Artist: Harry Chapin

Harry Forster Chapin (December 7, 1942 ΓÇô July 16, 1981) was an American singer, songwriter, and humanitarian who fought to end world hunger.

Following an unsuccessful early album made with his brothers, Tom and Steve, Chapin's debut album was Heads and Tales (1972, #60), which was a success thanks to the single "Taxi" (#24). Chapin later gave great credit to WMEX-Boston radio personality Jim Connors for being the DJ who "discovered" this single, and pushed the air play of this song amongst fellow radio programmers in the U.S]

However, Chapin's recording future became somewhat of a controversy between two powerful record companies headed by two very powerful men, Jac Holzman of Elektra Records and Clive Davis of Columbia. According to Chapin's biography Taxi: The Harry Chapin Story by Peter M. Coan, Chapin had agreed in principle to sign with Elektra Records on the grounds that a smaller record label would give greater personal attention to his work. Clive Davis, however, remained undaunted, doubling almost every cash advance offer Chapin received from Holzman. Despite a cordial relationship with Holzman, Davis had a long history of besting Holzman over the years to particular artists, but this was one time that he did not prevail. Chapin ultimately signed with Elektra for a smaller advance, but with provisions that made it worth the move. The biggest stipulation in the nine-album deal was that he receive free studio time, meaning he paid no recording costs. It was a move that would ultimately save Chapin hundreds of thousands of dollars over the term of his contract and set a precedent for other musicians. "This was completely unheard of," said Davis in the Coan book. "There was no such thing as free studio time."

Chapin's follow-up album, Sniper and Other Love Songs (1972, #160), was less successful despite containing the Chapin anthem "Circle" (a big European hit for The New Seekers). His third album, Short Stories (1974, #61), was a major success. Verities & Balderdash (1974, #4), released soon after, was even more successful, bolstered by the chart-topping hit single "Cat's in the Cradle", based upon a poem by his wife. Sandy Chapin had written the poem inspired by her first husband's relationship with his father and a country song she heard on the radio. When Harry's son Josh was born, he got the idea to put music to the words and recorded the result. "Cat's in the Cradle" was Chapin's only number one hit, shooting album sales skyward and making him a millionaire.

He also wrote and performed a Broadway musical The Night That Made America Famous. Additionally, Chapin wrote the music and lyrics for Cotton Patch Gospel, a musical by Tom Key based on Clarence Jordan's book The Cotton Patch Version of Matthew and John. The original cast soundtrack was produced by Tom Chapin, and released in 1982 by Chapin Productions.

Chapin's only UK hit was "WOL*D", which reached #34 in 1974. His popularity in the UK owed much to the championing of BBC disc jockey Noel Edmonds. The song's success in the U.S. was championed by WMEX jock and friend of Chapin's Jim Connors who in part inspired the song.[The national appeal of the song was a result of disc jockeys playing it for themselves, since the song dealt with a much-traveled DJ, problems in his personal life, and his difficulty with ageing in the industry. This song was also a significant inspiration (though not the only one) for Hugh Wilson, who created the popular television series about DJs and radio, WKRP in Cincinnati] Chapin's recording of "The Shortest Story", a song he wrote about a dying child and featured in his 1976 live/studio album Greatest Stories Live, was named by author Tom Reynolds in his book I Hate Myself and Want to Die as the second most depressing song of all time (just behind "The Christmas Shoes").

By the end of the decade, Chapin's contract with Elektra (which had since merged with Asylum Records under the control of David Geffen) had expired, and the company made no offer to renew it. A minor deal with Casablanca fell through, and Chapin settled on a simple one-album deal with Boardwalk Records. The Boardwalk album, though no one knew it at the time, would be his final work. The title track of his last album, Sequel, was a follow up to his earlier song "Taxi", reuniting the same characters ten years later. The songs Chapin was working on at the time of his death were subsequently released as the thematic album The Last Protest Singer.

Discography

In 1972, Chapin switched his career focus to music. After a bidding war broke out over him, he signed a recording contract with Elektra Records. The contract was unprecedented as it granted him free recording time.
His 1972 debut album, Heads & Tales was an international success. It sold 1.1 million units. It was boosted by the Billboard Hot 100 top 20 single, Taxi. The song was also a top 5 hit in Canada. The song is based on Chapin's ex-girlfriend, who wanted to be an actress, selling out her dreams and marrying a rich man. While Chapin originally wanted to be a pilot, and he is now "flying" in his taxi. The story-line, however, is from a dream he had the weekend before he was supposed to start driving a taxi. He got a film job and didn't have to drive the taxi.

The follow-up album, Sniper and Other Love Songs was released the same year. The single, Sunday Morning Sunshine became a top 30 Billboard Adult Contemporary hit. The album's signature song, Sniper, is an almost 10 minute long ballad about the University of Texas tower shooting. The album also contained the Chapin anthem, Circle. The album sold 350,000 units.
His next album, Short Stories was released in 1973. It sold 1 million units. The album produced another worldwide hit, W·O·L·D. The single became a top 40 hit on the Billboard Hot 100, a top 10 in Canada, and top 10 and 20 in various other countries. The song is about an aging disc jockey who has given up his entire life to continue his career. The song is sung in the point of view of the jockey to his ex-wife. The song was inspired by Jim Connors when Chapin listened to him during a phone call to his ex-wife while at the WMEX studio. WOLD is an actual radio station in Marion, Virginia but there is no relation. The name simply comes from getting old, hence the "O*L*D*".

In 1974, he released his most successful album, Verities and Balderdash. It sold 2.5 million units. It was boosted by the #1 hit, Cat's in the Cradle. The single itself sold 1.3 million units. The song is about a dad who didn't have time for his son during his childhood, and then quickly turns into his son not having time for him. The song is from a poem his wife, Sandra Chapin, wrote. A second single from the album, I Wanna Learn a Love Song, was a top 10 hit on the Billboard Adult Contemporary. The song is based on how he met his wife. Another notable song from the album is 30,000 Pounds of Bananas. Although not released as a single, the song was extremely popular. It is based on a real truck crash in Scranton, Pennsylvania that was hauling bananas.
In 1975, he released his fifth studio album, Portrait Gallery. The album was less successful than the last, but contained the top 40 Billboard Adult Contemporary hit, Dreams Go By. The album sold 350,000 units. However, he was working on a Broadway play, The Night That Made America Famous. The play earned a total of 4 award nominations.

In 1976, he released two albums. The first was Greatest Stories Live. The album sold 2.1 million units. It was his first live album featuring a select number of songs from the previous albums. He also released On the Road to Kingdom Come. The album had no single release, but contained two popular songs, Corey's Coming and The Mayor of Candor Lied. The album sold 350,000 units.

In 1977, he released his seventh studio album, Dance Band on the Titanic. The album had no single release, but was named London's album of the year. The album sold 500,000 units.

In 1978, he released his ninth studio album, Living Room Suite. Despite the economic recession, the top 20 Irish hit, Flowers Are Red, was produced. The album sold 350,000 units.

In 1979, he released his second live album, Legends of the Lost and Found. Still in the economic recession, the album sold 250,000 units.

In 1980, his recording contract was up. He signed a new one-album deal with Boardwalk Records. He released the final album of his lifetime, Sequel. The single release, Sequel, was a follow up to his first hit single, Taxi. The song was a top 20 near miss on the Billboard Hot 100, peaking at #23. It is considered to be his fastest breaking album. The album sold 500,000 units.

