Speaker 1: Get in touch with technology with tech Stuff from how
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com. Hey there, and welcome to tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Jonathan Strickland, senior writer at how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com. And today we're going to revisit the
Speaker 1: world of m P three's because I promised you guys
Speaker 1: I do an episode about the history of MP three players,
Speaker 1: and this is that episode. I've already covered the history
Speaker 1: of the MP three format itself and how digital audio works,
Speaker 1: so you can check out those earlier episodes as well
Speaker 1: if you want to. But first let me just give
Speaker 1: like kind of a very brief overview of the history
Speaker 1: of the MP three super summarized version. If you recall,
Speaker 1: it originated as a project out of a research company
Speaker 1: called the Frown Hawthor Gazelle Shoft Company. A team of
Speaker 1: researchers led by Karl Heinz Brandenburg created the MP three
Speaker 1: format back in seven. Now, what he was doing was
Speaker 1: trying to build a compression formula that would allow for
Speaker 1: high audio quality that doesn't take up as much space
Speaker 1: as raw audio files do. Those are huge, so how
Speaker 1: do you get them smaller so that transmission is easier.
Speaker 1: He wanted to do this for audio transmission across phone lines. Now,
Speaker 1: the name MP three comes to us courtesy of the
Speaker 1: Motion Picture Experts Group, also known as IMPEG, and the
Speaker 1: reason the three is there is because the full name
Speaker 1: for the format is the IMPEG Audio Layer three. So
Speaker 1: Brandenburg's team's research led to this audio compression format. Al
Speaker 1: Fraunhofer a Gazelle Shoft applied for a patent in Germany
Speaker 1: in nine and for a patent in the United States
Speaker 1: uh in. And this is a good spot to include
Speaker 1: a bit of information to clear up some ambiguity. An
Speaker 1: MP three player can be a couple of different things.
Speaker 1: One version of an MP three player is just a
Speaker 1: program that you run on your computer and it's meant
Speaker 1: to decode compressed MP three files and then play them
Speaker 1: back so that you can listen to them. Now, the
Speaker 1: other meaning of MP three player is really what I
Speaker 1: was going to talk about today. That's a dedicated, typically
Speaker 1: portable device that is a decoder and an audio system
Speaker 1: all in one, kind of like a Sony Walkman was
Speaker 1: the old cassette player. I think of MP three player
Speaker 1: as this handheld personal audio device, but technically MP three
Speaker 1: player can refer to either. And since it can refer
Speaker 1: to either. I'm going to cover the history of both,
Speaker 1: but I'm really going to focus more on those handheld devices.
Speaker 1: Now frown hawfor a gazelle shaft, and I do love
Speaker 1: saying that name over and over, which is why I
Speaker 1: take every opportunity to do so. They marketed an MP
Speaker 1: three player program for computers, but it failed to catch on.
Speaker 1: It wasn't terribly user friendly, people didn't really care for it,
Speaker 1: and the MP three was actually in danger of fading
Speaker 1: into obscurity. If no one had created a user friendly
Speaker 1: MP three program, chances are that format never would have
Speaker 1: caught on and we would have some other compression format
Speaker 1: that would be the standard uh or at least a
Speaker 1: major standard in audio compression. Now, there were other researchers
Speaker 1: and companies working on a way to find success where
Speaker 1: the German company found frustration, and that's when we flash
Speaker 1: forward to ninet. So remember ninety seven is when the
Speaker 1: company first started developing the MP three compression format. Ten
Speaker 1: years later is when Thomas lav Lak created the a
Speaker 1: MP MP three playback engine now use Lac was born
Speaker 1: in Croatia and studied at the University of Zagreb's Faculty
Speaker 1: of electrical engineering and computing, and he had graduate weighted
Speaker 1: with a degree of engineering. And he developed his MP
Speaker 1: three player software when he was a student, and he
Speaker 1: wanted to launch it as a commercial product. He said,
Speaker 1: all right, well, I've created this thing that can play
Speaker 1: MP three files, and I want to be able to
Speaker 1: make this something like a piece of software that could
Speaker 1: actually sell. So he formed a partnership with an American
Speaker 1: entrepreneur named Brian Littman. Together they created a new company
Speaker 1: called Advanced Multimedia Products. This was back in the time
Speaker 1: when multimedia became like the catchphrase. It was a buzz term,
Speaker 1: kind of similar to like the way we call Internet
Speaker 1: of Things or cloud computing. Those are real buzz terms today.
Speaker 1: Multimedia back in those days was the big buzz word,
Speaker 1: and it also could mean things like full motion video
Speaker 1: in computer games, and I've talked about that in a
Speaker 1: previous episode. They were terrible and amazing and terrible. So
Speaker 1: Advanced Multimedia Product that's where you get the a MP
Speaker 1: in a MP MP three. It wasn't AMP like an amplifier,
Speaker 1: but rather an acronym for Advanced Multimedia Products. Side note
Speaker 1: it was Lack would later go on to work in
Speaker 1: the world of video games. He co created a company
Speaker 1: called two by two Games, which released a turn based
Speaker 1: war game called Unity of Command. So, if you've ever
Speaker 1: played Unity of Command, that was made by the same
Speaker 1: person who created the first commercially successful MP three player program.
Speaker 1: So this program hits the market and it is commercially successful,
Speaker 1: but it's not entirely easy to use for everybody. That's
Speaker 1: when a University of Utah student named Justin Frankel took
Speaker 1: this AMP program and he poured it it over to
Speaker 1: the Windows operating system, along with help from a few
Speaker 1: other developers, and he called this sport win AMP w
Speaker 1: I N A MP. Justin Frankel, by the way, would
Speaker 1: actually go on to develop the New Tell, a peer
Speaker 1: to peer sharing program, and new Tell in this case
Speaker 1: is spelled with a g N you good New Teller.
Speaker 1: There's some disagreement online, by the way, regarding to who
Speaker 1: contributed to creating winapp and who was ultimately responsible who
Speaker 1: did most of the work. But I'm gonna be honest
Speaker 1: with you, guys, I cannot sort it all out. There
Speaker 1: are multiple stories out there. They all disagree with each other.
Speaker 1: Some of them seemed to be a little more conspiracy
Speaker 1: oriented than others. It's very difficult to sort out what
Speaker 1: is the actual truth. It seems to me like there
Speaker 1: were multiple players involved and there's disagreement about who did
Speaker 1: most of the work. So for the purposes of this podcast,
Speaker 1: let's say that Frankel developed WINAMP and just put a
Speaker 1: little asked a risk behind that phrase, because honestly, without
Speaker 1: chatting with all the parties involved, I can't really make
Speaker 1: an educated guess as to who whom was the ultimate
Speaker 1: party responsible. I'm guessing it was more of a group effort.
