Everything about how we access and listen to music has changed in the past 25 years

This story is part of CNET at 25We’re celebrating a quarter of a century of industrial technology and our role in telling you its story.

I start almost every morning with the call “Hey Google, stream SiriusXMU” in the Google Nest Mini, which is attached to my kitchen wall. I might as well ask to play any number of artists, albums, songs or playlists, to stream an internet radio station from anywhere in the world, or to have algorithms generate an instant “station” that matches my mood. As a music lover and collector, I finally have the endless jukebox of my dreams, which is made possible by a variety of streaming services, an inexpensive intelligent loudspeaker and wireless high-speed Internet.

When CNET started 25 years ago, none of these things existed. In retrospect, it feels like they all appeared overnight. But it took a lot of technological advances, lawsuit after lawsuit and the reluctant collaboration of music labels and musicians to get us to a point where the world’s largest music collections are no further away than an app on your phone, and each Playlist it is tailor-made for your taste. Here’s a quick look back at how it all happened.

From CDs to streaming

In 1995, CDs were the main format for music media and exceeded vinyl sales in the late 1980s and cassettes in 1993. However, at that time, if you wanted to make a custom mix or copy for your friends, you were still doing it with tapes. That would change only two years later.

Oddly enough, the CD’s digital format accelerated its own downfall. In the late 1990s, prices for computer CD-ROM drives had dropped and software for extracting audio from CDs and converting to WAV and MP3 files – also known as ripping – was immediately available. CD-R drives that you could use to create your own audio discs were expensive, but affordable. By the end of the decade, you could easily share the music that was once on CD and, perhaps more importantly, share it with others around the world through less-legal peer-to-peer sharing networks like Napster.

Napster was eventually torn out of life by the record industry in 2001 and filed for bankruptcy the following year. But MP3 and service have changed the music world forever. Legal MP3 download sites like eMusic also appeared, and Rhapsody was introduced as the first on-demand music streaming service shortly after the turn of the century. In a strange twist, even Napster lives on in a way. The brand has switched hands several times since it closed, and was most recently revived for the name of Rhapsody’s current music streaming service.

However, before the streaming services really took off, people continued to buy CDs and downloads. The latter received a huge boost from Apple’s iTunes Store, which was launched in 2003. Rather than risking industry risks, Apple managed to sign deals with five major record labels selling DRM-protected AAC audio files for 99 cents per track and $ 9.99 per album.

The DRM devil

DRM stands for Digital Rights Management and anyone who downloaded music before 2009 knows what pain it can be. At the simplest level, DRM limits the use of your own digital file. In the heyday of Apple’s iTunes Store, the company sold AAC audio files that were protected with its FairPlay DRM, limiting playback to its iPod music players and iTunes. In addition to restricting what you used to play, the files could not be easily shared on P2P networks. In 2007, Apple started selling premium AAC music files without DRM. Apple was DRM-free until 2009. The only problem was that Apple charged a fee of 30 cents per song if you wanted to remove the FairPlay DRM from tracks that you had already bought.

Of course, Apple wasn’t alone here, and the Sony BMG rootkit fiasco was probably the most notorious DRM excess of the era. If you have played certain CDs from the music label on your computer, copy protection software is secretly installed to prevent you from copying the music. The software was also difficult to remove, and even the uninstaller caused security problems for users.

By 2008, Apple would be the largest music seller in the United States, but streaming was still wide open. Streaming services and stations continued to multiply during this time, starting with Pandora (now owned by satellite radio and the SiriusXM streaming service) and Last.fm, which is owned by CNET’s parent company ViacomCBS and no longer streams music. 2008 was also the year that Spotify was launched in Europe and grew rapidly thanks to a free music model for anyone willing to advertise between songs. The service would not be available in the US until 2011, but quickly became the market leader, while competitors like MOG and Rdio were devoured by other services. Spotify currently has more than 130 million subscribers.

And in order to bow the decline of the CD in the past 25 years, Vinyl, a format that thanks to its dedicated audience never died, started selling the CD in 2019 for the first time since 1986.

