WEBVTT - The MP3 Revolution 0:00:04.240 --> 0:00:07.240 Welcome to tech Stuff, a production of I Heart Radios, 0:00:07.320 --> 0:00:13.880 How Stuff Works. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff. 0:00:13.920 --> 0:00:16.840 I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland. I'm an executive producer with 0:00:16.880 --> 0:00:18.759 How Stuff Works and I heart Radio and I love 0:00:18.840 --> 0:00:21.799 all things tech. And we have done it. We have 0:00:21.880 --> 0:00:26.799 reached the ultimate episode of our relationship with media and 0:00:26.840 --> 0:00:31.000 its evolution over the years. Episode seven of that arc. 0:00:31.600 --> 0:00:34.360 And uh. When I started down this path, I was 0:00:34.400 --> 0:00:37.080 thinking it might be a three or four part series 0:00:37.120 --> 0:00:39.520 and here we are at episode seven, so let's get 0:00:39.640 --> 0:00:42.880 right into it now. In the last episode, I talked 0:00:42.920 --> 0:00:46.680 about the development of the MP three compression format, which 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:50.760 would have an enormous impact on both technology and culture, 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:53.760 as well as business. As it turns out, the MP 0:00:53.880 --> 0:00:57.040 three format is a lossy format that means you lose 0:00:57.120 --> 0:00:59.800 a bit of the information in the original file as 0:00:59.840 --> 0:01:02.800 you compress it down, and that means when you decompress it, 0:01:02.800 --> 0:01:06.080 when you expand it back to its regular size later on, 0:01:06.280 --> 0:01:08.800 you actually don't have the full file. Some of that 0:01:08.840 --> 0:01:12.679 information is just gone now. The goal of the MP 0:01:12.760 --> 0:01:16.240 three compression format is to only cut information that doesn't 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:20.680 affect the quality of the ultimate sound, but that depends 0:01:20.720 --> 0:01:23.800 not just on the compression algorithm, but also the sample 0:01:23.920 --> 0:01:26.000 rate and the bit depth that you select as you 0:01:26.040 --> 0:01:30.520 compress stuff. As you use the the encoders, typically you 0:01:30.560 --> 0:01:34.800 can set these features and you can use you know, 0:01:34.880 --> 0:01:38.600 more compression, which means you're going to have UH files 0:01:38.640 --> 0:01:40.880 that are of a smaller size. They're easier to handle, 0:01:41.240 --> 0:01:44.920 but they also have more likelihood to have some artifacts 0:01:45.000 --> 0:01:48.960 and distortion in them, or clipping or other elements that 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:53.200 indicate that, yeah, you really compress that file. Now, a 0:01:53.240 --> 0:01:56.400 few things helped make the MP three and other compressed 0:01:56.440 --> 0:02:01.360 audio file formats and enormous success. They weren't huge successes 0:02:01.440 --> 0:02:03.320 right out of the gate, but it took a little 0:02:03.360 --> 0:02:05.960 time and then once it got to a certain level, 0:02:06.080 --> 0:02:08.920 they really took off. The first thing that helped was 0:02:09.000 --> 0:02:13.040 that Internet download throughput was slowly on the rise, meaning 0:02:13.360 --> 0:02:15.239 it wouldn't take a full day to download a song 0:02:15.320 --> 0:02:17.400 or anything like back in the old days when we 0:02:17.400 --> 0:02:20.080 were all using dial up and we had very slow modems, 0:02:20.639 --> 0:02:23.760 it took ages just to download a small file. You 0:02:23.800 --> 0:02:26.480 wouldn't even dream of trying to tackle something like a 0:02:26.600 --> 0:02:29.400 raw audio file, even the compressed one would have taken 0:02:29.480 --> 0:02:32.760 quite some time. The second element that really helped was 0:02:32.800 --> 0:02:36.519 that hard drive storage space was also climbing, so you 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.760 could fit more files onto your hard drive because the 0:02:39.760 --> 0:02:43.840 hard drives were getting higher in capacity. Some MP three 0:02:43.919 --> 0:02:47.480 players that came along later on after the MP three 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:51.440 format had been settled, actually had physical hard drives in them. 0:02:51.480 --> 0:02:54.920 They had tiny hard drive platters that actually moved inside 0:02:55.080 --> 0:02:59.800 the portable player. Actually had a creative zen player that 0:02:59.880 --> 0:03:02.560 was like that is a bit of a brick. It 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:05.639 was heavy and it was a little bulky, largely because 0:03:05.639 --> 0:03:08.600 it was housing a physical hard drive. Later on, most 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:13.120 of these players would switch over to solid state drives. 