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A HISTORY OF
THE DIGITAL MUSIC
REVOLUTION
Compiled by the Staff of Boston Beats
 e are living through an
amazing period of technological development. Just look around yourself as
you read this: email, the Internet, MP3’s, and the computer itself, have
all exploded into our lives in recent years. And there are more
revolutionary changes to come; technologies so pervasive that you will
literally not be able remember how you were able to live without them—that
is, how you’re living right now.
Looking back, many of the greatest
inventions and moments of discovery go virtually unnoticed in their time,
their significance not yet understood by the greater public. More
recently, technological advances seem to be happening so fast that many
fail to remember just how recently we lived without them. But the story
itself—just the facts of what happened and when—becomes an amazing
narrative in the context of the lives we are living now.
To retell the story, Boston Beats has
compiled a timeline of the most significant events leading up to and
marking the Digital Music Revolution. This history is the sum of the
histories of recorded music, the computer, the Internet, and most recently
of the explosion in popularity of (and legal battles over) new
technologies like the MP3 and peer-to-peer file sharing. The patterns of
history have lessons for the future. The challenge is extracting those
lessons, and recognizing that history is being made around us every day.
The point? Look around: the ride is
getting faster.
NEXT SECTION
PART I: The Dark Ages: When Time Stood
Still
PART II: Dawn of the Computer Age
PART III: Dawn of the Internet
PART IV: The Rise of (and Battle Over)
the MP3
PART V: Life After Napster
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