which Stacey says is his first love. And Stacey says Conquer gives him the freedom, both as a businessman and creative artist, that he never found on his previous labels owned by Sony and Disney.

The 2007 top-five finalist on Idol says major labels offer plenty of support, but they don’t always spend time to develop an artist’s creative side. And they tend to slot performers into categories. If somebody sounds like Mariah Carey, for example, they may be marketed the same way.

Stacey wants to have an independent voice, but he doesn’t want to be peddling his albums on an unknown website or through expensive marketing.

So, he signed as a marquee artist at Conquer to earn money under the company’s system. He gets a fee from every album sold and depends on the company’s 20,000 independent representatives and major website to get the word out.

Artists ultimately depend on live shows for the majority of their income, but albums can provide good income even with heavy competition from such outlets as iTunes and Walmart, Stacey said.

Meanwhile, lesser-known artists with 2,000 or 20,000 fans on their own Facebook pages languish because they can’t connect with a label. For $49.99, Conquer allows artists to upload as many songs as they want and collect 50 cents for every 99 cent download that customers buy.

And that also means artists won’t depend on, or be indebted to, record labels that invest money in an act that can be a potential flop.

Conquer also holds shows for the artists at its massive semiannual conventions, one of which takes place in Greensboro each year.

Market America, which sells all its products directly to more than 12 million buyers through its consumer website and subsidiary Shop.com, views music as another lure for potential customers and future sales representatives.

“With music being the international language,” said Dennis Franks, executive vice president of Market America, “we feel it will attract more people to our site.”

And that’s sweet music for Franks, Ridinger and Stacey.

Contact Richard M. Barron at 373-7371 or richard.barron@news-record.com