MP3s Are Beneficial :: Music Technology Essays

MP3s Are Beneficial With the invention of the computer came the invention of the internet. That invention of the internet has changed our entire lives and will entire to continue to change our lives. The internet is not always entirely good, but with the availability of information and the newfound ease of communication most do not often think of the internet as troublesome. While some find certain aspects of the newest technology harmful, others appreciate the technology and use it to uncover new leaves. Early perhaps no one had the vision of how the internet would change the entertainment world to the point it has today. The form of email we have today wasn’t in the inventors minds nor anything such as live video broadcasts online. So people sitting in front of a computer downloading and sharing audio files from one another through a mediator was nowhere near the realm of the inventors either. For Shawn Fanning, a 18 year-old college drop-out the vision of sharing songs and other audio files was right down his alley. For days Fanning, whose friends nicknamed "Napster," went sleepless while scribbling a code for the file sharing program. Eventually the code for Napster was completed in mid-1999. Napster was to allow its users to share mp3 files amongst each other. Mp3’s are a compressed form of an audio file that take up much less space than other forms of audio files. A CD can hold up to 80 minutes of music most of the time, but in mp3 form it can hold up to 10 hours of music or sound, So with advantage of mp3’s the popularity of Napster grew amazingly fast and within a year "An average of 640,000 people were downloading songs" at any given time. But with the popularity came the glaring eye of the Recording Industry Association of American (RIAA). As college students all across America quickly discovered they can hear their favorite musicians or songs wi thin minutes and all it takes is a few clicks of a mouse. College campuses started to ban the use of Napster as the RIAA was quickly moving to put a strong hold on the file sharing program. The RIAA’s position was "The record labels, as musicians' representatives, have long had legal control of how songs are distributed--and the ability to make money from that distribution.