Speaker 1: Now when AMP would actually go on to become one
Speaker 1: of the top MP three playback programs on the Windows platform,
Speaker 1: in it was a free program, anyone could download it,
Speaker 1: and that really helped cement the MP three format. It
Speaker 1: helped establish it as a format that would stick around
Speaker 1: because now you had a free program you could use.
Speaker 1: You had a compression formula that allowed you to store
Speaker 1: a lot more music in the same storage space as
Speaker 1: if you were to use the raw music files you could.
Speaker 1: You could store way more music with m P three
Speaker 1: format because it compressed it so low, so low as
Speaker 1: in low storage space, and of course that depended upon
Speaker 1: things like the bit rate you set your encoding at
Speaker 1: and if you wanted to learn more about that, you
Speaker 1: can listen to the digital audio episode I did to
Speaker 1: talk more about bit rate. I'm not going to go
Speaker 1: into that here. So the NP three format was no
Speaker 1: longer in danger of fading off into obscurity. In one
Speaker 1: year after when it became free, A o L purchased
Speaker 1: the rights to win app. They actually acquired a company
Speaker 1: called null Soft. That was the company that Frankel had
Speaker 1: formed when he was marketing win app. And the price
Speaker 1: for acquiring Nullsoft was a cool eighty million dollars, not
Speaker 1: bad for a University of Utah dropout. Frankel dropped out
Speaker 1: of the out of college once he had developed this
Speaker 1: program because he was running his own company. He had
Speaker 1: created a startup and UH found enormous success by getting
Speaker 1: acquired by A o L. This was just one example
Speaker 1: of a long and storied history of people creating company
Speaker 1: needs that showed some utility and then selling out to
Speaker 1: a larger company. And by selling out, they don't mean
Speaker 1: they sold out in the you know, derogatory sense. They
Speaker 1: made really good business decisions by making millions of dollars
Speaker 1: off of their work. Um, I only wish I had
Speaker 1: come up with something equally as useful so that I
Speaker 1: could be a millionaire. Gosh darn it, but don't we
Speaker 1: all anyway? It was not long for this world ultimately,
Speaker 1: because in a O l shut down winnapp. Uh you
Speaker 1: couldn't download it anymore. They stopped supporting it. But of course,
Speaker 1: by the MP three format was firmly entrenched, so the
Speaker 1: death of winnapp did not mean the death of the
Speaker 1: MP three. And there are tons of other MP three
Speaker 1: pro player programs and MP three compatible programs out there,
Speaker 1: way more than I name. Some of them have really
Speaker 1: interesting features. Some of them are really slimmed down programs
Speaker 1: that just have basic commands. Most operating systems have some
Speaker 1: form of MP three playback functionality built into them with
Speaker 1: a stock application, so you don't even have to download
Speaker 1: anything to be able to access MP three files for
Speaker 1: most cases. So instead of focusing on the software side,
Speaker 1: let's shift over to talk about portable MP three players.
Speaker 1: When did they start to show up? So while it
Speaker 1: was Lack was working on the a MP MP three
Speaker 1: player program, and thank goodness, I'm not gonna have to
Speaker 1: say that anymore. There was a company in South Korea
Speaker 1: that was busy creating the first solid state handheld MP
Speaker 1: three player. Now that company was this Sahan Information Systems Corporation.
Speaker 1: The original product they launched was called the MP man
Speaker 1: Digital Stereo Player, kind of like a Walkman, but it's
Speaker 1: an MP man, And of course Walkman came from Sony.
Speaker 1: This came from Sahan Information system Now, the company wasn't
Speaker 1: prepared to market this worldwide, so they actually partnered with
Speaker 1: another company, Iger Labs, and Iger Labs was in charge
Speaker 1: of marketing this product over in the Western world, and
Speaker 1: they showed off the device at the nineteen s Bit
Speaker 1: trade show in Germany. The product would then hit the
Speaker 1: consumer market in the summer of nineteen so you have
Speaker 1: the software side developing at the same time as the
Speaker 1: hardware side, which was kind of interesting right now. There
Speaker 1: were two versions of the early MP man MP three player.
Speaker 1: Others would follow after a while, but the first two,
Speaker 1: we're pretty simple. One of them had thirty two megabytes
Speaker 1: of memory, which was enough to hold about thirty two
Speaker 1: minutes of audio encoded at a killabits per second. That's
Speaker 1: about eight standard length songs. Obviously standard length is you know,
Speaker 1: that depends, but we're talking three to four minutes, right. So,
Speaker 1: just for fun, out of the mischievous of my heart,
Speaker 1: I decided to ask eight co workers a simple question.
Speaker 1: If you could fit one and only one song on
Speaker 1: an MP three player for your use, what would it be?
Speaker 1: And so here is the how Stuff Works employee playlist,
Speaker 1: as determined by the eight co workers I asked. H
Speaker 1: I asked a couple of others this question later on
Speaker 1: and tortured them as well. By the way across the board,
Speaker 1: when I asked this question, it was clear to me
Speaker 1: that the people responding were giving more thought to this
Speaker 1: question than perhaps any other piece of work that crossed
Speaker 1: their desk this week. That's not a judgment, I'm just
Speaker 1: making an observation. So co worker Allison said that she
Speaker 1: would put put under pressure by Queen and David Bowie
Speaker 1: on this MP three player. Christopher went with a door
Speaker 1: by Prince, although he has since reconsidered his choice multiple times.