0:03:13.120 --> 0:03:15.919 Those are faster, they're lighter, and you don't have to 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:19.440 worry about physical moving components with those. The third factor 0:03:19.480 --> 0:03:21.799 that made a big impact on the MP three success 0:03:22.280 --> 0:03:25.840 was that the compressed files worked well with both both 0:03:25.880 --> 0:03:29.000 of those first two factors. The first two things uh 0:03:29.280 --> 0:03:33.000 complimented the MP three the file sizes. The MP three's 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:36.520 were smaller than the raw audio files, so they didn't 0:03:36.560 --> 0:03:39.040 take as much time to transfer over the Internet, and 0:03:39.080 --> 0:03:41.200 they took up less hard drive space, which meant that 0:03:41.240 --> 0:03:43.840 consumers had a chance to carry around an entire music 0:03:43.960 --> 0:03:48.160 library on a portable device. You might be able to 0:03:48.360 --> 0:03:51.840 have a few CDs in your car and thus have 0:03:51.920 --> 0:03:56.240 a selection of maybe a dozen different albums, but on 0:03:56.320 --> 0:03:59.880 a portable MP three player of a sufficient hard drive size, 0:04:00.160 --> 0:04:02.920 you could have hundreds of songs on there, So it 0:04:03.080 --> 0:04:05.720 really changed the game that way. Then there were the 0:04:05.760 --> 0:04:10.320 sharing services like Napster and Khaza and lime wire and 0:04:10.760 --> 0:04:15.080 numerous others. These were the bane of the recording industry, 0:04:15.440 --> 0:04:18.760 and they led to some pretty high profile draconian lawsuits 0:04:18.760 --> 0:04:21.200 that I'll talk about a bit later in this episode. 0:04:21.760 --> 0:04:25.320 The services enabled users to share copies of files with 0:04:25.360 --> 0:04:29.360 each other, and they very quickly became the trading grounds 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:34.760 for copyrighted material, sometimes unreleased copyrighted material, So stuff was 0:04:35.279 --> 0:04:39.080 leaking on the Internet before it could get officially published 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.920 as c ds. So instead of going out and buying 0:04:41.920 --> 0:04:44.320 a CD and ripping it on a computer to put 0:04:44.360 --> 0:04:47.480 songs on an MP three player, or buying a song 0:04:47.600 --> 0:04:50.000 off an online store like iTunes, which came a little 0:04:50.040 --> 0:04:53.719 bit later, people were instead downloading client software to connect 0:04:53.760 --> 0:04:56.320 to peer to peer networks and to grab that stuff 0:04:56.320 --> 0:04:59.280 for free. And along the way they risked pulling down 0:04:59.400 --> 0:05:03.320 some nasty computer viruses and other malware, because not everything 0:05:03.440 --> 0:05:06.279 was what it claimed to be on those services. You 0:05:06.360 --> 0:05:09.200 might think, oh, there's the new Bruce Springsteen album. I'm 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:11.280 just going to download it, and it turns out that 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:13.839 it's a trojan horse for some sort of malware that 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.880 you're completely unaware of. It was not unusual in those 0:05:16.960 --> 0:05:19.560 days to download a file and then try to play 0:05:19.640 --> 0:05:21.800 it so you can listen to the music and nothing 0:05:22.080 --> 0:05:24.320 seems to happen, and you might think, oh, it's a 0:05:24.320 --> 0:05:28.320 corrupted file. The download didn't happen properly. It could also 0:05:28.400 --> 0:05:30.880 be that it was actually malware, So that was a 0:05:30.960 --> 0:05:34.360 risk you had to take um and hopefully you were 0:05:34.360 --> 0:05:36.800 at least aware of that risk if you were engaged 0:05:36.839 --> 0:05:40.760 in that behavior. Now, some people became obsessed with collecting 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:45.719 music files. They established enormous digital music libraries of their own. 0:05:45.839 --> 0:05:49.080 Sometimes they'd even download stuff they never really planned to 0:05:49.160 --> 0:05:52.160 listen to, just so that they could have it. And 0:05:52.480 --> 0:05:55.840 people were purchasing fewer CDs, and that was a huge 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:59.200 blow to the recording industry. There were multiple reasons for that, 0:05:59.279 --> 0:06:01.240 and again I'll talk about that a little bit more 0:06:01.279 --> 0:06:04.800 in depth later on, but this was this was a 0:06:04.839 --> 0:06:09.800 scary thing for record labels because the profit margin for 0:06:09.839 --> 0:06:13.120 CDs was really good. You know, the CDs were cheap 0:06:13.200 --> 0:06:16.360 to manufacture, you could sell them for a really good profit, 0:06:16.760 --> 0:06:20.039 and companies obviously did not want that cash cow to 0:06:20.080 --> 0:06:24.040 go away. So when they started seeing that trend on 0:06:24.080 --> 0:06:27.680 the decline, companies really freaked out. And there were a 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:31.560 lot of different reasons that contributed to that decline, but 0:06:31.880 --> 0:06:34.880 the company seemed to really focus on piracy as being 0:06:34.960 --> 0:06:39.440 the one main reason for that happening. Worse than that, 0:06:40.000 --> 0:06:42.520 companies started seeing those albums get leaked, like I said, 0:06:42.560 --> 0:06:45.520 before they could even publish them, and they were wondering, 0:06:45.520 --> 0:06:48.320 how is this happening? How can these songs that haven't 0:06:48.360 --> 0:06:52.240 even published, they haven't played on the radio, they shouldn't 0:06:52.279 --> 0:06:55.120 really be outside the control of the company. How are 0:06:55.160 --> 0:06:58.839 they getting out to get leaked onto these services? Because 0:06:58.839 --> 0:07:01.640 people were downloading the late songs from artists days or 0:07:01.680 --> 0:07:04.960 sometimes even weeks before the album would actually drop. The 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:08.680 New Yorker did a profile on someone responsible for thousands 0:07:08.680 --> 0:07:10.920 of leaks. He was not the only one, but this 0:07:10.960 --> 0:07:13.160 is a representation of what was going on. It was 0:07:13.200 --> 0:07:16.040 a guy named Dell Glover. He was working at a 0:07:16.120 --> 0:07:19.920 PolyGram c D manufacturing facility in the Carolinas, and Glover 0:07:20.000 --> 0:07:23.640 claimed he never personally smuggled any of those production CDs 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:26.040 out of the facility, but he had a network of 0:07:26.080 --> 0:07:29.080 employees who would do that for them for him, So 0:07:29.160 --> 0:07:32.520 he would, you know, rely on these people to smuggle 0:07:32.600 --> 0:07:37.120 up brand new CDs that were being produced but not 0:07:37.200 --> 0:07:40.000 yet being sold. One of the ways they would do 0:07:40.040 --> 0:07:43.240 this is they would commonly produce more CDs than they 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:46.480 actually needed for an order, because sometimes you know, you 0:07:46.520 --> 0:07:50.840 have irregular CDs that are pressed something there might be 0:07:50.880 --> 0:07:55.000 some manufacturing error, something is affecting the quality, uh, And 0:07:55.080 --> 0:07:57.520 sometimes he would just end up with extras anyway. And 0:07:57.560 --> 0:07:59.840 those extras were always meant to go through a shredder 0:08:00.240 --> 0:08:03.360 so that the material could be destroyed and then recycled. 