In 1981, Chapin was killed in a car crash on the Long Island Expressway. He was buried at the Huntington Rural Cemetery. Millions of fans throughout the world mourned him following the news of his death.

On December 7, 1987, on what would have been his 45th birthday, Chapin was posthumously awarded the Congressional Gold Medal for his campaigning on social issues, particularly his highlighting of hunger around the world and in the United States. His work on hunger included being widely recognized as a key player in the creation of the Presidential Commission on World Hunger (under 39th President Jimmy Carter) in 1977. There was also a tribute concert held at the Carnegie Hall to commemorate his 45th birthday if he were alive, and also to award him the Congressional Gold Medal which was presented to his son Joshua Chapin and laid to rest on an empty stool with Harry's guitar leaning against it. Various artists contributed, including Bruce Springsteen, Richie Havens, and Pat Benatar, whom Harry taught to sing rock & roll. It was hosted by Harry Belafonte.

Albums

Studio albums

Live Albums

Compilation and specialty albums

Year	Album	Chart Positions		Certifications	Sales
		US	CA
1972	Heads & Tales Debut album Released: March 11, 1972 Label: Elektra Records	60[2]	57	Gold (US) Platinum (CA)	1,100,000
1972	Sniper and Other Love Songs 2nd album Released: October, 1972 Label: Elektra Records	160[3]			350,000
1973	Short Stories 3rd album Released: December 1, 1973 Label: Elektra Records	61[4]	39	Gold (US) Platinum (CA)	1,100,000
1974	Verities & Balderdash 4th album Released: August 24, 1974 Label: Elektra Records	4[5]	4	2x Platinum (US) 2x Platinum (CA)	2,700,000
1975	Portrait Gallery 5th album Released: September 27, 1975 Label: Elektra Records	53[6]			350,000
1976	On the Road to Kingdom Come 6th album Released: October 23, 1976 Label: Elektra Records	87[7]	66		350,000
1977	Dance Band on the Titanic 7th album Released: September 10, 1977 Label: Elektra Records	58[8]	91	Gold (US) [9]	500,000
1978	Living Room Suite 8th album Released: September 10, 1978 Label: Elektra Records	133[10]			350,000
1980	Sequel 9th album Released: March, 1980 Label: Boardwalk Records	58[11]	72	Gold (US)	500,000
Year	Album	Charts		Certifications	Sales
		US	CA
1976	Greatest Stories Live Released: April 23, 1976 Label: Elektra Records	48[12]	71	2x Platinum (US) Platinum (CA)	2,100,000
1979	Legends of the Lost and Found Released: November, 1979 Label: Elektra Records	163[13]	72		250,000
Year	Album	Charts	Certifications	Sales
		US
1985	Anthology of Harry Chapin Released: 1985 Label: Elektra/Asylum Records	—		250,000
1987	Remember When the Music Released: 1987 Label: Dunhill Compact Classics	—		250,000
1988	The Gold Medal Collection Released: September 13, 1988 Label: Elektra/Asylum Records	—	Platinum (US)	1,000,000
1988	The Last Protest Singer Released: November 30, 1988 Label: DCC Compact Classics	—		250,000
1990	Harry Chapin Tribute Released: July 1, 1990 Label: Relativity Records	—		N/A
1998	The Bottom Line Encore Collection Released: March 10, 1998 Label: The Bottom Line Record Company	—		N/A
1999	Story of a Life Released: October 19, 1999 Label: Elektra Records	—		N/A
1999	Storyteller Released: 1999 Label: BOA Records	—		N/A
2000	Onwards and Upwards Released: 2000 Label: Harry Chapin Foundation	—		N/A
2001	VH1 Behind the Music: The Harry Chapin Collection Released: August 21, 2001 Label: Elektra Records	—		N/A
2002	The Essentials Released: July 2, 2002 Label: Elektra Records	—		N/A
2003	Classics Released: 2003 Label: Warner Special Products	—		N/A
2006	Introducing... Harry Chapin Released: August 1, 2006 Label: Rhino Records	—		N/A
2015	Bottom Line Archive Series: Live 1981 Released: June 30, 2015 Label: The Bottom Line Record Company	—		N/A
2019	The Singles A's & B's Released: March 01, 2019 Label: Wounded Bird Records	—		N/A

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Chapin_discography

Music listening in 2019: 10 takeaways from the IFPI’s new report

Global music-industry body the IFPI has published its latest ‘Music Listening’ report, for 2019, based on a survey of 34,000 people in 21 countries.
Whereas the body’s annual Global Music Report focuses on revenues, this study is all about people’s music habits: how much they’re streaming and buying music; what devices they’re doing it on; and whether they’re still getting it from unlicensed sources at least some of the time.
The survey was conducted in April and May this year by the IFPI and its research partner AudienceNet. The 21 countries were: Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Poland, Russia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as China and India – although results from the latter two were not included in the IFPI’s ‘global’ figures in the report. Here are Music Ally’s 10 key takeaways from Music Listening 2019, which we’ve been reading overnight.

1. Surprise! Music-streaming is growing!

Okay, not really a surprise. On average, people are spending around 18 hours a week listening to music, up from 17.8 hours a year ago. It’s clear that streaming is driving this. 89% of respondents now use some kind of on-demand streaming service, while 64% listened to music through audio-streaming services in the last month. The latter stat is up from 57% a year ago.

2. It’s not just about the youngsters

This is a point that the IFPI stresses in the report. It’s true that young people are the keenest streamers: 83% of 16-24 year-olds used audio-streaming services in the last month, and 63% in the last day. Meanwhile, 52% of them report having used paid streaming services in the last month – the highest percentage for any age bracket.
But the highest rate of growth for use of streaming services comes from 35-64 year-olds: 64% of 35-44 year-olds, 53% of 45-54 year-olds and 44% of 55-64 year-olds used audio-streaming services in the last month, up by nine, eight and nine percentage points respectively.

3. Video is the biggest music-streaming format

That ‘value gap’ argument about whether the music industry should be getting more money from YouTube isn’t going away anytime soon. The IFPI’s study claims that video accounts for 47% of on-demand streaming consumption globally – remember, this doesn’t factor in YouTube-crazy India – compared to 37% for paid audio streaming, and 15% for free audio streaming.
The IFPI also reckons that 77% of respondents used YouTube for music in the past month. That makes for an interesting comparison with YouTube’s own official figure, mind: in May 2018 it said that “more than one billion music fans come to YouTube each month”.
That said, video’s share of streaming is falling: in the IFPI’s 2018 study, 52% of global on-demand streaming time was video; 28% was paid audio streaming; and 20% was free audio streaming. So paid audio has taken a bite out of both the other categories over the last year.

4. Smartphones aren’t yet the biggest music device

There are some useful stats on ‘device share’ of music listening time in the IFPI’s report. Radios are still the most popular device, accounting for 29% of the time respondents spend listening to music. However, smartphones are just behind, with a 27% share of listening time – unchanged from the IFPI’s 2018 study.
Of course, smartphones are bigger for younger listeners: they account for 44% off the time 16-24 year-olds spend listening to music, according to the study.
What about radio as a content form, rather than a device? The IFPI says that globally, music listeners average 5.4 hours a week listening to radio either live or on catch-up. That’s actually up by an hour year-on-year from the 4.4 hours reported in the 2018 study.

