Limewire, the peer-to-peer file sharing service that first debuted in 2000, heralded the beginning of the end for traditional music distribution.
Before Limewire entered the scene, Napster changed the way we listened to music and media forever. Napster was the concept, Limewire was the execution. While both came at the tail end of the '90s, together, they spurred a stark transition for the coming years. The way we shared media had changed. The way we examined our tastes as a culture that consumes media and products on a daily basis was forever altered. It was a consumer frenzy.
Limewire worked something like this: You would learn of a new artist and want to hear their album (remember, YouTube wasn't out yet), you'd download a torrent to acquire the desired album or single, you'd get a virus and then you'd try again ad infinitum until your computer resembled a chimeric beast of digital STDs. For the more daring, there was, of course, other forms of media to download like movies or other "adult" entertainment, but primarily it was the easiest way to secure new albums without having to pay. It was the golden age of piracy (or theft, for a lack of a better term).
Now, of course, most artists weren't happy about it. Today we would consider it branding and exposure, but back then it was pure theft to most. I guess Lars Ulrich of Metallica needed another yacht or two, so it wasn't long before a massive lawsuit put Napster down for the count in 2002, leaving Limewire and its mutations Frostwire, Wireshare and the like as the dominant form of media sharing.
Before we try and sympathize with Lars, let's try and remember: YouTube didn't come out until early 2005, so it wasn't possible, or even probable, to simply listen to an artist's work through a third-party service. iTunes wasn't around either, so digitally buying a single track was at times needlessly complicated, if even possible.
So what's life been like since the rise of digital media?
Well, with the advent of MP3 players, suddenly physical products looked dimwitted. CDs seemed pointless, frail, easy to scratch, costly and spacious. We all know what happened to the Betamax tape, and hell, what happened to VHS, but with digital media, music is a different animal. Digital media in the form of MP3s, MP4s or FLAC files (for those connoisseurs of uncompressed pure unadulterated aural bliss) dominate the current market.
Bandcamp is a primary delivery methods for artists today, making pay-what-you-want price points more marketable and sustainable than ever. Pandora rapidly exposes users to new, yet similar music (provided you don't hit the skip button like it’s going out of style), and Spotify creates a custom playlist that can't be beat. Do you require rarities? Perhaps a live performance? Hit up YouTube. It's almost always there, or at least it's been re-posted somewhere else.
Physical mediums are more cherished now, not just because of their presence but because of their shared history and because of their sound differences (though not necessarily because of their sound quality). Want to get your band's material out there? Why, of course cassette tapes and CDs are the best vehicle, my friend. They're cheap, plentiful, and come in so many colors it makes your head hurt. The DIY scene has become bigger than ever, with an immediate and affordable way to create diverse mixtapes that showcase a burgeoning label’s efforts.
If you need a maximum physicality and a tangible, real object to hold, vinyl culture is bigger than ever with a sound variance that is a selling point all it’s own. Do you want a smooth, warm sound? Vinyl is the way to go. And that's a medium that, aside from enthusiasts who have been dead for a long time now, can up your hipster level tenfold when you head on over to Urban Outfitters.
But what about those who still want the torrent experience? The joy of peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing?
Well, that’s a little trickier. It seems counterproductive considering the many legal ways of streaming music and being able to contribute to the proliferation of an artist’s success, but there are still options for the would-be second-wave torrent users. But with so many options, and most of them legal, what’s the point? I mean, come now, let’s not get too hedonistic! In all actuality you don’t need me to tell you how to get a digital five-finger discount. You already know, and if you don’t, Google will instruct you. It’s not hard. I can tell you that.
Alas, never in the history of music has a listener or consumer had so many options in how they choose to listen to music. Beyond the platforms, both physical and digital, there’s also the medium itself, which is just as expansive as ever before. Are you into dreamy electro pop with a hint of technical metal? How about cosmic hip-hop?
It exists.
We live in a world where a global catalog of music is at our fingertips, and all we have to do is find it. P2P torrent channels made this all possible. We discovered more than just demos and albums of artists we already knew. Through the evolution of technology itself listeners discovered new sounds, new genres, new worlds of music. What’s even more exciting is to think about how this variety of sound will affect future artists and musicians. We think it’s diverse now, but in another ten years, we’re going to see the state of music change again like we always do.
We may have grown up as pirates, but today we sit as kings in terms of choice. And we owe it all to the golden age of piracy and those digital Blackbeards behind Limewire and Napster.
Brian Roesler is enrolled in USFSP's digital journalism and design master's program. He is almost finished with his first year.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 4, 2016.