0:08:03.840 --> 0:08:08.800 But you could just secretly, you know, hide one of 0:08:08.840 --> 0:08:12.200 those CDs on your person while you're taking all the 0:08:12.240 --> 0:08:14.119 rest of the shutter because no one was keeping track 0:08:14.600 --> 0:08:18.600 of the shredded disks. So if you did it and 0:08:18.680 --> 0:08:21.000 you were careful and you didn't get caught, you could 0:08:21.080 --> 0:08:24.360 stand to gain from that. So Glover would take the 0:08:24.360 --> 0:08:26.880 smuggled disks home and then he would rip the music 0:08:26.920 --> 0:08:29.640 off of them using his computer and upload the files 0:08:29.680 --> 0:08:32.720 to a ringleader of a piracy ring, who then made 0:08:32.760 --> 0:08:35.960 them available on various peer to peer networks, well first 0:08:36.360 --> 0:08:39.599 on centralized networks and later peer to peer networks. This 0:08:39.720 --> 0:08:43.800 also helped start the idea that the content on the 0:08:43.840 --> 0:08:46.160 Internet is free. It's a It's an idea that's got 0:08:46.240 --> 0:08:49.520 a pretty strong hold on the average Internet users. Psyche 0:08:49.559 --> 0:08:52.880 this these days, this concept that if I, if I 0:08:52.920 --> 0:08:55.480 go online, I should be able to get stuff for free. 0:08:55.880 --> 0:08:58.720 People got used to that idea. They didn't have to 0:08:58.720 --> 0:09:02.160 walk into a store and lay down cash for a purchase. Now, 0:09:02.200 --> 0:09:05.600 in some cases, artists or companies might allow people to 0:09:05.720 --> 0:09:09.880 listen to or even download some content for free. It 0:09:09.920 --> 0:09:12.160 actually becomes something they're welcoming. They might think of it 0:09:12.200 --> 0:09:15.760 as a type of marketing. But in other cases, people 0:09:15.760 --> 0:09:18.160 were just pirating the heck out of stuff. They were 0:09:18.200 --> 0:09:22.040 just copying it because they could not because it was 0:09:22.080 --> 0:09:26.000 allowed and the thought of paying for content was on 0:09:26.040 --> 0:09:29.319 the decline. The revenue model for the web was largely 0:09:29.440 --> 0:09:32.400 ad based. Right if you went to a website, chances 0:09:32.400 --> 0:09:36.679 are that website was making money by using web advertising. 0:09:36.720 --> 0:09:40.599 They were selling space on the web page that advertisers 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:44.400 would pay money to occupy for a certain amount of time. 0:09:45.400 --> 0:09:50.200 And uh, this was not ideal for content creators necessarily 0:09:50.240 --> 0:09:53.960 because and and for website operators too, because people were 0:09:53.960 --> 0:09:56.320 starting to develop what we largely would refer to as 0:09:56.480 --> 0:10:00.560 as a ad blindness. People would stop pay attention to 0:10:00.600 --> 0:10:02.520 the fact that there even were ads. They're just paying 0:10:02.520 --> 0:10:06.319 attention to the content. That led to some pretty irritating 0:10:07.080 --> 0:10:10.199 trends and advertising things like pop ups and pop unders 0:10:10.240 --> 0:10:14.120 and ads with full sound that just start playing as 0:10:14.120 --> 0:10:16.720 soon as they load on your screen. Irritating stuff like 0:10:16.760 --> 0:10:21.840 that that would uh decrease your enjoyment of the web experience. 0:10:22.200 --> 0:10:25.120 But it also meant that a lot of people would 0:10:25.480 --> 0:10:28.760 install ad blockers so that they could not have that 0:10:28.840 --> 0:10:33.360 experience and still get the content they wanted. The content 0:10:33.520 --> 0:10:36.959 wasn't technically free because it was being paid for by advertising, 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:41.240 but the end user was not directly paying for the experience, right. 0:10:41.280 --> 0:10:43.760 It wasn't like it was behind a paywall, So for 0:10:43.800 --> 0:10:46.720 the user it felt like everything is free. And when 0:10:46.720 --> 0:10:50.040 everything feels like it's free, it then feels like a 0:10:50.160 --> 0:10:53.440 huge imposition to be told, Hey, if you want access 0:10:53.480 --> 0:10:55.839 to this, you've got to pay for it, and so 0:10:55.880 --> 0:11:00.280 it kind of conditioned people to an expectation that intent 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:05.520 needs to be free. Um, that's a huge problem, not 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.760 just for music, it's for web content in general, and 0:11:10.520 --> 0:11:12.920 I'll talk about that a little bit later too. But 0:11:13.000 --> 0:11:15.520 this was also a shift away from owning a physical 0:11:15.520 --> 0:11:19.160 copy of a song or a movie or television show, 0:11:19.520 --> 0:11:22.480 as those would follow the same path. If you could 0:11:22.480 --> 0:11:25.640 get a digital version and it was a good enough 0:11:25.840 --> 0:11:28.600 digital version of whatever it was you wanted, there wasn't 0:11:28.679 --> 0:11:31.800 much call for buying something that would take up physical space. 