5. Smart speakers are gaining traction

Music-industry conferences love a panel session on how smart speakers are The Hot Thing in music listening. But are they? The IFPI study offers some numbers on that too. Globally, 20% of respondents have used smart speakers for music in the last three months, although it’s as high as 34% in the US and 30% in the UK.
However, in the stats for device share of music-listening time, smart speakers are still niche: they only account for 3% of global listening according to the IFPI. That’s less than portable Bluetooth speakers (4%) and hi-fis / turntables (8%). That doesn’t mean smart speakers are a flop as a device category: it’s just some handy perspective for those excitable panels.

6. Pop is the tops… but younger people differ

It can feel like hip-hop and R&B are the dominant genres in the streaming era, but from a global perspective, pop is still tops according to the IFPI’s research. In fact, the top 10 favourite genres globally are, in order: Pop; Rock; Oldies; Hip-hop / Rap; Dance / Electronic; Indie / Alternative; K-Pop; R&B; and Classical.
(Our assumption is that Indian film-music and Chinese C-Pop would be in the list if the IFPI was including the surveys from those two countries in its global figures.)
In the global list, ‘Oldies’ didn’t feature in the IFPI’s top-ten-genres list at all in 2018; hip-hop / rap has risen from fifth place to fourth; dance / electronic has fallen from third to fifth; and singer / songwriter has disappeared altogether –or possibly subsumed into other genres.
Again, younger listeners show different habits: 16-24 year-olds are more than four times likely to say hip-hop / rap is their favourite genre as any other age group. And not just American music either: 26% of French 16-24 year-olds cited French-language hip-hop as their favourite genre.

7. Music piracy has fallen in the last year

The IFPI has consistently campaigned against various forms of piracy, and it’s not going to stop now just because legal streaming has pushed infringement to the margins of the industry’s concerns. But its latest study has some good news to bolster that trend.
In 2019, 27% of respondents to its survey reported using copyright infringement as ‘a way to listen to or obtain music in the past month’. That’s down from 38% in last year’s study. 23% of respondents download music through ‘stream-ripping’ services, but that’s also down sharply – from 32% in 2018.
The IFPI maintains that piracy “remains a threat to the music ecosystem”, pointing to the 34% of 16-24 year-olds who stream-rip, but the overall trends feel positive.

8. Take a bow, Mexico

One of the stats that jumps out from the report is this: the 25.6 hours a week that Mexicans spend (on average) listening to music. Impressive, compared to the 18 hours global average.
It’s a reminder of why Mexico has become such an influential market in the streaming ecosystem, capable of propelling Latin American tracks into the global charts of services like Spotify. There aren’t just lots of Mexican music-streamers; they’re heavy listeners too.
(And that’s good news for rock bands: it’s the top genre in Mexico, ahead of pop and Latin pop.)

9. Koreans are the best at buying

When it comes to listening time, South Korea falls some way short of Mexico, with an average of 13.9 hours a week. However, Koreans are still tops when it comes to actually buying music: 44% of respondents there said they’d bought CDs, vinyl or downloads in the last week, well ahead of the 26% global average.
Still, that average is a reminder that the modern music story isn’t entirely about streaming: more than a quarter of music listeners still buy, too.

10. Africa is still a mystery

The IFPI is upfront about its research methodology: for example the exclusion of its India and China surveys from the global figures in its new report. However, it’s important to understand what else isn’t covered here.
While the body notes that the 21 countries surveyed accounted for 92.6% of global recorded-music market revenues in 2018 as tracked in its Global Music Report earlier this year, like that report there’s only one country from Africa (South Africa) and none from the Middle East.
Africa, particularly, is a fascinating market for music listening / consumption, even if that’s not translating to meaningful (or at least easily-measurable) industry revenues yet. Music Ally would love to see someone tackle this issue with a continent-wide survey of similar scale to the IFPI’s new report.



Source: https://musically.com/2019/09/24/music-listening-2019-ifpi-report/

The CD is dead? Not so fast

Best Buy might have dumped it and we're all addicted to Spotify, but the truth about the format's health is complex

Last week, Billboard dropped a two-part music retail bombshell. First, Target is reportedly looking to overhaul its financial arrangement with its music and video vendors. Basically, the shopping giant only wants to pay labels for what product stores actually sell, instead of buying inventory up front and returning unsold merchandise for credit. In an even bigger blow, the article also noted that Best Buy has apparently decided to stop selling CDs in its stores as of July 1.
The news brought on waves of nostalgia for consumers of a certain age. Back in the '90s, when the CD boom was in full effect and e-commerce had yet to become an industry force, Best Buy was a mecca for cheap albums. For kids with limited funds or who didn't have the ability to visit independent record shops, big-box stores offered a gateway to cool. (I vividly remember purchasing Elastica's self-titled debut at Best Buy.) Oddly enough, in recent years I've found that Best Buy is the only brick-and-mortar store in my area that stocked certain albums during release week ("Hesitant Alien," the solo album from My Chemical Romance frontman Gerard Way, comes to mind).

Still, people who had shopped at Best Buy in recent years weren't exactly surprised at the move. Anecdotal evidence suggests that the CD section (and selection) in stores has been shrinking for years. This mirrors industry statistics. According to Billboard's deep dive into Nielsen's 2017 Year-End Music Report, there were 88.2 million CDs sold last year, a decrease of 20 percent from 2016. And although vinyl remained popular — sales rose nine percent, to 14.3 million — streaming dominated the year. On-demand audio and video streams increased a whopping 43 percent, to 618 billion. Total physical and digital album sales, meanwhile, decreased 17.7 percent, to 169.15 million.

Taken at face value, these statistics seem to indicate that the days of actually owning music physically or digitally as opposed to enjoying through a streaming service are numbered. However, these doom-and-gloom proclamations can feel like self-fulfilling prophecies. Discussions about how the CD is dying pop up on a regular basis in a way similar to how all those articles about rock 'n' roll's death remain popular. Indeed, many stories act as though CDs are already extinct. "If the majors don't play ball and give in to the new sale terms, it could considerably hasten the phase down of the CD format," Billboard said of Target's ultimatum, while a USA Today headline on the Best Buy move reads, "Music CDs fading fast as Best Buy may hit 'eject' button." It's hard not to think sometimes that people actually want CDs to die out.
 
Technology trends aren't helping this suspicion. Good luck finding a laptop with a built-in CD drive. Cars are also trending in that direction. For example, the 2018 Ford EcoSport doesn't have a CD player, only streaming capabilities. "Streaming is the fastest growing source of music and video content and particularly with younger consumers, who we've found time and time again prefer streaming and subscription services over traditional forms like CDs," Michael O'Brien, the SUV group marketing manager for Ford, told NPR in 2017.
Of course, the idea that technology and marketing affect how we listen to music is hardly new. Formats have cycled in and out of popularity with the introduction of cool accessories — the Walkman, boom boxes, the Discman, iPod. For its part, the compact disc's futuristic sheen was what originally bolstered its cachet in the '80s. Still, the CD market also came with its own sneaky pressure — namely, that music fans were encouraged to re-buy albums they already owned on LP or cassette, due to the supposedly better-quality sound. 

When you don't have a machine to play CDs, it follows you would buy fewer CDs. But in contemporary times, it's not a stretch to wonder if companies are responding to consumer demand when they eliminate CD players, or is this another example of corporations shaping consumer habits and hastening the format's demise, for financial gain? After all, CD (or DVD) drives are still useful and needed for plenty of work purposes, and people now have to purchase them separately. In 2016, The Verge pointed out that Apple's controversial removal of its headphone jack on newer iPhones helped the company's bottom line. It's easy to see something similar happening here.