Speaker 1: Nathan chose later Alice by tool. Sherry chose telephone call
Speaker 1: from Istanbul by Tom Waits Ramsey, who is the director
Speaker 1: for the Forward Thinking series. Now his choice was waiting
Speaker 1: Room by Fugazi. Our office manager to Mika said she
Speaker 1: would go with the Imperial March by John Williams from
Speaker 1: the Empire Strikes Back soundtrack. I think she wins. Julie,
Speaker 1: who hosts Stuff of Life among other things, went with
Speaker 1: Nina Simons Centerman, specifically a live version. She wanted me
Speaker 1: to make sure I mentioned that. And then we have
Speaker 1: Matt Frederick, one of the hosts of Stuff they don't
Speaker 1: want you to know, who decided to torture me because
Speaker 1: he chose a song that I don't think I can
Speaker 1: pronounce sefan Inglare by a group called Seeger Ross, and
Speaker 1: I know I butchered it, and I know that that
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily Matt's intent, But I also know that Matt
Speaker 1: is probably not disappointed to hear that I cannot say
Speaker 1: the name of the song he chose. Now, I think
Speaker 1: it's only fair that I do the same as my
Speaker 1: co workers. But I'm giving myself all eight tracks. So
Speaker 1: here are eight songs I feel like I could put
Speaker 1: on an MP three player that could only hold those
Speaker 1: eight songs. First up is Tie your Mother Down by Queen,
Speaker 1: because it's a song that was written in nineteen six
Speaker 1: by Brian May and May went on to become an
Speaker 1: astro physicist. So if an astrophysicist can write an amazing
Speaker 1: song called tie your Mother Down, I think you have
Speaker 1: to include it on your MP three player. Next, I've
Speaker 1: got Sabotage by the Beastie Boys, which I think is
Speaker 1: best played in a car that has all the windows
Speaker 1: rolled down. Third is my one and only entry from
Speaker 1: They Might Be Giants. This when we can't keep Johnny down,
Speaker 1: Because you know it's My name is Jonathan, so I
Speaker 1: went with that. Anyone who knows me is aware that
Speaker 1: I'm an enormous fan of They Might Be Giants, so
Speaker 1: picking any one song from them was really tough. Fourth
Speaker 1: would be The Clashes cover of Pressure Drop, which was
Speaker 1: originally by Toots and the Maytals, which was one of
Speaker 1: my favorite cover songs. And then next I've I've chosen
Speaker 1: this must be the Place by the Talking Heads. Uh.
Speaker 1: Then we would have a song from a more recent
Speaker 1: band that I've become obsessed with. That would be The
Speaker 1: Struts and Put Your Money on Me. After that s
Speaker 1: O B by Nathaniel Rateliff in the Night Sweats, and
Speaker 1: the last song I would put on my MP three
Speaker 1: player would have to be something that would indicate my
Speaker 1: love of musicals, So I picked the song once in
Speaker 1: a while from The Rocky Horror Show, not the Rocky
Speaker 1: Horror Picture Show, but the play The Rocky Horror Show,
Speaker 1: and specifically the roxy cast version. So look up the
Speaker 1: different songs. I mentioned, both the ones that my coworkers
Speaker 1: picked and the ones I picked to kind of get
Speaker 1: your idea of why anyone would want to put that
Speaker 1: on an MP three player that could only hold eight songs.
Speaker 1: It will give you a lot more information about the
Speaker 1: personalities of the people who work here and of me.
Speaker 1: I guess that's also a warning. Now. I did say
Speaker 1: that the MP man was available in two versions. The
Speaker 1: second one actually had sixty four megabytes of storage. That's
Speaker 1: double the amount of data you could stuff onto the
Speaker 1: other version. It did not have a rechargeable battery, though.
Speaker 1: The thirty two megabyte had a nickel metal hydride battery
Speaker 1: that you could recharge and had nine hours of playtime,
Speaker 1: which is pretty incredible, right, like nine hours to play
Speaker 1: eight songs over and over again. Well, the sixty four
Speaker 1: megabyte instead of having that rechargeable battery, it ran off
Speaker 1: a single double A battery. Now, technically the double A
Speaker 1: could be rechargeablepending upon what brand you purchased, but you
Speaker 1: get what I mean. It wasn't inherently a rechargeable battery.
Speaker 1: The original player, the thirty two megabyte version, it didn't
Speaker 1: have expandable memory. So if you wanted to upgrade, you
Speaker 1: had to do this. You purchase your thirty two megabyte
Speaker 1: You decide, you know what, eight songs isn't enough, I'd
Speaker 1: really like to have sixteen on there. You would send
Speaker 1: your thirty two megabyte model and a check to cover
Speaker 1: the difference in cost off to Eiger Labs, and they
Speaker 1: would send you a sixty four megabyte version in return.
Speaker 1: That's how you upgrade. It didn't have anything to do
Speaker 1: with removable storage discs or anything like that. So how
Speaker 1: much did these things cost? Well, the thirty two megabyte
Speaker 1: mp man cost a cool two hundred fifty dollars when
Speaker 1: it launched in If you were to take that same
Speaker 1: product and look at inflation, you could say, all right,
Speaker 1: well today, that means it would cost close to three
Speaker 1: hundred and sixty eight dollars. So you would be spending
Speaker 1: almost three hundred and seventy dollars in order to listen
Speaker 1: to eight songs on the go in digital format, and
Speaker 1: of course that also depends upon the song length. Right.
Speaker 1: If you wanted to store songs by the Ramans on there,
Speaker 1: you'd probably be able to squeeze in an extra tune
Speaker 1: because most remote songs are three minutes or shorter. But
Speaker 1: if you're a big fan of the musical genius known
Speaker 1: as meat Loaf, you might only get a couple of
Speaker 1: tracks on your m P three player before you filled
Speaker 1: up all the memory. Now I've gotten more to say
Speaker 1: about the MP man and the more successful MP three
Speaker 1: player that followed it, but first let's take a quick
Speaker 1: break to thank our sponsor. The launch of the MP
Speaker 1: man wasn't an enormous success, but it did help establish
Speaker 1: the MP three as not just a digital compression format,
Speaker 1: but also a filed type that could be used for
Speaker 1: portable devices. So in September, just a couple of months
Speaker 1: after the MP man launched, a new MP three player emerged,
Speaker 1: and this was the Rio P MP three hundred and
Speaker 1: that debuted at a price of two hundred dollars, which
Speaker 1: then prompted Eiger Labs to reduce the MP man price
Speaker 1: to two hundred dollars as well. The b MP three
Speaker 1: hundred also had thirty two megabytes of storage space, and
Speaker 1: you'd load music from a computer using a parallel port cable.
Speaker 1: Do you remember. Those were kind of the things we
Speaker 1: would use before stuff like USB cables became a standard.
Speaker 1: So how did this PMP three hundred measure up to
Speaker 1: the MP man apart from the identical amount of storage space. Well,
Speaker 1: if you look at an MP man, and I do
Speaker 1: recommend that you search for these different devices and look
Speaker 1: at images just so you can see what these actually
Speaker 1: looked like. Um, the MP man had a very small
Speaker 1: digital display, almost like an electronic calculator, like handheld electronic
Speaker 1: calculator that you would have basic one, not even a
Speaker 1: scientific model. And so it had a very small digital
Speaker 1: display that mostly showed how much time had passed from
Speaker 1: the launch of a song. And it had two physical
Speaker 1: buttons that you can use to navigate the device, one
Speaker 1: called mode and the other called info, and it weighed
Speaker 1: about sixty five grams. The p MP three hundred had
Speaker 1: a larger digital screen than the MP man, and it
Speaker 1: also had more buttons, including three on the top edge
Speaker 1: of the player and several more on the front surface
Speaker 1: of the player beneath where the screen was a circle
Speaker 1: in the front, gave basic controls like play fast, forward, rewind,
Speaker 1: and stop, and other buttons allowed you to do things
Speaker 1: like change the volume level or select basic functions like repeat.