0:11:32.440 --> 0:11:34.640 There are still people who preferred having a physical copy, 0:11:34.679 --> 0:11:37.160 and there still are today. There are people who would 0:11:37.240 --> 0:11:40.120 much prefer to go out and get physical copies of movies, 0:11:40.240 --> 0:11:43.320 largely because it's a good way to guarantee you're getting 0:11:43.679 --> 0:11:49.920 the best uh experience for your money, and that things 0:11:49.960 --> 0:11:52.280 like a Blu ray disk. Like let's say you're going 0:11:52.280 --> 0:11:57.079 to get a four K Ultra high definition disk and uh, 0:11:57.240 --> 0:11:59.280 you want to watch it on a four K television, 0:11:59.760 --> 0:12:02.560 You're probably going to have a better experience than watching 0:12:03.040 --> 0:12:06.559 a digital version that's gone through compression. In the decompression 0:12:07.480 --> 0:12:09.280 that still might be really good, it might be better 0:12:09.320 --> 0:12:13.480 than high definition, but it's probably not going to measure 0:12:13.559 --> 0:12:15.440 up to the physical copy. So there's some people who 0:12:15.520 --> 0:12:18.800 still demand that. They also might want things like the 0:12:18.800 --> 0:12:22.679 cover art or liner notes or special features, or they 0:12:22.720 --> 0:12:25.800 may just want something physical to relate to with the 0:12:25.920 --> 0:12:29.360 music or movies or television that they enjoyed. They might 0:12:30.000 --> 0:12:33.760 have a sort of a psychological attachment to that. And 0:12:33.800 --> 0:12:37.040 then there's the audio file community. They were largely against 0:12:37.040 --> 0:12:42.359 digital files in general, compression in particular, and really lossy formats. 0:12:42.400 --> 0:12:46.400 They hated that idea because they were very passionate and 0:12:46.600 --> 0:12:51.520 arguing that that approach was decreasing the actual quality of 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.800 the music itself. Now, generally speaking, you could tell the 0:12:54.800 --> 0:12:57.960 difference between a good analog recording played on a decent 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.200 stereo system and a digital file of the same piece 0:13:01.240 --> 0:13:04.320 of music played on a comparable sound system, specifically a 0:13:04.360 --> 0:13:08.440 compressed digital file. The more extreme the compression, the easier 0:13:08.480 --> 0:13:10.800 it was to tell the difference between the two. And 0:13:10.880 --> 0:13:13.439 so there was a community of audio files who protested 0:13:13.480 --> 0:13:17.080 how the compressed format was ruining the beauty of the 0:13:17.120 --> 0:13:21.040 experience of listening to music. But for many people, including myself, 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:24.960 the convenience factor mattered way more than the quality of 0:13:25.000 --> 0:13:27.920 the music. While the difference might be noticeable between the 0:13:27.920 --> 0:13:31.120 perfect sound system and a portable MP three player, most 0:13:31.160 --> 0:13:32.839 people just wanted to be able to hear the songs 0:13:32.880 --> 0:13:35.640 they liked in an easy to carry format, and as 0:13:35.720 --> 0:13:39.200 long as the compression wasn't really ruining the song, it 0:13:39.280 --> 0:13:42.040 was fine. You know, it might not be the best quality. 0:13:42.080 --> 0:13:45.040 You might not get the levels of bass or trouble 0:13:45.120 --> 0:13:47.400 that you would get with a really good stereo system, 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:51.040 but if the song sounds like the song in general, 0:13:51.480 --> 0:13:55.079 then that was good enough. Meanwhile, things would get worse 0:13:55.120 --> 0:13:57.840 for audio files because of a trend in music that 0:13:57.920 --> 0:14:01.280 was being affected by compression, a front type of compression. 