Section 11.1. Digital Audio and the Internet

11.1. Digital Audio and the Internet

Recorded music has appeared in a variety of shapes and sizes over the decades, including fragile discs spinning at 78 rpm, vinyl records in colorful sleeves that were artworks in themselves , pocket- size cassette tapes, and CDs that gave all those predecessors a hard shove into the Bargain Bin of History. But no music format ever exploded into the public consciousness as quickly and widely as the bits of computer code known as MP3 files .

Using the MP3 format makes it possible to compress the digital files that represent songs into files small enough to be uploaded, downloaded, emailed , and stored on hard drives by the hundreds. That feat of smallness set off a sonic boom in the late 1990s that continues to reverberate across the music world.

Of course, the other big technology that made noise in the 1990s was the Internet itself. Even though dial-up modems were still the standard way to connect a computer to the Internet, MP3 files were still small enough that you could download a pop single in just a few minutes, even over a telephone line.

File-sharing services like Napster began to flourish as people realized they could find music for free on the Internet. Young music fans would rip their entire CD collections (that is, copy the songs from the CD to the computer) and make them available to download, bypassing the whole buy-the-CD-and-give-royalties-to-the-labels-and- artists thing.

Of course, this wasn't the recording industry's favorite technology. Its lawyers eventually sued most of the original file-trading sites right out of business.

But from the ashes of the litigiously stomped file-swapping sites came the realization that people enjoy the convenience of downloading music off the Internet and might even pay for songs. Several recording-industry deals later, online music stores selling songs legally began to pop up like Starbucks franchises. The arrival of affordable broadband connections also made it easier and faster to download even more songs.

So you have the musicand you have a method of getting it to your computer. Now you just have to figure out how you want to listen to it and where to find it.