The Effects The Mp3 Had On The Music Industry
The Mp3 format was created by Fraunhofer and Thompson multimedia in the early 1990's and has an advanced compression technique, meaning it enables music to be stored in a form that is as small as 1/12th the size of a normal audio file and still retain the same audio quality. Napster was created specifically to trade this format. Shawn Fanning created Napster and released it in beta form in mid 1999. It only took 11 months after the release to have the program banned from over 200 schools and get the company entangled in lawsuits involving 18 record labels and 2 major independent artists. Napster was finally shut down a little over a year after its release, it never even had a chance to develop into anything more than a beta version. Several months after the closing of the popular music site, the tally of replacement sites similar to Napster was over 100. Some of the programs were even designed to function independently so that the RIAA would never be able to shut them down. Napster would continue to popularize the Mp3 format so much, that it would soon open the doors for future portable music players and almost get rid of the infamous cd single. Napster was a program that allowed users to share and transfer songs between
The word was traveling faster that an advertisement could carry it. Things got worse for Napster when several major universities blocked access to Napster. If anything, Napster helped publicize new artists and sell more albums. Dre were also urging colleges to ban access to Napster. The DMCA makes it very hard to sue web sites for any illegal activities that have been committed by users. The RIAA officially filed suit against Napster on December 7th, 1999, accusing them of providing an environment for distributing unauthorized copies of copyrighted music. Napster traffic nearly quadrupled between october 1999 and november 1999, and almost quadrupled again from november 1999 to february 2000. 4% in only the first half of the year and the cd single sales were next to nothing. During the first few weeks, it seemed that the RIAA was not getting anywheredue to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). Even computer manufacturers such as Dell are shipping consumer pc's with cd burners as standard equipment. Cd burners also became faster as new recording technologies were applied. Less than one year after that decision, hundreds of Mp3 players and Mp3 related products have been released into the market costing anywhere from $100 to $1500 and sometimes even more. There were several universities that refused to block access due to tradition and the claim of unrestricted access. Even it the RIAA claims to have suffered huge losses, they still came out positive in the end.
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