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:05.520 Online music forums were starting to erupt around the same 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.880 time period, with conversations about music being louder than it 0:14:09.920 --> 0:14:13.719 had been before that the actual recordings being pressed to 0:14:13.880 --> 0:14:18.440 c D we're at a volume greater than previous generations 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:21.680 of music. So if you put a CD in and 0:14:21.800 --> 0:14:24.560 you set the volume on your CD player, let's say 0:14:24.680 --> 0:14:28.600 five out of ten, and you're playing a CD of 0:14:28.720 --> 0:14:32.400 older music, then it might be a comfortable listening experience. 0:14:32.560 --> 0:14:36.640 But then you put in a more recent album and 0:14:36.680 --> 0:14:38.480 it would suddenly be too loud to listen to you 0:14:38.520 --> 0:14:44.280 would have to adjust the volume. Well, compression was having 0:14:44.280 --> 0:14:46.920 a big effect on the quality of music. See, the 0:14:47.000 --> 0:14:50.840 conversation was really about the dynamic nature of sound and music, 0:14:51.640 --> 0:14:55.360 and most people refer to dynamic as a range of 0:14:56.240 --> 0:14:59.040 sounds and their loudness. It's really kind of a range 0:14:59.040 --> 0:15:04.160 of volume. A dynamic song, therefore, would have quiet components 0:15:04.160 --> 0:15:07.280 and loud components, and there should be a pretty decent 0:15:07.400 --> 0:15:10.160 range between the two, and ideally you should be able 0:15:10.160 --> 0:15:11.760 to hear all of it based on the way the 0:15:11.840 --> 0:15:17.240 music is constructed and recorded. Now, Emmanuel Derrity actually did 0:15:17.280 --> 0:15:20.200 an analysis of music from the nineteen seventies up through 0:15:20.440 --> 0:15:23.360 two thousand ten to see whether or not music as 0:15:23.360 --> 0:15:27.800 a whole really did get louder and less dynamic. He 0:15:27.840 --> 0:15:31.760 published the findings on the website sound on sound dot 0:15:31.800 --> 0:15:35.400 com and found that, yeah, music did get louder. The 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:39.200 dynamic question is actually a little more complicated. But he 0:15:39.240 --> 0:15:42.640 traced the trends in music, finding that as time went on, 0:15:43.280 --> 0:15:48.280 music recordings were getting louder, and that at the same time, 0:15:48.320 --> 0:15:52.520 the range between the peak loudness and the median loudness 0:15:52.600 --> 0:15:55.280 of the songs was decreasing. So in other words, in 0:15:55.360 --> 0:15:58.600 earlier music, you might get a few moments of loudness, 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:03.280 but most of the time the the median volume was lower, 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:06.880 so you had a range there. In later songs, the 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:11.520 peak wasn't necessarily much higher than the median, so the 0:16:11.560 --> 0:16:15.280 loudest sound was not that different from the median sound, 0:16:15.840 --> 0:16:18.440 and that meant there was less dynamic range, at least 0:16:18.440 --> 0:16:22.760 according to this volume approach, and and some people argued 0:16:22.800 --> 0:16:26.680 it led to a homogeneous, noisy, less interesting sound overall, 0:16:27.280 --> 0:16:30.200 Drudy actually found there was more loudness range than people 0:16:30.240 --> 0:16:33.360 typically imagined in that more recent music. But it gets 0:16:33.400 --> 0:16:38.480 super technical now. The reason for that wasn't just that 0:16:38.560 --> 0:16:41.160 it was a change in taste for music, but that 0:16:41.240 --> 0:16:43.520 was part of it. It was also in the nature 0:16:43.560 --> 0:16:46.880 of compression and what people referred to as digital brick 0:16:46.880 --> 0:16:51.280 walls now. Essentially, to get music that loud, you had 0:16:51.320 --> 0:16:54.400 to put a hard upper limit on the loudest noise 0:16:54.920 --> 0:16:59.240 because the CD could only replicate so loud of a 0:16:59.280 --> 0:17:03.000 noise before you'd start getting a distortion like clipping or 0:17:03.040 --> 0:17:06.080 other artifacts. But that compression would also mean that it 0:17:06.119 --> 0:17:09.880 would square off the peaks in sound. It would create 0:17:10.080 --> 0:17:14.000 a digital version of distortion that would only appear in 0:17:14.040 --> 0:17:15.960 the recorded version. If you were able to listen to 0:17:16.040 --> 0:17:20.879 the original decompressed version, it would sound very, very different. 