25 Years of Music and Technology Milestones

1979 July 1, Walkman introduced in Japan

1980 RIAA launches "home taping is killing music campaign"

1982/1983 - CD player and format introduced - welcome 0s and 1s

1983 MP3 Invented in Germany, for the Film Industry

1984 - Jack Valenti says "the VCR is to the American film producer...as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone."

1986 prerecorded cassettes outsell vinyl 3:1

1988 CD sales exceed sales on vinyl

1994 First CD-Rs produced

1997 Winamp released - MP3 craze begins - 15mm people download the application - plays CDs - rips MP3s

1998 CD Burners cost $500, Blank 74 minute Discs cost $2.60 a piece

1999 Napster launched

1999 Napster sued

1999 Winamp sold to AOL for $86mm

1999 Diamond introduces the Rio 500 - first USB player - has 64 MB + 64MB expansion slot - 2 hrs of music

2000 Gnutella developed by the same folks who created winamp. Bearshare, Morpheus, LimeWire launch - central server no longer needed

2000 Metallica sues Napster - 300,000 users banned from the Napster Network for offering Metallica sonce

2000 In February, Napster traffic peaks at 26.4mm users world wide

2000 In April, tracks from Radiohead's album appear on Napster 3 months before CD release. In spite of little promotion and airplay, Album debuts at #1

2001 In March, Napster served with injunction from the 9th circuit. In July, Napster closes.

2001 Kazaa reaches 10mm users

2001 Generation 1 iPods shipped 11/10/01 - 5 gig, costs $400

2003 "The best selling CD is blank" - 30 Billion discs sold worldwide

2003 iTunes music store has 200,000 song catalog - 10gig iPod costs $299

2003 In September, the RIAA begins suing P2P users

2003 iTunes music store launches for Windows - October

2004 Podcasting begins in October when former MTV VJ Adam Curry launches iPodder.org

2005 CD Burners cost $60, spindle of 50 Blank 80 minute discs cost $20 - 40 cents a piece

2005 In March, Apple announces that sales have surpassed 300 million songs - 60 billion have been traded via P2P during the same time period

2005 Some estimates put simultaneous users of P2P at 8.5mm in March (+80% vs 2003) - Pew Study finds 20mm have used email, IM, trading iPods as means of sharing music files

2005 Finding Music recommendations gets a whole lot easier - upto11.net launches in March

2005 In May Apple crosses 400mm downloads - this amounts to only about 20 per ipod

2005 In September, the average number of people logged in to P2P networks was 9.3mm, up from 4.3mm in September of 2003.