The ABC's of MP3

ESSENTIAL MILESTONES


Don't get too misty: The best is yet to come.

1965


American physicist James T. Russell invents the compact disc.




1982


Sony Music releases the first commercial CD, Billy Joel's 52nd Street.




1989


The first "consumer" CD recorder, the Denon DN-770R, is released. The unit costs $20,000, with blank discs running $40.




1998


College students Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev create Winamp, the first mainstream MP3 player software, and offer it for free on the Net.




1999


Created by Northeastern University student Shawn Fanning, Napster allows individuals to easily share music files, without regard to copyright.




Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) sues Diamond Multimedia to stop sales of the Rio PMP300 portable MP3 player, a $200 32MB device. In August 1999 the suit is dropped, opening the floodgates for portable MP3 player manufacturers.




2001


Napster dies, but online file sharing lives on. Napster ran on a centralized database of available songs—current file-sharing software uses decentralized systems.




2003


Apple launches iTunes Music Store, selling 5 million downloads (at 99 cents a song or $10 an album) in its first eight weeks of operation.




Worldwide CD-R disc sales are estimated at $5.7 billion.




THE FUTURE


Wireless technology and receiver-equipped headphones make it possible to access the entire library of commercially released music wherever you wander.




Mandatory digital-rights management hardware installed in consumer electronics and computers limits consumer ability to play copied media files.