Compared to two decades ago, when CDs were at peak popularity, of course 2017's sales statistics look anemic. But the compact disc is still the most popular format for people purchasing records. The second-most-popular format, with 66.2 million units sold? Another one pundits love to say is dying, digital albums. And it's certainly not correct to say that all consumers are eschewing CDs. Luke Sardello, the co-owner of Dallas-based Josey Records, told the Dallas Observer that the store has expanded its used CD inventory, in large part because that slice of its business "has grown year over year the past two years."
"CDs are still our third best-selling category behind new and used LPs," he says. "There is still demand for CDs by music fans that prefer to have a physical copies of their favorite albums without making the jump back into vinyl. They still like seeing the artwork and reading the liner notes. CDs still tell a story that streaming can't do." 

That used CDs are now cheaper than ever likely explains some of this popularity. But the format's convenience and stability is still unparalleled. Vinyl isn't exactly portable and, unless you're downloading music to a phone for offline listening, you're at the mercy of a solid internet connection if you want to rock out. Artist catalogs disappear and reappear from streaming services all the time. Those of some artists, such as Def Leppard, weren't even available until recently. Physical product also still offers more precise, correct information about album credits. Although Spotify recently started adding this info, Pitchfork points out how imperfect the endeavor has been so far. 

Plus, operating under the premise that streaming is now everyone's default illustrates a big (and classist) presumption: that everyone can access or pay for streaming service subscriptions. Reliable and affordable broadband internet access, which is necessary to have steady access to streaming platforms, still isn't available in many rural areas. A January 2018 Rolling Stone feature on country rap (or "hick-hop") noted that artists in this genre still sell physical records. "This fan base of lower-class country folk haven't all evolved to the digital world," says one country rap artist, Big Smo. "We don't have new shit."
Although the CD market looks bleak now, it's likely this won't always be the case. The vinyl resurgence (and, more recently, the cassette micro-boom) illustrates that even formats left for dead can bounce back. Retro nostalgia is always in fashion; people love to fetishize the past, and what it represents. And it's not like buying (or not buying) CDs is an either-or proposition: My household still buys CDs in addition to new and used vinyl, and we also subscribe to a streaming service. Compact discs will still have their place in a music collection, as long as people give them a shot at survival.

https://www.salon.com/2018/02/10/the-cd-is-dead-not-so-fast/

15 Places to Get Free Music Downloads

lifewire.com, by Stacy Fisher

There are plenty of websites out there that offer free music downloads, and we've weeded through them so you can find only the best and brightest in this list of the best 15 places to get free music downloads legally.

At these websites, you'll be able to download free music in high-quality MP3 format so they'll play on your computer, phone, or tablet. Since you can download and save them, they'll forever be yours.

All the free music downloads here are legal. They're either public domain or, in most cases, the artists have given permission for you to download and enjoy their hard work. That means you can feel great about listening to the music and discovering some hidden gems you might have otherwise passed up.




Jamendo

What We Like
Lots of ways to browse for music downloads
Lets you stream music, too
Includes an online radio function
There are mobile apps you can use

What We Don't Like
Downloads are in MP3 only; no option for other formats
Requires you to make a user account (it's free) to download the music
Free downloads are in MP3 quality only, not HD

All the free music downloads at Jamendo are made available through Creative Commons licensing meaning that the artists themselves have decided they want to give out their music for free for the masses to enjoy.

You can discover new music at Jamendo by viewing the most popular music and the songs that trending. There's also a Latest music filter to see recently added songs. You can also search for artists that you know to see if their music is available for download.

Another way to find great music here is by listening to one of the Jamendo radio channels. When you find a song or artist you like, you can then download that single track or the entire album.

Yet another way to browse this free music is via playlists, like "Best of January," "Electro Funk Frenzy," "Valentine's Day," and "Girls On the Rise."

If you'd rather stream the music at Jamendo instead of download it, they give you that option, too.




NoiseTrade

What We Like
You get the whole album at once in one click
Lets you preview the tracks before downloading them
Provides a way to tip the artists
Also includes eBooks and audiobooks

What We Don't Like
Must download the whole album; can't pick specific tracks
You have to enter your email address to download the music

You can download thousands of free music albums from NoiseTrade, through Paste Magazine, and they're all completely legal to take. The artists want you to check out their creations and if you like it and are inclined to do so, you can tip them or help promote them to your friends.

You can stream part of the songs right now, but to download an album and access the full-length music, you need to enter your email address and zip code. You'll receive the album as a ZIP file which contains the MP3 files.

You can easily find new albums you want to download by viewing the "Notable" picks on the home page, plus there's a list of genres you can comb through.

NoiseTrade also offers free eBook and audiobook downloads for authors who'd like to share and earn your tip.




Amazon

What We Like
You can sort the list of music downloads
Provides several ways to filter and refine the list of downloads
The songs can be previewed

What We Don't Like
The download process can be confusing
You have to log in to your Amazon account to download the music
Only the music through the link below is free; other music on Amazon is not

There are thousands and thousands of free music downloads at Amazon.com, making it one of my favorite websites to visit when I'm looking for new music to download legally.

You can see the all the free music downloads by choosing a genre or sorting by popularity, release date, length of the song, reviews, or in alphabetical order by title, artist, or album.

You can play the songs before downloading them, but when you're ready to save the songs to your computer, add the item to your cart. Then, you can check out as if you were purchasing something by pressing Confirm Purchase. You'll be taken to a link to download the free music, and it'll also be saved in the Digital Orders tab of your order history.




Bandcamp

What We Like
Lets you download songs and full albums
Includes lots of tracks you won't find on other free music download sites
You can choose to pay if you want to
No user account is needed

What We Don't Like
Not every song you see is free to download
You have to explicitly say that you're choosing to not pay for the music
There isn't a "free only" page

Bandcamp makes it easy for artists to share their music in a "name your price" type of setting. This means that while you can pay for the music, another option is to put a zero in the payment box and download the song for free.

The Discover page is a great way to find the best selling music at Bandcamp, plus new arrivals and songs recommended by artists.

Not all songs can be downloaded for free but for the ones that don't have a minimum price, put a zero in the "Name Your Price" box. To do this, choose Buy Digital Track, enter 0 in the box, select download to your computer, and follow the on-screen prompts to get the download.

Sometimes, there also isn't a minimum price on entire albums, so you can use the Buy Digital Album option to get all of its songs for free.




Internet Archive's Audio Archive

What We Like
Lots of free audio downloads to pick from
Several sorting and filtering options
Most music can be downloaded in several audio formats
Supports previewing music
You don't need a user account to download the free music

What We Don't Like
Has a lot more lower quality music than other music download sites
Navigating the website can be confusing

Internet Archive's Audio Archive has millions of results for free downloads of music, audio, podcasts, radio programs, and most notably their Live Music Archive.

You can sort the free music downloads by most viewed items, title, date published, or creator, as well as filter the results by media type (concerts, audio, etc.), topics & subjects (e.g. rock or funk), language, and more.

You'll find all kinds of artists with free music downloads here including Jack Johnson, John Mayer, Grateful Dead, 311, and Smashing Pumpkins.

There are usually multiple file formats that you can download the free music in, like MP3 and OGG. These are listed in the DOWNLOAD OPTIONS area of every download page.




SoundClick

What We Like
Includes music from signed and unsigned artists
Lots of genres to pick from
No sign in necessary
Includes lots of music download deals and discounts

What We Don't Like
Not every song is free
There isn't a single page where you can find all the free music; it's mixed in with music that costs
Some songs can only be streamed

SoundClick is the ultimate portal into finding free music downloads directly from the artists websites. These artists have decided they'd like to let people download their music for free. This includes signed and unsigned musicians.