0:17:20.920 --> 0:17:23.520 So you could do that to create an effect on purpose, 0:17:23.800 --> 0:17:26.119 but a lot of people just found that it was 0:17:27.040 --> 0:17:31.199 having a negative impact on the quality of sound overall. This, 0:17:31.320 --> 0:17:32.560 by the way, it's not the same thing as m 0:17:32.600 --> 0:17:36.080 P three compression. With this recording compression, we're talking about 0:17:36.480 --> 0:17:39.720 compressing the upper and lower limits of a sound's loudness. 0:17:39.920 --> 0:17:43.199 We're not talking about compressing a digital file size. Now. 0:17:43.240 --> 0:17:46.120 I mentioned this because you'll often hear music fans talk 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:49.159 about how compression has had a negative impact on music, 0:17:49.720 --> 0:17:52.480 but they are frequently talking more about the production side 0:17:52.480 --> 0:17:56.480 of music and not necessarily on the end digital file format. 0:17:56.880 --> 0:17:59.520 But for the record, both processes can have a negative 0:17:59.520 --> 0:18:02.040 impact on the final quality of a sound. And the 0:18:02.160 --> 0:18:05.720 loudness wars were largely brought about because the CD form 0:18:05.800 --> 0:18:08.639 factor and the trend to push the limits of the 0:18:08.760 --> 0:18:11.840 levels of loudness that CD s and CD players could handle. 0:18:12.119 --> 0:18:15.119 It wasn't on the digital file side at all. But 0:18:15.280 --> 0:18:17.679 let's get back to those digital files. That's really what 0:18:17.760 --> 0:18:20.680 I was talking about in this episode. Anyway, the recording 0:18:20.720 --> 0:18:24.159 industry tried lots of different tactics to try and stop 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:27.280 the flood of leaks and downloads. As album sales began 0:18:27.320 --> 0:18:30.560 to decline, and the industry had been on a trend, 0:18:30.720 --> 0:18:34.919 enjoying a decade of incredibly robust sales. As soon as 0:18:34.960 --> 0:18:40.240 the CD had premiered, it was starting to already gain momentum. 0:18:40.320 --> 0:18:44.399 It would overtake cassettes, and then it would eclipse previous 0:18:44.440 --> 0:18:49.120 sales figures of cassettes and vinyl, doing gang buster business 0:18:49.320 --> 0:18:53.359 for the recording industry. It was and and a great 0:18:53.440 --> 0:18:56.280 time to be the head of a recording label. But 0:18:57.480 --> 0:19:03.120 after that, once those hayed a years had passed, the 0:19:03.200 --> 0:19:05.600 industry started looking at these declines and it was a 0:19:05.640 --> 0:19:08.159 really harsh wake up call to see those numbers go 0:19:08.240 --> 0:19:10.880 the other way. And the companies were not just gonna 0:19:10.920 --> 0:19:14.480 take this lying down. Many tried various digital rights management 0:19:14.520 --> 0:19:17.320 strategies to protect the music under their labels. They tried 0:19:17.359 --> 0:19:20.960 to protect c d s, the famous one being Sony 0:19:21.119 --> 0:19:25.000 when it backfired on them, uh, But there were others 0:19:25.040 --> 0:19:27.800 that tried different methods as well in an effort to 0:19:27.960 --> 0:19:31.399 limit how people could use digital files. But typically that 0:19:31.440 --> 0:19:34.159 would just mean hackers would find the d r M 0:19:34.240 --> 0:19:36.880 and strip it out of the music files and share 0:19:36.880 --> 0:19:39.840 it anyway. The other big move that organizations like the 0:19:39.840 --> 0:19:44.080 Recording Industry Association of America or r I double A 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.919 that they took was was legal action, and boy hawdy, 0:19:48.920 --> 0:19:52.520 did they go all out in that realm. The targets 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:56.200 didn't just include services like Napster that enabled file sharing 0:19:56.240 --> 0:19:59.400 on a grand scale. They also included regular folks who 0:19:59.400 --> 0:20:03.600 were engaged in some illegal file sharing and some people 0:20:03.960 --> 0:20:08.680 who probably weren't, and the stakes were really high. I'll 0:20:08.680 --> 0:20:11.600 talk about that more in just a second, but first 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:22.280 let's take a quick break. The r I double A 0:20:22.440 --> 0:20:27.080 sued Napster in December. The service had