When Music Met The Internet

Many technologies have been modernized by being diffused with the Internet. We can now listen to the radio online, watch a movie, upload pictures, have a live conversation using Skype, go shopping, book a trip and the list goes on and on and on.

Remember growing up when you had piles and piles of cassette tapes lying around, or your huge collection of records? How about your walk-man or the newest cd ?
Music has officially gone digital. No more bulky collection to lug around. We now have i-pods and mp3's.

In 1987 the first MP3 was produced by Karlheinz Brandenburg who chose the song “Tom’s Diner” by Suzanne Vega. The first portable mp3 devise would not come along until 11 years later, but with the combination of the two- music has never been the same.

First people were "burning" cd and sharing songs by copying their cd's on line. I cant tell you the amount of home made cds i have from high school when we would compile our favorite songs onto a blank cd. From there, Napster appeared onto the scene and caused quite a stir. Today we have Apple and the mammoth iTunes program.

Unfortunately this revolution of music has destroyed many record stores including Tower Records, Virgin Megstore, Sam Goody's and HMV. It has caused issues for record companies from Capital Records to Jive Records. Having access to digital music not only makes it easier to get ahold of new music, it makes it easier for musicians to produce their music much cheaper.

iTunes was introduced to the world by Apple in 2001. It is an online site used to purchase and play digital songs. You can now purchase "single songs" rather than a whole album. The iTunes system helps you organize and easily manage your catalog of songs. In February of 2010 iTunes sold their 10 billionth digital song ! That is an enormous number for something being sold online.

No longer are the days we carry crates of vinyl records around. Music has diffused with the Internet and has changed the whole course of the music industry.

The Internet has been around for how long ??

The Internet was invented in the late 1960's and of course many important events have happened along the Internet timeline. But if you had to choose one, one important date on that timeline which would you be most interested in?

July 2001: A federal judge rules Napster must remain offline until it can prevent copyrighted material from being shared by its users

We have all heard of Napster. Napster was created by Shawn Fanning and his uncle John Fanning in 1999 while Shawn attended Northeastern University. Its was originally set up as a peer- to - peer file sharing service where people could share music.....for free. After running into massive legal battles regarding copyright violations the site was forced to shut down.
The site made it easy to exchange MP3 files which musicians viewed as "stealing". The band Metallica ignited the legal battles when they discovered their song "I Disappear" was being downloaded on the site before it was even released. After being sued by musician such as Metallica, Dr. Dre and organizations as the RIAA the site officially shut down in July of 2001.
In 2002, Roxio acquired the company and in September of 2008 the site was purchased by Best Buy for $121 million who is the current parent company of the site. The site currently exists as an online music store which requires a paid online subscription.
Napster.com
Napster may have run into major difficulties over the past few years, but it opened the doors for music share and music purchase sites.

February 2007: Apple Surpasses one billion iTunes downloads

Today if you want to purchase music online, most people automatically think of the site iTunes. iTunes was established in  January of 2001. Of course with this site you pay for the files that you download but without the presence of Napster, do you think 1 billion songs would have been downloaded in 6 years !

One Billion Songs - now that is alot of music.......