With SoundClick, you can browse through the music charts and genres until you find a free music download you'd like to have and then either listen to or download that song.

You can also create custom radio stations, get to know other listeners on the forums, and read more about your favorite SoundClick artists.

While you can, of course, download free music from SoundClick, some artists make their music available only after you've paid for the download, and others allow music streaming only.




Last.fm

What We Like
Every download is available in one click
A user account is not required
There are lots of ways to browse for music

What We Don't Like
It's hard to search for free music only
You can't preview songs before downloading them
MP3 is the only download option

Last.fm has several pages of free music downloads that fall into all genres. You can browse these free downloads by category, new releases, coming soon, or by simply looking through the whole list.

Just one selection will download your chosen song.

Besides free music downloads, you can also stream thousands of songs and get recommendations of bands you'll love.




SoundCloud

What We Like
Tons of content
Includes music downloads from well-known and new, up-and-coming artists
Every track can be streamed before downloading
Easier to find free downloads vs some other music download sites

What We Don't Like
You have to log in to download music
Finding free downloads can be difficult

SoundCloud is a website that lets you stream and download free music. Content at SoundCloud is sometimes uploaded by professional artists, while others are shared by independent musicians.

Not all music on SoundCloud can be downloaded, and some require you to Like a Facebook page to get the file. However, music that can be downloaded instantly and without an account, either have a Download file button in the More menu or a FREE DOWNLOAD button under the song.




Audiomack

What We Like
All songs are streamable
Easy to find popular song downloads
Many ways to sort, filter, and browse for free music
No need to make a user account
Mobile apps for streaming music

What We Don't Like
Not every song can be downloaded
No way to find just the free music downloads

You'll like Audiomack if you like SoundCloud and are interested in finding new music. All the music on this website is 100 percent legal and free to stream, and depending on the artist, you'll find music downloads, too.

The Audiomack website is very easy to use. You can search for songs, albums, and artists or browse the Trending or Top Songs sections. There's also a Recently Added page to find all the newest music at Audiomack.

Some of the music genres on this website include reggae, pop, R&B, hip-hop, instrumental, and afrobeats.

You can download music at Audiomack without needing a user account. Most if not all of the songs are in the MP3 format.

If you prefer to stream music from your phone or tablet, Audiomack works that way, too, on both Android and iOS devices.




Spinrilla

What We Like
Stream and download.
No user account necessary for albums.
Download in bulk or individually.
No website ads.

What We Don't Like
User account is required for single-track downloads.
Some tracks can only be streamed.

Spinrilla has free hip-hop mixtape downloads. You can browse for these music downloads by the mixtape name, single, or chart, such as the most popular mixtapes today, this month, or all time.

The website navigation is clean and easy to understand, and you only need a user account if you want to download individual songs. Whole albums can be downloaded in seconds without an account.

This website also lets you see which mixtapes will be released in the future. The Upcoming Mixtapes page shows when each mixtape will be available.

These music downloads are accessible from the website but you can also listen on your Android or iOS device via the Spinrilla mobile app.




Musopen

What We Like
Completely free music downloads you can use for anything
Includes sheet music downloads
Lots of unique ways to find free music
Supports previewing the music
Includes an online radio option

What We Don't Like
Music downloads require you to log in to a user account
Per-day download limits
No free HD audio

Musopen has sheet music and recordings that are completely free, legal, and copyright-free. You can listen online or download the music for whatever purpose. There's even an online radio you can listen to from a computer or through their Classical Radio mobile app.

There are lots of ways to find free music downloads at Musopen: browse by composer, performer, instrument, form, or time period. Of course, you can also do a manual search to see if they have something specific.

Another way to find music downloads here is to use the Music Discovery Tool. With this tool, you can filter all the music on the website by instrument, rating, and license type (to find only public domain music, creative commons music, etc.).

You can preview music without logging in but to actually download anything you find on Musopen, you have to create a user account. A free account gives you access to five music downloads every day and standard, lossy audio quality.



ReverbNation


What We Like
Helps you find up-and-coming artists
All the music can be streamed
Lets you browse for downloads by genre

What We Don't Like
Not every song is free to download
You need a user account to download some music

ReverbNation is a good pick if you're looking for music downloads from artists you don't yet know about. Several now-popular bands like Imagine Dragons and The Civil Wars started out on ReverbNation.

Not every song you see on this website can be downloaded, but it is all streamable through your web browser. Downloadable songs are indicated by a small download button next to the song.

The Discover page is a good start if you're not sure where to begin looking for new music downloads at ReverbNation. To search by genre, use the Charts page.


DatPiff

What We Like
Includes mixes from popular artists
Lets you download entire albums at once
Mobile apps are available
No user account is necessary

What We Don't Like
Limited mainly to rap music
Music can be downloaded as MP3 only

If you're into mixtapes and rap, you'll love DatPiff because that's most of the free music downloads you'll find at this website. You can stream as well as download the music.

What you'll find at DatPiff are not only mixtapes made by fans but also releases from artists looking for recognition by giving out their music for free.

One easy way to find free music downloads at DatPiff is to look through the most listened, most downloaded, highest rated, and hot this week sections. Those can be further broken down into all time, this month, this week, and today to see what's been popular over time.

Some of the most popular mixtape downloads at DatPiff are from artists like Lil Wayne, Wiz Khalifa, Big Sean, Meek Mill, and Jadakiss.

DatPiff is available on not only computers but also your mobile device. You can get the DatPiff app for free for iOS, Android, and Windows.


Free Music Archive


What We Like
No user account is needed to download music
Several ways to sort the music
You can listen before downloading
Categorizes song downloads into several genres

What We Don't Like
MP3 is the only download option

You can also download free music at Free Music Archive, which is directed by the freeform radio station WFMU. The music here is free for you to legally download (even without a user account) and is a mix of public domain and Creative Commons licenses.

The easiest way to find music you'd like to download at Free Music Archive is to browse through the genres of music or watch their blog for collections, artists, or songs they'll highlight. They also have top charts for all time, this week, and this month.

If you create a free account at Free Music Archive you'll be able to make your own collections and interact with other listeners.


YouTube


What We Like
There's a lot of music available
All the songs can be streamed
Apps let you stream from your mobile device

What We Don't Like
It's really hard to find free music downloads
It's too easy to download copyrighted music accidentally

Yes, YouTube is a huge source for music and most of it is illegal to download due to copyright restrictions.

However, if you filter your search results for Creative Commons videos only, it's completely safe to download music from YouTube. Look for videos that have download links to the audio, but if you're sure it's legal and don't see a download link, you can still get it with a YouTube to MP3 downloader.

You might also filter Duration for Short ((here) to find what are most likely music videos instead of interviews, YouTube movies, etc.

Despite YouTube being the largest video streaming service on the internet, we've placed it at the very bottom of this list because it's not easy to find free music among all the other content.




Source: https://www.lifewire.com/free-music-downloads-1356648

The Music Revolution. Thanks MP3!

by Juan Esteban Correa

I was just a naive 15 year old in the year 1998, and my older cousin introduced me to the best invention in computers after the Internet, the MP3. It was an instant love, my goal was to use all my PC storage (10GBs) and fill it with music. I was ready to start, I got my first MP3s from my cousin: Nena 99 – Luftballoons, Depeche Mode - Just can’t get enough , and Boston - More than a feeling and a few others. An eclectic collection of music I know, but it was just the beginning.