Speaker 1: These would be things that become standard in future MP
Speaker 1: three players. The additional features and lower price point pushed
Speaker 1: the Rio ahead of the MP MAN. Now that's not
Speaker 1: to say that the launch of the Rio was perfectly smooth.
Speaker 1: In October nine, the Recording Industry Association of America a
Speaker 1: k a. The r I double A sued Rio Port,
Speaker 1: which was a subsidiary of a company called Diamond Multimedia.
Speaker 1: And Diamond multi Media essentially produced the Rio through Rio Port.
Speaker 1: So what was the beef? Well, the r I double
Speaker 1: A claimed that the Rio violated the nineteen two US
Speaker 1: Home Recordings Act. The mp MAN was such a niche
Speaker 1: item that the r I double A didn't even take
Speaker 1: notice of it. But the Rio was making a bigger splash,
Speaker 1: and so the R I double A said, we've got
Speaker 1: a niphus in the butt. Anyone familiar with media organizations
Speaker 1: knows that this is a pretty common occurrence. So you
Speaker 1: get a new technology that debuts and it allows people
Speaker 1: to create, play and share recordings of media and then
Speaker 1: lawsuits come flying in. We saw it with the development
Speaker 1: of video cassettes, both Beta max and VHS. We saw
Speaker 1: it with just cassette tapes. We saw it with c
Speaker 1: d s and specifically writeable c d s, and we
Speaker 1: saw it with m P Three's no big shock. Every
Speaker 1: time that someone comes up with a new way to
Speaker 1: do this, we see the various industry UH components react
Speaker 1: normally through lawsuits. And on the one hand, you can
Speaker 1: kind of understand where they're coming from. If someone can
Speaker 1: replicate a recording or make it available for other folks
Speaker 1: to download for free, why would anyone bother to pay
Speaker 1: for a recording? Right? So, why would I bother to
Speaker 1: pay for a song if I could just go online
Speaker 1: and download it for free and you know, there's no
Speaker 1: repercussions there. But on the other hand, we've seen multiple
Speaker 1: times that the legal tactics don't prevent piracy from happening,
Speaker 1: and in some cases, lawsuits might encourage people who otherwise
Speaker 1: wouldn't dream of hirating stuff to actually go to the
Speaker 1: dark side and do it, saying saying, you know, I
Speaker 1: wasn't going to do it before, but because of the
Speaker 1: way this company is acting, I'm totally gonna do it now.
Speaker 1: Maybe they're just justifying what their activity is, but it's
Speaker 1: not a great story, and it also leads to companies
Speaker 1: adopting various types of digital rights management or DRM that
Speaker 1: can ultimately cause more frustration to legal customers than two
Speaker 1: people pirating that software or files. More on that in
Speaker 1: a little bit. So for about a week and a
Speaker 1: half in October, the r I double A was able
Speaker 1: to secure a sales ban on the Rio, so about
Speaker 1: ten days or so the Rio could not be sold
Speaker 1: legally in the United States, but by October six that
Speaker 1: ban was lifted. Real Port would countersue the r I
Speaker 1: double A in December and said that what that organization
Speaker 1: was doing was illegal. They were trying to stifle a
Speaker 1: market that they didn't actually control, and that market would
Speaker 1: be digital music. There was a lawsuit that followed, and
Speaker 1: the court ruled that the Rio wasn't in violation of
Speaker 1: any rules because the company couldn't control the behavior of
Speaker 1: its customers. In other words, it's not an MP three
Speaker 1: player manufacturer's fault. If customers fill up their devices with
Speaker 1: stolen files, they can't control that. It's the same as
Speaker 1: saying it's not a computer manufacturer's fault if a hacker
Speaker 1: uses their computers to make malware. Dell can't control if
Speaker 1: I take a Dell computer and start creating malware off
Speaker 1: of it, so Dell should not be held at fault
Speaker 1: if I unleash a damaging malware onto the world. By
Speaker 1: the same token, an MP three player manufacturer can't guarantee
Speaker 1: that its customers are going to play by the rules,
Speaker 1: and it can't be held responsible when they don't. The
Speaker 1: r I double A appealed this verdict, and then the
Speaker 1: court said that the RIO didn't qualify as a recording
Speaker 1: device under the definitions a Recording Act, so therefore it
Speaker 1: couldn't be in violation of any rules because it didn't
Speaker 1: qualify for the rules that are I double A said,
Speaker 1: we're in play, so the MP three player lived to
Speaker 1: fight another day. On a side note, the r I
Speaker 1: double A would soon see its fears realized upon the
Speaker 1: birth of peer to peer sharing services, namely Napster. These
Speaker 1: services became massive resources for pirates, first of music files
Speaker 1: and then later for all types of files. Now the
Speaker 1: technology itself and peer to peer sharing isn't illegal, but
Speaker 1: it was put to illegal use frequently enough that everyone
Speaker 1: in the industry was equating this perfectly legal means of
Speaker 1: distribution with illegal activity. It became an enormous headache for
Speaker 1: a lot of people who used peer to peer sharing
Speaker 1: for totally legitimate legal purposes. Uh. It didn't help that
Speaker 1: there were also lots of people using it to pirate
Speaker 1: the crap out of music, movies, and games and other
Speaker 1: types of files. This would also extend into the era
Speaker 1: of the bit torrent networks. So I've talked about those
Speaker 1: in previous episodes. I won't dwell on it here. Those lawsuits, however,
Speaker 1: got the attention of the industry at large, and nobody
Speaker 1: wanted to get sued by a powerful organization representing the
Speaker 1: interests of the major music labels. They had almost bottomless
Speaker 1: amounts of cash and could completely bankrupt smaller companies that
Speaker 1: were trying to get into this industry. So various entities
Speaker 1: in the technology sector, including consumer electronics companies and various
Speaker 1: rights holders formed what was called the Secure Digital Music
Speaker 1: Initiative or s d m I. Their goal originally was
Speaker 1: to create a strategy, some encryption specifications and other strategies
Speaker 1: to prevent the unlawful distribution of MP three recordings, so,
Speaker 1: in other words, they wanted to create a digital rights
Speaker 1: management strategy. To do this, they created a digital water
Speaker 1: marking process that would attach a bit of code to
Speaker 1: a music file, and that bit of code would act
Speaker 1: as a water mark. If you tried to remove the
Speaker 1: water mark, it would in theory, cause damage to the
Speaker 1: MP three file, so that you would get signal loss,
Speaker 1: you would have a lower quality sound file, or maybe
Speaker 1: it wouldn't even play properly at all. And they also
Speaker 1: work to create a standard for MP three players. So
Speaker 1: the idea was that MP three player manufacturers would implement technology,
Speaker 1: some kind of code hard coded into the device that
Speaker 1: would prevent an s d M I compliant player from
Speaker 1: playing an sd M I compliant music file if it
Speaker 1: didn't have authorization to do so. So, in other words,
Speaker 1: think of it like a key in a lock. If
Speaker 1: the key was not present on the device, it could
Speaker 1: not unlock a music file that had been illegally loaded
Speaker 1: onto the device. And to make sure that their plan worked,
Speaker 1: the s d d M I group invited various hackers
Speaker 1: to try their hand at removing a digital watermark without
Speaker 1: harming the MP three file. So there was a group
Speaker 1: led by a Princeton University professor of computer science and
Speaker 1: his name was Ed Felton. They claimed that they managed
Speaker 1: the task. Now, the SDM I group said no, no, no, no, now, yeah,
Speaker 1: you you didn't do it because just because our software
Speaker 1: says that the watermark is gone doesn't mean the watermark
Speaker 1: is really gone. Plus there's signal loss here in this
Speaker 1: audio file, so you didn't really successfully do this. Now,
Speaker 1: Felton's group did not opt for the non disclosure policy.