only gone live 0:20:27.200 --> 0:20:30.320 in June of n r I double A did not 0:20:30.600 --> 0:20:34.439 waste time about this, and like many legal processes, this 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:37.879 one took a long time to reconcile. And it was 0:20:37.920 --> 0:20:40.800 tricky because the d m c A did establish that 0:20:41.080 --> 0:20:44.719 service providers are not responsible for how their customers use 0:20:44.800 --> 0:20:48.639 their service as long as the service itself is in 0:20:48.680 --> 0:20:52.320 fact legal and pure to pure distribution is a perfectly 0:20:52.440 --> 0:20:57.399 legal process. The problem wasn't with the method necessarily, but 0:20:57.520 --> 0:21:01.840 the content that users were uploading and sharing. It's it's 0:21:01.920 --> 0:21:05.080 legal to use peer to peer networks to distribute files, 0:21:05.080 --> 0:21:08.080 that's their purpose. It's not legal to use peer to 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:11.199 peer to distribute files without the authorization of the owner 0:21:11.280 --> 0:21:15.960 of the intellectual property. To use an analogy, it's perfectly 0:21:16.040 --> 0:21:20.320 legal to use the road system to transport stuff from 0:21:20.320 --> 0:21:22.359 one city to another. We do it all the time. 0:21:22.800 --> 0:21:25.199 That's what the road system is for. But it is 0:21:25.359 --> 0:21:30.880 illegal to smuggle contraband. However, if someone were caught smuggling, 0:21:31.160 --> 0:21:34.280 the law wouldn't go after the Federal Highway Administration in 0:21:34.280 --> 0:21:37.200 the United States because it's not the f h W 0:21:37.240 --> 0:21:41.199 as fault that someone was transporting illegal goods using the 0:21:41.280 --> 0:21:45.080 highways that the agency actually oversees. The same concept was 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:47.760 meant to apply to online providers, but there was a 0:21:47.840 --> 0:21:51.080 caveat The providers had to be willing and able to 0:21:51.160 --> 0:21:55.160 take action against people who are using the services illegally. 0:21:55.440 --> 0:21:58.320 If a copyright holder, such as a music label were 0:21:58.359 --> 0:22:01.840 to contact a service like Napster, that service was supposed 0:22:01.880 --> 0:22:05.120 to help clamp down on illegal behaviors, and in return, 0:22:05.440 --> 0:22:08.520 the service would receive the protection of safe harbor. So 0:22:08.680 --> 0:22:11.399 part of the lawsuit was alleging that Napster was willfully 0:22:11.480 --> 0:22:15.000 turning a blind eye to illegal behavior on the service. Now, 0:22:15.040 --> 0:22:17.639 for the record, Napster did try to comply with this, 0:22:18.200 --> 0:22:21.800 but they were only able to demonstrate that their their 0:22:21.960 --> 0:22:29.040 ability to prevent illegal file sharing was point four percent effective, 0:22:29.600 --> 0:22:32.800 and the prosecution argue that that wasn't good enough. It 0:22:32.840 --> 0:22:35.480 had to be a hundred percent effective, which led some 0:22:35.520 --> 0:22:39.160 people to say, this isn't actually an attack on Napster, 0:22:39.560 --> 0:22:42.160 this is an attack on peer to peer file sharing 0:22:42.680 --> 0:22:46.520 as a strategy in the first place. Um, And so 0:22:46.680 --> 0:22:50.280 it led to a pretty ugly fight. The lawsuit also 0:22:50.359 --> 0:22:52.960 led to Napster shutting down its existing service in two 0:22:52.960 --> 0:22:56.000 thousand one. The lawsuit kept on going at that point. 0:22:56.280 --> 0:22:59.000 The following year, a judge and an appeals court both 0:22:59.040 --> 0:23:03.040 found that Napster was liable for numerous copyright copyright violations 0:23:03.640 --> 0:23:07.240 in separate lawsuits with artists like Dr Dre and Metallica. 0:23:07.400 --> 0:23:11.120 Napster would settle out of court, paying handsomely to do so, 0:23:11.600 --> 0:23:16.000 and Napster would go bankrupt. They would eventually re emerge 0:23:16.000 --> 0:23:18.760 in a very different format as an online music store. 0:23:19.560 --> 0:23:23.320 It was not really the same entity as the original company, 0:23:23.440 --> 0:23:25.879 UM that, like I said, that company had gone bankrupt. 0:23:25.960 --> 0:23:28.880 Another company came in and bought up all the assets. Uh. 0:23:28.920 --> 0:23:30.879