Show Notes
Before Spotify, Apple Music, and endless playlists, there was the MP3, and one mysterious music leaker who helped expose just how radically digital technology was about to change the music business. Will Anderson takes us back to the late ’90s and early 2000s, when music started escaping the CD and physical album, and a new world of file-sharing, leaks, and Napster sent the industry scrambling.
Vulture’s Jason P. Frank joins to unpack the mystery of the music leaker at the center of this story, how MP3s made it possible for music to spread instantly across the internet, and how Napster turned that possibility into a full-blown revolution. We’ll explore the excitement, controversy, and unintended consequences of a technology that made music easier to share than ever and forced record labels to confront a future they weren’t ready for.
From mysterious leaks to the rise of file-sharing, the MP3 era transformed how music was discovered, distributed, and consumed, laying the groundwork for the streaming world we live in today.
Part of the Vox Media Podcast Network and produced by Figures Network.
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