To play my music I had to install an MP3 player, and I installed Winamp my all time favorite player.

Winamp was so cool, it had the slickest interface and it was the first media player that let you create playlists.

There were 3 ways to get mp3s back then, ripping your cds to mp3, copying mp3s from your friends, or downloading them from the Internet. Of course the first option was the easiest one, I converted all my CD library to mp3s, that’s how I got my first 1000 songs. But this method was not sustainable, it took a lot of time to rip the cds, and I didn’t have enough money to keep up with the latest hits from my favorite artists. So I had to go to my good friend the Internet to stay on top of the trends. There were few options back then to get music from the Internet, a couple of sites with files in their root directory. My weapon of choice, The Music Lover a site that no longer exist that had the Billboard Top 40 Hits updated every week. Not the best source for indie music, but it had all the MTV hits. It was good enough for me. That’s how I added a couple of 1000 new songs to my music library.

After some months a friend introduce me to Napster the first peer to peer file sharing app. Sean Parker and Shawn Fanning revolutionized the world 19 years ago with this service. Although the focus was music it gave birth to other P2P technologies that are booming today like the Blockchain and Bitcoin. Napster was amazing, sadly it only lasted for of couple years due to copyright infrigment. Some other services came up to the rescue (Limewire, eMule, Gnutella) but none of them were as good as Napster.

Quote from The Social Network movie.

“Sean Parker: Well, I founded an internet company that let folks download and share music for free.
Amelia Ritter: Kind of like Napster?
Sean Parker: Exactly like Napster.
Amelia Ritter: What do you mean?
Sean Parker: I founded Napster.
Amelia Ritter: Sean Parker founded Napster.”

About 2 years later one of the last geniuses in human history, Steve Jobs, made paying for music cool 😎 again with the launch of the iTunes store. With iTunes my library kept growing, it had almost every song in the planet. Every song on iTunes had the best song compression settings, and was the best app for organizing music. iTunes quickly became the most popular MP3 player, it had a clean UI that was simple and elegant, obviously you can’t expect less from a product from Apple.

I had everything under control with iTunes, my library of more that 30k songs was in sync with all my devices, I had playlists for every genre, audience and mood. I was on top of my game until Spotify came knocking my door. Spotify was a game changer my library grew 100X, now I could stream every song in the world and the best part I didn’t run out of storage.

I have more than 200 playlists on Spotify. I have the app on my Mac, my smartphone, my car, my tv and now on my homespeaker. I discover about 100 new songs every week.

Music is the answer, it has give meaning to my live. Thank you MP3 for creating this revolution. Can’t wait to see what the future will bring us.

PS. A few other services that have being part of this history:

Shazam, YouTube, Vevo, Soundcloud, Musical.ly, Beats. Thank you!
Source: https://medium.com/@juanestebancorrea/the-music-revolution-thanks-mp3-aa739b370190

The Long Overdue Death of Retail Compact Disc (CD)

Memorializing the Compact Disc. Once upon a time, the CD was the ubiquitous music platform. Our story outlines how the disc-based music technology was adopted, loved and eventually abandoned by a generation that arrived a little too late to collect vinyl record albums. In its day, the CD weathered a storm of competitors that sought to usurp the audio throne by offering key improvements in storage capacity and audio resolution. But behind the inevitable fall of the CD is a story of how the music industry refused to read the writing on the wall.
All things considered, I was rather late to the compact disc game. Having been born to your typical middle-class family in the early 1980s, for much of my early childhood I made do with cassette tapes of my favorite acts, from the sweet, poppy sounds of Men Without Hats to a Canadian band with the (sadly for a pre-pubescent boy) very misleading name, Barenaked Ladies. Other great groups from the late 1980s and early 90s, like Guns N Roses, Nirvana, and Soundgarden, also managed to capture my attention despite some of the frustrating limitations of cassette technology - like having to fast forward and rewind just so I could listen to GNR's deliciously guttural rant "Get in the Ring" a few more times.

Compact Disc Firsts

• Optical digital data-storage was invented by Jim Russel who filed the first patents in 1966, later purchased by Sony and Philips to develop the CD

• Developed in collaboration by Sony and Philips, the Compact Disc launched in 1982
• The first CD was officially released on October 1, 1982, it was Billy Joel album 52nd Street. 
• The first CD player was the Sony CDP-101, also launched on October 1, 1982. It retailed for $730, a heavy price for the privilege of listening to 52nd Street by Billy Joel in pristine digital glory.

Soundtrack of Our Lives on CD

Ah, but that all changed in the winter of 1995, when my parents placed a Discman under the Christmas tree, along with my first three CDs: Collective Soul's incredible blue album, Soul Asylum's "Let Your Dim Light Shine," and Foo Fighters' self-titled debut. For the next few years, I rarely left the house without that clunky, BK Whopper-sized device, which I connected to an old stereo when I got home. And, while my collection of CDs was by no means large, or even particularly impressive, I rarely went more than a month or so without thinking about, pining for, and then finally pooling what little grass-cutting money I had together to buy the next big album.
For the rest of my teenage years, I gravitated towards the kind of music that had animated my imagination when I first got that Discman, with CDs from Green Day, Stone Temple Pilots, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, and the Smashing Pumpkins. Then there were those bands that didn't quite pack stadiums and weren't everyone's cup of tea but, perhaps for those very reasons, garnered my love: Better Than Ezra, Toadies, The Verve Pipe, Spacehog, and Canadian acts like Moist, Limblifter, Econoline Crush, Finger Eleven, and, of course, my personal favourite, Our Lady Peace

US CD Sales Since 1982

 

Oh, those were the days. I'm guessing I'm not the only one who fondly remembers the smell -- of some weird, foreign and unhealthy chemicals, that gently emanated from the freshly opened case of a new compact disc. It was the good kind of miasma, the type that promised hours of enjoyment as I played video games, chatted about girls with pals, or drifted off to sleep. I can even remember how you had to pull a little harder to get the disc out the first time you used it -- the little 'squelch' sound the plastic made as the disc slid over the case's donut-hole plug for the first but hardly last time. Alas, these finer details of CD ownership are now little more than the footnotes in music history. By the early 2000s, a number of factors emerged that, within a rather shocking amount of time, signaled the end of the compact disc.
First and foremost for me, personally, it was remarkably hard to predict which discs would be winners. Sure, you could listen to the radio -- that's usually where I heard new music for the first time since my parents didn't have cable television and therefore no access to MTV or Canada's Much Music -- but for most bands that meant exposure to just one or two songs. In the end, this made the CD-buying experience a little like Russian roulette -- a slight overstatement, but less so when you consider, that through most of the 90s, each CD was about $20 and my job was cutting neighbors' lawns during the summer.