Speaker 1: The group had offered a prize, a cash prize award
Speaker 1: to anyone who could manage to do this. If you
Speaker 1: opted out of that non disclosure policy, you were not
Speaker 1: eligible for the award. Well, Felton's group never agreed to
Speaker 1: the non disclosure part. So they moved to publish their
Speaker 1: method to defeat the s d M I um uh
Speaker 1: D r m S strategy. And that's when several groups,
Speaker 1: including the r I double A, sprung into action. They
Speaker 1: threatened legal action under the Digital Management Copyright Act or
Speaker 1: d m c A. Felton turned to the Electronic Frontier
Speaker 1: Foundation the e f F, and said, hey, now this
Speaker 1: is not fair. So they took it to the U
Speaker 1: S Department of Justice, and the d o J said,
Speaker 1: you're cool, Felton, because legit academic research isn't a violation
Speaker 1: of the d m c A. So the paper was published,
Speaker 1: the s d m I essentially dissolved without any fanfare
Speaker 1: in two thousand one. Turns out that protecting digital information
Speaker 1: is pretty tricky, and this approach was ultimately a failure.
Speaker 1: It's probably a good thing seeing is how those approaches
Speaker 1: to DRM tend to do more harm. They they negatively
Speaker 1: affect legitimate legal customers more than they affect the people
Speaker 1: who are skirting around the law. And trust me, nothing
Speaker 1: is more frustrating than the feeling you're being punished for
Speaker 1: following the rules. Anyone who's played a single player video
Speaker 1: game that will only work if you have an active
Speaker 1: connection to the Internet probably knows what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: All right, back to the MP three players. After the
Speaker 1: launch of the MP Man and the Rio, other devices
Speaker 1: began to hit the market, and the biggest challenge companies
Speaker 1: faced was to provide a decent amount of memory storage
Speaker 1: while trying to keep the price down, because in those
Speaker 1: early days, if you wanted to use solid state flash
Speaker 1: based memory storage, you're paying a pretty hefty price. We're
Speaker 1: talking between three and four dollars per megabyte, which adds
Speaker 1: up to about thirty five hundred dollars per gigabyte. That's
Speaker 1: that's an enormous amount of money. I don't have thirty
Speaker 1: dollars to spend on a one gigabyte MP three player.
Speaker 1: I don't have it to spend on a tarobyte MP
Speaker 1: three player, to tell you the truth. Now, a new
Speaker 1: MP three player debuted with a much larger hard drive
Speaker 1: then its competitors. And this was the Remote Solutions Personal Jukebox,
Speaker 1: and it had four point eight gigabytes of storage. How
Speaker 1: How could Remote Solutions Personal Jukebox have four point eight
Speaker 1: gigabytes when everyone else is struggling with thirty two or
Speaker 1: sixty four megabytes? Did it cost the same amount as
Speaker 1: a car? No? And the reason was personal juke box
Speaker 1: wasn't using solid state flash memory. Instead, the Personal juke
Speaker 1: Box actually was using a repurposed laptop hard drive. In
Speaker 1: other words, it used a disc based storage system hard disc,
Speaker 1: not floppy disk, and it used magnetic storage instead of
Speaker 1: the solid state model. Now, that kept the price down,
Speaker 1: but it was still monstrously expensive. The launch price for
Speaker 1: the Personal Jukebox was seven hundred dollars, which is about
Speaker 1: the same as one thousand, one hundred fifty one dollars
Speaker 1: in today's money. And you might think that a laptop
Speaker 1: hard drive would make an MP three player larger and
Speaker 1: heavier than those that use flash storage, and you're right.
Speaker 1: It was not really a portable device, at least not
Speaker 1: in the same way that the flash based ones were.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, another disc based hard drive MP three
Speaker 1: player debut, and this one was the Creative Nomad Jukebox.
Speaker 1: It cost five dollars for six gigabytes of storage, so
Speaker 1: more storage for less money, But like the Personal Jukebox,
Speaker 1: it was a hefty monster. It was too big for
Speaker 1: a personal listening device. It kind of looked like a
Speaker 1: personal CD player rather than MP three player, much too
Speaker 1: large to fit into a pocket. If you wanted to
Speaker 1: go lightweight, you would have to opt for something else,
Speaker 1: like the I to Go Ego, which had a micro
Speaker 1: drive capable of storing two gigabytes of music. But there
Speaker 1: was a hefty price tag for the Eye to Go Ego.
Speaker 1: It cost two thousand dollars a two thousand dollar MP
Speaker 1: three player, and that's by two thousand year standards like
Speaker 1: the year two thousand. If you wanted to adjust for inflation,
Speaker 1: it's more like two thousand seven eight seven dollars for
Speaker 1: a two gigabyte MP three player. It's not even made
Speaker 1: out of platinum or anything. Other alternatives were also popping up,
Speaker 1: though most of them had those storage limitations. There was
Speaker 1: the r C A Lira or Lyra if you prefer,
Speaker 1: it's l y r A, and that marked r C
Speaker 1: as attempt to get into the MP three player business.