Listen

The development of music formats also changed how, where and when we listened to music. In 1995 you may have had a portable CD player and a thick wallet with discs that you took with you. Or you have saved this for your car together with a cassette adapter with which you can send audio from your CD player to the cassette deck of your car. For listening at home, you would have individual HiFi components or a shelf system with a multidisc changer.

Since the music collections have moved from physical media to MP3s, you’ve probably spent more time listening to music through your computer’s speakers or connected headphones at home. The portable CD player was now in a drawer and was replaced by one of the first MP3 players. Although you may have been indifferent to portable players until the first iPod arrived in 2001.

Within a few generations of the device, the iPod would become the music system most people would need at home, in the car, or on the go. At least until the launch of the first iPhone in 2007, which was ultimately able to exploit its single-purpose predecessor. Just as the iPod wasn’t the first digital music player, the iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone, but it was the ultimate connected MP3 player that we knew only Apple could make.

The MP3 player and iPod have not yet completely disappeared. Every now and then a new one appears. However, for most of us, our phones are used for music just as often as for sending text, getting directions, taking photos, and scrolling through social media. The wireless capabilities of a phone not only allowed us to download songs directly to the computer via radio rather than via a wired connection, but also enabled us to replace large, stationary speakers and iPod docking stations with portable Bluetooth speakers of all shapes and sizes.

And now we can ask AI’s digital assistants to play any music they want using a speaker connected to the Internet, a TV or even a lamp. You can have it play in a specific room or broadcast throughout the house. Plus, with little or no effort, this music can follow you from home to your car, gym, office, or wherever you go.

A creative boom

The way we access and listen to music has changed dramatically over the past 25 years, as has the creation and production of music. Home recordings are nothing new, but the sheer amount of technological tools that musicians have provided over the past few decades is breathtaking.

We have laptops that are as powerful as desktops but weigh less than 5 pounds and can run digital audio workstations like Ableton Live and Image Line FL Studio that started in 1997 as Fruityloops.

A singer can cut a vocal track on their iPhone, clean it up or add effects on a tablet or laptop, and then share it with bandmates who live all over the world so they can record their parts the same way – a whole song that was created without anyone entering a real studio. Sales have also changed fundamentally, as artists can reach consumers directly on websites such as SoundClound and Bandcamp.

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From listening to looking

As I wrote this story, I was reminded of another one I wrote in 2005 for Computer Shopper magazine (then owned by CNET), which was about turning an old desktop computer into a digital jukebox – completely Featuring a $ 500 15-inch touchscreen monitor that lets you explore your music collection without a keyboard, mouse, or remote.

The first iPad was released just five years later. Apple has basically made my large, expensive weekend project redundant and essentially put the same touchscreen access to your music into something you can keep on your couch – all for $ 500. This first iPad was not immediately ideal for music fans, especially with only 16 GB of storage space and without wireless synchronization. However, it wouldn’t be long before faster WiFi and cloud storage services, including Apple’s iCloud with iTunes Match, literally have all your music at hand anywhere.

Our physical and digital collections have been replaced with streaming services tied to connected devices instead of a traditional stereo. As I said at the beginning, I have an infinite jukebox wherever I am between services and a smart speaker (and my phone). Where do we go from here?

For starters, wireless handover from device to device could be a bit more seamless, not to mention device independence. It is desirable to think that you should be able to choose the source of your choice and have it jump from smart speaker to your car to your phone and back again without shouting commands and connecting without cables. With unlimited mobile data plans and the possible widespread availability of ultra-fast 5G networks, it would also be great if Better audio quality was available regardless of service.

One more thing: after much more live music could be streamed during the coronavirus pandemic, the next phase of music seems to be as easy as focusing more on video. Of course, a lot of video is made for music, but everything is spread across different YouTube channels, websites, and services. The future could be to offer streams of live performances from various large and small venues around the world, or even from artists’ homes, so that you can watch them on your TV, tablet, computer or phone, or later stream video or audio. Seattle-based startup Lively tried something similar in 2014 to keep people from recording concerts on their cellphones, but maybe now is the time to make it happen.