That meant I bought many, many duds -- usually, one-hit-wonder CDs where one fantastic song on the radio gave me hope the entire album would be amazing. Oh, I still remember the desperate, sinking feeling that washed over me as I frantically searched an album for a second or third decent track -- and then failing to land on one. It happened far too often for me, and as time went on I became less willing to gamble away the little cash I had. Eventually, even albums with two or three great songs seemed a waste, which complicated things further, since the early 2000s brought what I deemed fewer of the rock-solid albums of the 90s -- albums like Offspring's Smash, Green Day's Dookie, or Nirvana's Nevermind.
RIAA Recorded Music Sales

• CD sales surpassed cassette tape in 1991, its final year as the top format in music sales was 2015
• Music streaming subscription became the top selling music format for the first time ever in 2016
• Adjusted for inflation, 2016 vinyl sales hit highest levels since 1989

Digital Downloads Arrive

Right around the same time, friends and coworkers at the grocery store where I worked started talking about this new software that allowed you to download songs or even whole albums without paying anything at all! What was this fan-dangled technology, I wondered, and how can I get in on it?
Although Audioholics can't condone unlicensed digital downloads, it's safe to say it was a significant factor in the decline of the disc because nearly everyone who listened to music at the dawn of the new millennium at least experimented with digital downloads. Although I missed the Napster train, I was most definitely aboard for the Limewire bus. It had some serious drawbacks - it left all kinds of nasty junk on the family computer - but all of a sudden I had nearly a world of music at my fingertips. And so began the age of downloading tracks and burning them to discs. In its own way, it was thrilling: you could create the ultimate CD tailored to your own music interests and not those of some goofball studio exec. My ripped discs would go from Blink 182 to Deftones to Eiffel 65 and I could often pack more than 20 tracks on a single CD.
And it was cheap: other than having to buy packs of blank CDs and paying to get the spyware wiped from my chugging PC, the process was very affordable. So affordable, in fact, that I no longer felt the need to protect my CDs as if they were children; instead, they fell down the side of car seats and slid under my bed, where they sometimes stayed until scratched beyond use. But no biggie; I could just use the files I'd already downloaded to create a whole new CD in a few minutes.

Retailers and Car Manufacturers Sense the Stench of Death of the Compact Disc

Fast-forward a decade or so and the CD is finally, finally being phased out by the few retailers who still offer them. At Best Buy, one of the handful of companies that's so far (narrowly) survived the digital revolution, in recent years the compact disc section has shrunk down further and further, to the point where it's little more than a novelty; a place where your Dad can grab best-of albums from Led Zeppelin or The Who. From literally rows and rows of compact discs and several "listening stations," big retailers like Best Buy have in many cases shrunk their CD offerings to a small display at the end of a single aisle.
Now, even that meager offering is about to disappear, with reports indicating Best Buy will cease selling compact discs this July. Target, another brick-and-mortar retailer from the CD's heyday, is expected to follow suit shortly thereafter.


To add a final nail in the CD proverbial coffin, car manufacturers are phasing out CD players starting in 2018.  Instead, you will find at least one USB port, and Bluetooth capability for streaming music from your phone pretty standard fare.
In truth, this is long overdue. Even the Napster and Limewire age is a thing of the past, replaced in large part by streaming services like Apple Music, Google Play, Spotify, and countless others, which give you access to a great fount of music for less than what a single CD cost in the 90s. In fact, that's how I'm listening to 'ol Kurt sing about teenage angst right now.
Nevertheless, this seems like a good time for a heart-felt send-off to the compact disc and the many CD collections that are still out there, in basements, attics, storage lockers, boxes under stairways. Cheers and RIP. 
Now that the once dominant audio platform's days are behind us the question remains: Did you like CDs? Please share your thoughts in the related forum thread below.

Source: https://www.audioholics.com/editorials/the-long-overdue-death-of-retail-compact-disc

The MP3 Revolution

Our journey starts in New York City.
You know the place I’m talking about. If you’ve watched Seinfeld, it’s the diner Jerry and friends hole up in almost every episode, but that’s wasn’t why I was there. This was where Suzanne Vega wrote her song “Tom’s Diner” sometime in 1981. Now I’m not the biggest Suzanne Vega fan, but there’s a reason she’s considered the mother of MP3. “Tom’s Diner” was used extensively in the research that went into the creation of the MP3 format. And this diner is where it all began.

It’s a good song, but more importantly, it’s entirely a cappella—and recorded flawlessly. Audiophiles in the late 80s found that the smooth yet subtle performance Vega delivered in the original was perfect for tuning their hi-fi speaker systems. As it turns out, the human voice was a good way to test for clarity, and playing “Tom’s Diner” reveals minor tuning problems in a speaker.

But as most great things in life are, Tom’s Diner’s historical importance happened completely by chance. Karlheinz Brandenburg (the lead scientist working on the compression algorithm) was finishing up his post-doctorate working on digital music compression, when he heard “Tom’s Diner” playing on the radio down the hall. “This. This is the song that I will listen to countless times on my mission to create the best audio algorithm the world has ever seen!”, he thought to himself. And yes, I did make that part up but every hero (or villain) needs that eureka moment so I took some liberties here. Anyway, back to the story.

Brandenburg had been studying psychoacoustics, or how people perceive music, and used the concept of auditory masking as the baseline for what he wanted his algorithm to do. Without getting too scientific, auditory masking is when there is a loud sound that drowns out another smaller sound.

For whom the bell tolls

If I strike a bell in a quiet room, and then go outside and strike it again, listen to what happens.

The bell didn’t sound the same just then, did it? It was harder to hear, lost in the cacophony of the outside world. The ringing was shorter, wasn’t it? Also, was the bell quieter? It was.

No, the outside world didn’t make that bell sound any different, but rather, the way MP3 compresses audio did. But even if you tried this for yourself in the real world, the result would be similar. Our ears and brain didn’t evolve to hear the difference between two specific tones at 632Hz and 635Hz, they evolved to hear a growl. Or a yell. You know, sounds that might signal impending doom.
If a louder sound of similar frequency is present with a quieter one, your brain deletes it. This physiological response—auditory masking—is the entire basis of the psychoacoustic algorithm that defines MP3 compression. Any sound your brain would normally not be able to hear: the encoding deletes to save space. If it works as intended, you’ll have a much smaller file- and your ears would be none the wiser. This happens all the time in our everyday lives. Ever been in a bar that’s too loud to hear what your friend is saying? Same thing.

The MP3 is why we listen to songs on our phones today.

Brandenburg used this to his advantage, devising an algorithm that would find the sound data that humans couldn’t hear because of auditory masking, and just getting rid of it. He took “Tom’s Diner” and ran it through his compression algorithm…. and Vega’s vocals in “Tom’s Diner” sounded like a possessed demon fighting its way through his speakers. Clearly, the algorithm was doing something funky. So he tweaked it, and ran it again. And again. And again. Each time changing the algorithm slightly until, after what I’m sure was a great few months of listening to the same song constantly, the differences between the original and the end result were almost imperceptible. MP3 compression was finally ready for the big time.

When the MP3 was invented, it was still a long way off from becoming the dominant music format of the new millennium. It had to overcome technological limitations, a cartel-like recording industry, and it needed the internet to do it.
While MP3 was a great way to compress an audio file in 1990, consumer storage just wasn’t up to the task. While you could theoretically hold 700MB on a CD, hard drives of the time were typically no bigger than a few tens of megabytes at best. You couldn’t just copy 700MB of uncompressed WAV audio- there just wasn’t space. Piracy wasn’t really a viable option.

At the time, if you wanted digital audio, you had to go to record store… or sign up for one of those insane CD clubs. You couldn’t listen to songs before buying them without the radio. You couldn’t just go on YouTube, and you definitely couldn’t torrent anything on a dial-up modem. The music industry knew it had a monopoly on its market, and from 1995 through 2000, several companies banded together to artificially inflate the price of CDs by about $5 per album. Consumers knew they were getting gouged, but there wasn’t a clearly superior alternative until 1999. That year, all hell broke loose, and MP3 began its ascent to becoming the dominant music format.