Speaker 1: The first model had a thirty two megabyte capacity on
Speaker 1: a CF card, and I also had a fairly large
Speaker 1: monochromatic display and several physical buttons for operation. If you
Speaker 1: wanted to store music on the device, you had to
Speaker 1: use proprietary software to write to the CF reader. Moreover,
Speaker 1: the files you'd store would be converted into an encrypted
Speaker 1: format that would only play on the Lira or Lyra
Speaker 1: or whatever. Now, because it actually used a removable memory card,
Speaker 1: you could upgrade the memory. You just buy a higher
Speaker 1: memory card. Now, the max in those early models was
Speaker 1: five dred twelve megabytes, so still way less than those
Speaker 1: hard disk style MP three players, but far more storage
Speaker 1: than the standard models that were on the market, and
Speaker 1: it kept the size of the device relatively small. One
Speaker 1: drawback was that when the Lyrah booted up, it had
Speaker 1: to read the full contents stored on the card, kind
Speaker 1: of like how your computer when it's booting up and
Speaker 1: it's trying to load the desktop, it has to read
Speaker 1: all the different things that are associated with the desktop
Speaker 1: before it can fully load. So the only way it
Speaker 1: could present a menu of all the songs stored on
Speaker 1: the device was to go through all the contents first. Now,
Speaker 1: the more you stored on it, the longer that boot
Speaker 1: time lasted. If you had more than half of your
Speaker 1: device full and you had five twelve megabytes of storage,
Speaker 1: you'd be waiting longer than a minute just for the
Speaker 1: thing to boot up properly. So it wasn't the most
Speaker 1: convenient compared to some other devices. Now, that entire line
Speaker 1: of our c A products would persist and evolve, with
Speaker 1: later models adding more functionality and more storage. Meanwhile, in
Speaker 1: two thousand, Sony joined the game by launching a device
Speaker 1: that sort of looked like a pen. It was called
Speaker 1: the Sony Viio m C P ten Music Clip, And
Speaker 1: boy doesn't that just roll off the tongue? I love
Speaker 1: these MP three players that all have letter and number
Speaker 1: of designations instead of just a quipping name that I
Speaker 1: can rattle off, Sony Vio m c P ten music clip.
Speaker 1: We'll just call the music clip from here on out.
Speaker 1: It was a sixty four megabyte digital music player, so
Speaker 1: their entry level was a little higher than the previous
Speaker 1: models that had come out over the last couple of years.
Speaker 1: It costs three dollars. And here's another big difference. Unlike
Speaker 1: the other players I've talked about, this wasn't actually an
Speaker 1: MP three player. It didn't play m P three files
Speaker 1: at all. Why because in a very Sony fashion, it
Speaker 1: would play music files in the A track three format.
Speaker 1: That's a t R a C three format. That's a
Speaker 1: format that was created by drum Roll Sony. So you
Speaker 1: can use included software to transcode files from MP three
Speaker 1: to A track three. But the whole process took a
Speaker 1: really long time. It was very clunky, and they paired
Speaker 1: it with a poorly designed program designed to move files
Speaker 1: from a computer to the player. Right, you would still
Speaker 1: download files onto your PC or rip music from a
Speaker 1: CD onto your PC. Then you would have to transfer
Speaker 1: from the PC to your MP three player in this case,
Speaker 1: you would also have to transcode into a track three
Speaker 1: if it wasn't already in that format. It was very
Speaker 1: frustrating experience and it a lot of customers were upset
Speaker 1: that it wasn't really an MP three player despite the
Speaker 1: fact that MP three would appear on the box because
Speaker 1: of that transcoding program. I mean, the transcoding program was included,
Speaker 1: so why not say MP three on the box. Uh. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: the the device did not get a lot of traction.
Speaker 1: It did not do very well in the marketplace. Also
Speaker 1: that same year, in two thousand, i Omega, which created
Speaker 1: ZIP discs, launched an MP three player called the Hip
Speaker 1: Zip and it had a forty megabyte storage capacity and
Speaker 1: use a scaled down version of the magnetic disc storage
Speaker 1: that they used for ZIP discs. But at this point
Speaker 1: the market was starting to get a bit crowded. There's
Speaker 1: some confusion going on in the marketplace. A lot of
Speaker 1: companies were launching MP three players at different storage capacities
Speaker 1: for different prices, and the experience could be remarkably different
Speaker 1: depending upon which device you chose and which software package
Speaker 1: came along with it. So that you can manage your
Speaker 1: music database and load up your device. Keep in mind,
Speaker 1: this is a time where these devices didn't have WiFi connectivity.
Speaker 1: You had to physically attach them to a computer in
Speaker 1: order to move music over onto them. Customers were starting
Speaker 1: to get a bit frustrated because it was a confusing time,
Speaker 1: and it turned out that having a bigger storage drive
Speaker 1: wasn't necessarily the killer feature because some products were just
Speaker 1: too frustrating to use. It didn't matter that you could
Speaker 1: store more music on them. The the process of getting
Speaker 1: music moved to the device was so irritating that a
Speaker 1: lot of people just didn't like them. But in two
Speaker 1: thousand one, product launch that changed the game completely. Now,
Speaker 1: before I talk about that, let's take another quick break
Speaker 1: to thank our sponsor. Okay, I mentioned before the break
Speaker 1: that we had a groundbreaking product launch in two thousand one.
Speaker 1: I am, of course talking about the Intel Pocket Concert.
Speaker 1: It's like i'man the iPod. But the Intel Pocket Concert
Speaker 1: did launch in two thousand one, and it was pretty cool.
Speaker 1: It had a hundred twenty eight megabytes of storage. It
Speaker 1: cost a hundred dollars this amount of storage, and that
Speaker 1: price point was really attractive. It actually met with some
Speaker 1: success in the market, but it didn't last very long,
Speaker 1: not because of problems with the device, not because people
Speaker 1: didn't like it, but because Intel reorganized in two thousand one,
Speaker 1: and in that reorg they shut down at their home
Speaker 1: electronics division, and the Pocket concert fell into the home
Speaker 1: electronics category. So it was a casualty of a reorgan
Speaker 1: It didn't have anything to do with the market acceptance
Speaker 1: of the MP three player. Just think if Intel had
Speaker 1: kept it, maybe the story would be very different. No,
Speaker 1: the one that actually launched in two thousand one that
Speaker 1: changed everything was the iPod. Now, it didn't change everything
Speaker 1: right away when it first launched, it was too limited
Speaker 1: to do that. Apple was not the powerhouse in two
Speaker 1: thousand one that it would become just a few years later.
