Introduction

              The introduction of electricity into music initiated the birth and growth of recorded music, which is essentially what digital music, is. The introduction of music and computers began in the 1950's. RCA (Radio Corporation of  America) introduced the first synthesizer. This creation was built to study the nature of sound. The combining of electronic instruments and microprocessors meant that a huge amount of data  could be utilized within one instrument. This idea led to the creation of MIDI. Developed in 1981 by  Sequential Circuits, MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) was presented as a combined language/transmission protocol which not only allowed for sending and receiving information, but also determining the structure of that information. The development of MIDI started huge advancements and creations of other forms of digital music. Today, electronic music has taken over, and the classical instruments of the past are  rapidly becoming invisible.

Important advancements

1991:Sony MD, or minidisc, is introduced; like a 3 1/2-inch computer 
            floppy disk, it comes packaged in its own protective caddy. 
            Moving Picture Experts Group-1 Audio Layer 3, also known as MP3, 
            is developed by the German research firm  Fraunhofer Institute. 
            The technology allows people to download digital-quality music from 
            the Internet, bypassing usual music outlets.

1995:Progressive Networks releases  Real Audio Player, which 
            enables "computer users navigating the Internet using the graphical 
            environment known as World Wide Web to choose audio clips from a menu 
            and begin listening to them immediately," according to a  NY Times
            abstract. 

1997:RealNetworks, formerly Progressive Networks, announces the 
            RealPlayer 4.0 will be integrated with Microsoft's Internet 
            Explorer 4.0

1998:Diamond Multimedia 
             takes the first portable MP3 player, the RIO PMP 3000, to market 
 
 

The History of  Internet Hi Fi 

                        MP3, an obscure compression format that has the music
                        industry shaking in its gold-studded boots, is surely one of the
                        Web's most unlikely heroes. 

                        MP3 is short for Moving Picture Experts Group, Audio Layer III,
                        and is a compression format that shrinks audio files with only a
                        small sacrifice in sound quality. MP3 files can be compressed at
                        different rates, but the more they are scrunched, the worse the
                        sound quality. A standard MP3 compression is at a 10:1 ratio,
                        and yields a file that is about 4 MB for a three-minute track. 

                        It all started in the mid-1980s, at the Fraunhofer Institut in
                        Erlangen, Germany, which began work on a high quality, low
                        bit-rate audio coding with the help of Dieter Seitzer, a professor
                        at the University of Erlangen. In 1989, Fraunhofer was granted
                        a patent for MP3 in Germany and a few years later it was
                        submitted to the International Standards Organization (ISO),
                        and integrated into the MPEG-1 specification. 

                        Frauenhofer also developed the first MP3 player in the early
                        1990s, but it turned out to be a pretty underwhelming
                        application. In 1997, a developer at Advanced Multimedia
                        Products named Tomislav Uzelac created the AMP MP3 Playback
                        Engine, which is regarded as the first prime-time MP3 player.
                        Shortly after the AMP engine hit the Net, a couple of university
                        students, Justin Frankel and Dmitry Boldyrev (who more recently
                        created MacAMP), took the Amp engine, added a Windows
                        interface and dubbed it "Winamp." In 1998, when Winamp was
                        offered up as a free music player, the MP3 craze began: Music
                        fiends all over the world started MP3 hubs, offering copyrighted
                        music for free. 

                        Before long, other programmers jumped in to create a whole
                        toolset for MP3 junkies. New encoders, rippers, and players
                        were sprouting up every week, and the movement was growing
                        strong. Search engines made it even easier to find the specific
                        MP3 files people wanted, and portable players like the Rio let
                        them take MP3 tracks on the road. 

                        And then came Napster. 

                        Napster is the killer app that will be undoubtedly remembered
                        more than any other MP3-related software. When Napster hit
                        the Internet in 1999, it allowed anyone with a connection to
                        find and download just about any type of popular music they
                        wanted, in minutes. By connecting users to other users' hard
                        drives, Napster created a virtual community of music junkies
                        that's still growing at an astonishing pace. 

                        However, the Recording Industry Association of America is
                        currently trying to shut Napster down. The RIAA also kept up
                        the pressure on the political front: Digital music heavyweights
                        recently gathered in Washington, D.C. to testify before a
                        Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on downloading and file
                        trading. Their lament: All this free downloading is screwing us
                        out of our deserved fees and royalties. The RIAA has sued
                        Napster, charging it with copyright law violations, and on July
                        26 won a decision in U.S. District Court that, in effect, ordered
                        Napster shut down. However, the very next day, a Court of
                        Appeals halted the order and ruled that Napster can stay in
                        business until the completion of its trial. 

                        Even if Napster is eventually forced to shut down, MP3 has
                        many other ways to survive and thrive
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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