Evolution

The world of 1999 was far different than the world of 1990. Hard drive storage had climbed orders of magnitude greater from 20MB into several Gigabytes of storage. 56k and cable modems were replacing the 24-baud models of the past, allowing just enough download speed to snag an MP3 in a few minutes, and just like that: the landscape was fertile for MP3’s technological revolution.
That revolution came in the form of Napster. Founded in the greater Boston area by brothers Shawn and John Fanning; along with Sean Parker, Napster offered its users a peer-to-peer networking solution to share their music online. For the first time ever, your average consumer could go online, search for anything they wanted, download it, and create a library of digital music without buying anything. CD-Rs allowed users to create their own CDs as well. Piracy wasn’t just an expression of rebellion, but a market response to an overpriced and inflexible commodity.

By early 2000, Napster had over 20 million users, downloading over a billion songs. By former employees’ own accounts, their software team could barely keep up with how fast the traffic expanded, even after attracting significant resources from venture capital firms to address the issue.
That was the first sign that file sharing wasn’t just a flash in the pan. It was here to stay. In fact, the number of P2P file sharers would continue to expand, with the NPD group estimated 15 million households used P2P networks in 2006, and 18.3% of all computers worldwide had Limewire (another popular P2P service) installed.

Almost 20 percent of the world's computers had Limewire. That's more than had macOS. Let that sink in.

After a 31% drop in industry CD sales that year, the Recording Industry Association of America, or RIAA panicked, and found an opportune punching bag in online music piracy. Though the MP3’s spread arguably increased demand for music, they tried to strangle it in the crib by suing Napster.
The future of the popular file sharing service became the hot-button issue of 2000, with musicians and record companies alike taking starkly diverging positions on the issue in a very public forum. Many people remember the outspoken Lars Ulrich of Metallica fame leading the RIAA’s crusade against Napster, but fewer people remember Public Enemy frontman Chuck D’s oddly prescient defense of free music sharing in a debate between the two musicians hosted by Charlie Rose.

Chuck’s position was that MP3 sharing was going to change the balance of power in favor of the content creator, instead of the record label holding all the power. While Lars claimed that it didn’t matter: MP3 sharing was (in his words) illegal, Chuck pointed out that most people across the globe didn’t have a way to “get found” and that distributing music for free online would increase demand.
History proved Chuck D right, but unfortunately for Napster, they lost their fight and shut down in July 2001. But the toothpaste was out of the tube. As soon as one P2P service was destroyed, another cropped up, and so on and so forth over the 2000s. When attacking P2P services didn’t stem the tide of MP3 sharing, he RIAA went after thousands of individuals by abusing the subpoena process, famously attempting to sue twelve-year-old children and the people who were literally incapable of stealing the music they were sued over. In most of the 17,587 people sued, the RIAA opted to take a cash settlement instead of pursuing cases to completion, but the industry’s image was tarnished forever as a result.
And MP3 sharing persisted.

New horizons

To meet the new demand for a way to listen to MP3 files, manufacturers started to release digital music players, capable of storing more music than the venerable compact disc in a package that was far more convenient. In 1998, the Recording Industry Association of America failed to win a judgement against Diamond for their MP3 player, thus opening the floodgates for more commercially-available portable music players. Now that there was no legal barrier anymore, any company could profit off of the explosive spread of the MP3.

The decision was a rare double-whammy, as it were. On top of creating a legal market for MP3 players, it also set the precedent for a legal market for MP3 downloads in the following years, which also paved the way for the long-term success of streaming services. But there is one product that would help drive the final nail in the CD coffin. In October 2001, Apple released the iPod.

After the MP3 was done turning the music industry on its head, the MP3 Player came along and changed everything we know about smartphones.

Hot on the heels of MP3’s rapid rise, many companies tried to create a pocketable MP3 player with mass appeal. Forget about sex appeal. SaeHan Information Systems released the first commercial personal music player in 1998: the MPMan F10, not to be confused with Diamond Multimedia’s Rio PMP300, which was released eight months later.

To no one’s surprise, rival companies tried to ride on the Rio’s coattails, but hard drive players were still cumbersome and a chore to navigate. Things were slow. You could cook a frozen pizza, eat it, and return to your computer only to see that it was on the brink of overloading from transferring a few CD’s-worth of songs. As you may expect, this created a demand for a more efficient, portable, and intuitive music experience. It wasn’t until the iPod that gold was struck.

The rise of the iPod

Prior to October 2001, we recognized Apple for their computers and as that thing that magically keeps the doctor away. But Apple hit the ground running by announcing the iPod. Its debut form looks embarrassingly archaic from a 2018 perspective. However, at the time it was a breakthrough for portable music and carefully negotiated consumer demands for an all-in-one media player with an unheard of storage capacity of 5GB. Not only that, but the 1st gen iPod provided 20 minutes of shock protection. It’s comical now, but users could exercise freely without worrying about damaging the hard drive. Sure, it wasn’t the first compact MP3 player to reside in the pockets of children and women’s jeans alike, but it was the one that consumers unanimously drooled over.
With the slogan, “1,000 songs in your pocket” and a well-timed release for the holiday season, the first iteration was a success, selling 125,000 units [3, 14]. Its spring 2002 update sealed the deal with Windows compatibility; users could easily operate within a well-oiled ecosystem unlike ever before. This provided a way to completely customize what music consumers bought, kept, and listened to without needing to carry a library of discs. Two years later, the 4th generation iPod received photo capabilities, foreshadowing the market for a multifunctional device.

A music player that takes photographs? What could possibly come next?

As our voracious appetite for convenient media consumption grew, Apple and others continued to innovate, keeping up with the exponential curve of demand. Video playback and basic gaming functionality were integrated. Meanwhile, single devices were granted increasing functionality while becoming evermore portable. Of course, competitors garnered followers for their portable media players too, such as the Sansa Clip, which had dirt-cheap affordability on its side. But their efforts couldn’t keep pace with Apple’s iPod hierarchy.
Following the iPod Classic’s success, the iPod Mini had large shoes to fill. As we know, size six feet will never fill a size 10 shoe. Thus, Apple quickly rebranded the Mini in favor the Nano in 2005, which celebrated eight generations of success. This year also included the Shuffle, the “first iPod under $100” A summer later, Apple made a successful push to attract athletes with the Nike + iPod partnership. While Apple continued to roll out improved iPod iterations, they were also working on what was intellectually conceived in as “Project Purple” and “N45,” known to us lay-people as the iPhone and iPod Touch, respectively.

The king is dead. Long live the king.

Though we may never know if the chicken or the egg came first, we do know that the iPhone preceded the iPod Touch. The latter of which was a sleeker, thinner, sexier iPhone… without the phone, that is. Released in 2007, the Touch made for a costly holiday gift that year and for years to come. It served as a middle ground for parents uncomfortable with allowing their children unrestricted access to something like the LG enV
Announced months earlier at MWC 2007, the iPhone made the buzz word. Passionate fanboys lead news outlets to refer to it as the “Jesus phone,” due to its cult-like following. The MP3 was now truly ubiquitous. We began to experience a decline in portable media player sales. Since having a separate device was too inconvenient for most people stopped using physical media in favor of their Swiss Army Knife of a smartphone.

Our phones shifted from a practical object to the extension of the self that we know today. Wherever we went and wherever we go, our music library follows. The iPhone release set the precedent for the next decade of smartphones. It allowed us to not only consolidate our devices but also to consolidate the control of our lives into a single apparatus. And to think, one of the first dominoes to fall was about a little diner on the corner of Broadway and 112th street.

Source: https://www.soundguys.com/podcast-the-mp3-revolution-17850/