Speaker 1: It was still recovering from a very a tumultuous period
Speaker 1: in the company history. It had gone through a lot
Speaker 1: of turbulence in the nineties. Co founder Steve Jobs had
Speaker 1: returned to Apple in after essentially being exiled for several years.
Speaker 1: If you remember, Steve Jobs was kind of forced out
Speaker 1: of Apple, effectively forced. He was essentially put to the
Speaker 1: side until he stepped away because he wasn't in charge
Speaker 1: of anything anymore. Then Apple was on the verge of
Speaker 1: bankruptcy after a series of terrible business decisions and strategies
Speaker 1: and jobs. Came back in as an interim CEO until
Speaker 1: he was starting to turn the company around and became
Speaker 1: the actual CEO, and he was working really hard to
Speaker 1: make the company healthy again. And the two thousand one
Speaker 1: launch of the iPod was one of the first really
Speaker 1: big moves Apple made to assert itself and become a
Speaker 1: leader in computing and electronics markets. So, the very first
Speaker 1: generation of iPods had a large led screen. They had
Speaker 1: the classic scroll wheel. You put your thumb on the
Speaker 1: wheel and spin it around in order to navigate the
Speaker 1: various lists of songs. A scroll wheel in that first
Speaker 1: generation was surrounded by the control buttons like play and
Speaker 1: pause and the wine and fast forward, and so the
Speaker 1: device had a pretty simple and fairly aesthetic design, kind
Speaker 1: of clunky compared to today's technology, but less clunky than
Speaker 1: a lot of the competitors that were out there. It
Speaker 1: also had five gigabytes of storage space, and it cost
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars when it launched. Also, it was aimed
Speaker 1: at a niche market because the only compatible computer you
Speaker 1: could use with the first generation iPod was a Mac.
Speaker 1: It wasn't compatible with Windows based PCs just MAX. The
Speaker 1: original iPods were running. Uh, they were rather compatible with
Speaker 1: MAX that we're running a brand new software package called iTunes. Now.
Speaker 1: At that time, iTunes was just a management soft are right.
Speaker 1: It was meant to help you manage your your music files,
Speaker 1: but you had to get the music files from somewhere
Speaker 1: else at that point. Now, because of those limitations, the
Speaker 1: iPod didn't immediately dominate the MP three player space. What's more,
Speaker 1: other companies were starting to introduce innovations into devices, and
Speaker 1: that wasn't an effort to set them apart from all
Speaker 1: the other competitors out there. In two thousand two, Arcs
Speaker 1: began to market a product called the Jukebox Multimedia jukeboxes
Speaker 1: in here anyway. The Jukebox Multimedia could play audio and video,
Speaker 1: as the name would suggest, and they had two different versions.
Speaker 1: They had a ten gigabyte and a twenty gigabyte version.
Speaker 1: The basic ten gigabyte version went on sale for four
Speaker 1: hundred dollars, so same price as the first generation iveod,
Speaker 1: but this one could show video and it had more
Speaker 1: storage space. Creative Labs would launch an MP three player
Speaker 1: called the move oh m u v O, which was
Speaker 1: a small, simple MP three player that used a single
Speaker 1: triple A battery and had a battery life of twelve hours,
Speaker 1: which was pretty impressive, and that came in uh both
Speaker 1: sixty four megabyte and eight megabyte options. It was less
Speaker 1: expensive than a lot of the other players, and it
Speaker 1: was fairly popular at the time because people were starting
Speaker 1: to really get into this idea of the MP three.
Speaker 1: A year later, other gadgets started to join the list,
Speaker 1: including Sony's next attempt at getting into the MP three game.
Speaker 1: It was another catchy model, The NW Dash MS seven
Speaker 1: zero D rolls off the tongue. I could just imagine
Speaker 1: kids writing to Santa, Dear Santa, please get me the
Speaker 1: n W Dash MS seven zero D, and then they
Speaker 1: probably end up with some completely unrelated electronic device because
Speaker 1: the parents couldn't read they were I'm sorry, Santa couldn't
Speaker 1: read the words properly, and then ended up buying I
Speaker 1: don't know, a hair dryer or something. By the way,
Speaker 1: that device looks really weird. You want to look up
Speaker 1: an image of this, so one more dying for those
Speaker 1: of you who want to look up the image. The
Speaker 1: NW MS seven zero d because I don't think I
Speaker 1: can really describe it properly. So here here goes. This
Speaker 1: is just a a wild attempt, but I don't really
Speaker 1: think it's going to help you that much. Imagine something
Speaker 1: that looks like an old fashioned electric razor, and then
Speaker 1: imagine a cylinder protruding from either side of one end
Speaker 1: of that electric razor. And then you have that MP
Speaker 1: three player from Sony. And it was actually a pretty
Speaker 1: small player. So the had a weird shape, but it
Speaker 1: really wasn't that big. It could hold two d fifty
Speaker 1: six megabytes of music, plus it had an additional dwight
Speaker 1: megabytes storage thanks to a memory card. This one launched
Speaker 1: at three hundred dollars and I actually kind of dig
Speaker 1: the design of this one. It used flash based memory,
Speaker 1: and so a lot of people like this one, specifically
Speaker 1: if they wanted to do exercise. Because flash based memory,
Speaker 1: you don't have to worry about skipping with any physical
Speaker 1: hard drive like a magnetic storage drive. You've actually got
Speaker 1: a physical disc that spins, and if you jostle it around,
Speaker 1: it can cause the device to skip. So those early
Speaker 1: MP three players, a lot of them, the ones that
Speaker 1: had those disk drive based storage systems. They weren't great
Speaker 1: if you wanted to go jogging or do heavy duty
Speaker 1: exercise because they could skip around. These other flash based
Speaker 1: ones didn't have that problem. Creative continued its push into
Speaker 1: the MP three market by launching a line of MP
Speaker 1: three players called Zen and the Zen line could play
Speaker 1: not just MP three files, but also w m A files,
Speaker 1: and some could also handle wave files and later others
Speaker 1: as types of files as well. Creative built management software
Speaker 1: called Creative Media Source, which allowed users to synchronize devices
Speaker 1: to music stored on a computer and meant that, you know,
Speaker 1: if you added more music to your PC and then
Speaker 1: you hooked up your device to the PC, it would
Speaker 1: automatically pull over new songs into your device. You didn't
Speaker 1: have to do it manually. You didn't have to go
Speaker 1: in and say all right, I want this one. You
Speaker 1: could do that, but you didn't have to. So if
Speaker 1: you added new music to your computer, it would automatically
Speaker 1: poured it over to your Zen every time you would
Speaker 1: plug it in. And my first MP three player was
Speaker 1: a Creative Zen Touch that actually launched in two thousand four.
