Digital Downloads Have Come a Long Way Since 1994
Feeling pissy because it takes too long to download shit to your stupid slow computer and your stupid slow internet service? Well read this piece from Noisey and calm the fuck down:
“Twenty years ago, on June 27, 1994, Geffen Records made history when it released the first major label song for exclusive digital download. The song was Aerosmith’s ‘Head First,’ an unused cut from the Get a Grip sessions. Ten thousand CompuServe subscribers downloaded it in eight days. It is three minutes and 14 seconds long. It took 60 to 90 minutes to download. ‘Head First’ was a trial, a marketing ploy, a flash of the future, an iceberg for a titanic industry, and 4.3 megabytes of riffs and double entendres, available as a WAV file.”
The ever forward-thinking Steven Tyler, a spry 78 years old at the time, was quoted thusly in the press release announcing the event: “If our fans are out there driving down that information superhighway, then we want to be playing at the truck stop.”
Meanwhile, according to Bring Back Glam!, The New York Times published an article by Neil Strauss — the dude who would go on to co-author Mötley Crüe’s The Dirt and Marilyn Manson’s Long Hard Road Out of Hell — which prophetically cited the download as the beginning of the end for the music industry as we once knew it:
“At stake may be nothing less than the future of the record business. If songs are available free through a computer’s phone line, this leaves record labels, manufacturers and retailers out in the cold. The current state of technology makes it impractical in terms of time and computer storage space to download an entire CD, but several computer companies are working to remedy the matter. More urgent is the matter of copyright. On the vast information network known as Internet, music fans have been making songs by popular acts available free for some time. Several major recording labels are in the process of deciding whether they will lobby for copyright protection on Internet.”
Yes, you read that correctly: there was a time when record labels weren’t even sure whether or not it was worth it to pursue copyright protection “on Internet.” This is right up there with not putting enough lifeboats on the Titanic in terms of “Hindsight is 20/20,” isn’t it?
You can read Noisey’s entire article here. Meanwhile, I’ll just leave you with this semi-related bit from Louis C.K., because, well, is it ever not a good time for Louis C.K.?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpUNA2nutbk