Speaker 1: At the time I chose the Creative Zen Touch, I
Speaker 1: don't think I got it in two thousand four. I
Speaker 1: think I got it later, so I got I got
Speaker 1: it for less. It was a later model, it was
Speaker 1: less expensive, but I chose that one because I owned
Speaker 1: a PC. I didn't own a MAC, and I could
Speaker 1: at that time get a version of iTunes for the PC.
Speaker 1: But iTunes for the PC and those days did not
Speaker 1: work very well. It was a kind of a monster
Speaker 1: on Windows. It was not a piece of software I
Speaker 1: particularly cared for. Back in those days. It worked much
Speaker 1: better on a Mac than it would on a PC,
Speaker 1: and as a result, I felt discouraged from using iTunes
Speaker 1: and decided to go with the creative Zeno much and
Speaker 1: use their media source software instead. Now, the zen Touch
Speaker 1: was a pretty solid brick of a device, but I
Speaker 1: like the interface. It had a touch sensitive vertical bar
Speaker 1: instead of a scroll wheel, and you use the vertical
Speaker 1: bar to scroll through your music selection. I held onto
Speaker 1: that thing for longer than I probably should have, just
Speaker 1: because I maintained that it was better to have a
Speaker 1: dedicated device to play music than to use my phone
Speaker 1: to play music. If you guys are long time listeners
Speaker 1: of tech stuff, and you listened way back in the
Speaker 1: day when Chris Palette was co host of Tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: You heard me talk about this, how I preferred having
Speaker 1: a dedicated device for my music so I didn't have
Speaker 1: to gum up the memory on my phone to hold
Speaker 1: all my music collection. And these days I do what
Speaker 1: the majority of people out there are doing. I use
Speaker 1: streaming services to access music. I have some stuff download
Speaker 1: to my phone, but mostly I'm streaming it. So now
Speaker 1: I don't have a dedicated music player, all right. But
Speaker 1: jumping back to two thousand three, Apple would continue with
Speaker 1: its iPod line. It launched a fifteen gigabyte iPod, and
Speaker 1: then later on in two thousand three, it launched a
Speaker 1: forty gigabyte iPod. But the biggest news was that iTunes
Speaker 1: graduated from a music management software program to a full
Speaker 1: fledged music store interface. That meant that in two thousand three,
Speaker 1: you could purchase music through Apple and then transfer it
Speaker 1: to your handy dandy iPod just directly. This was brilliant,
Speaker 1: you know, having your your ability to shop, your ability
Speaker 1: to manage your playlist, and your ability to sink it
Speaker 1: with your device all in one software package. However, Apple
Speaker 1: was also implementing a digital Rights Management strategy DRM that
Speaker 1: really irritated consumers. The forty gigabyte third generation iPod is
Speaker 1: the one that I always think about when I imagine
Speaker 1: an iPod. That's the vision I have in my head.
Speaker 1: They changed the control slightly so they still had the
Speaker 1: LED screen at the top. Beneath that, they put the
Speaker 1: control buttons arranged in a horizontal line below the LED
Speaker 1: screen so they were no longer around the circumference of
Speaker 1: the scroll wheel, and below the control buttons was the
Speaker 1: scroll click wheel. Uh. This one launched at a four
Speaker 1: hundred dollar price point. By two thousand four, color screens
Speaker 1: started to become a feature in some of the high
Speaker 1: end m P three players. Creative launched the Zen Media Center.
Speaker 1: That one had a color screen and ran on the
Speaker 1: Windows Mobile operating system. It could store forty gigabytes music.
Speaker 1: It cost five hundred dollars. Meanwhile, I Rivers H three
Speaker 1: hundred series packed a color screen and a much smaller
Speaker 1: form factor, and it also included an FM radio, so
Speaker 1: you could buy a twenty gigabyte I River h three
Speaker 1: D two hifty dollars. Apple followed suit by launching an
Speaker 1: iPod with a color screen and a sixty gigabyte storage capacity,
Speaker 1: costing three nine dollar. So now you've got lots of
Speaker 1: different players trying to get the edge by adding in
Speaker 1: these other features. But it was that music store that
Speaker 1: really gave Apple the edge. By pairing a store system
Speaker 1: with the management software for an iPod, Apple created a
Speaker 1: new way for consumers to buy music, and since Apple
Speaker 1: got a cut of the sales, it became an immensely
Speaker 1: profitable strategy for the company. It really propelled Apple into
Speaker 1: new heights, and Apple was also making a name for
Speaker 1: the quality of its products. People really liked the quality,
Speaker 1: they liked the experience, particularly if they owned a Mac.
Speaker 1: If you were like me and you owned a PC,
Speaker 1: you were still complaining about the fact that iTunes was
Speaker 1: not great on Windows. People began to trust the Apple
Speaker 1: brand more and the iPod would start to make its
Speaker 1: mark in other ways as well. Because the popular term
Speaker 1: for what I do is called podcasting, that was a
Speaker 1: lot to the brand name iPod. Now some folks prefer
Speaker 1: to use less branded terms like netcasts, and there's nothing
Speaker 1: wrong in that, but I would argue podcast remains the
Speaker 1: popular generic term for what I do, and that's thanks
Speaker 1: to Apple for making the iPod and taking MP three
Speaker 1: players mainstream. Now Apple did that not just by concentrating
Speaker 1: on the iPod line, but also by launching other brands
Speaker 1: that catered to specific markets. So you had the iPod
Speaker 1: Shuffle for example. This was a simplified, stripped down MP
Speaker 1: three player. It had no display, It automatically would shuffle playlists,
Speaker 1: had basic controls that allowed you to skip or replay
Speaker 1: songs and adjust the volume, and that simplification meant that
Speaker 1: the Shuffle could be sold for much less money than
Speaker 1: other MP three players, and the standard one gigabyte model
Speaker 1: was priced at a hundred fifty dollars and two thousand five,
Speaker 1: other companies were still trying to get into the game.
Speaker 1: Dell launched the DJ Diddy in two thousand five, which
Speaker 1: had a small display, had an FM radio, and five
Speaker 1: twelve megabytes of storage space. So it was lagging behind
Speaker 1: a lot of the other players, and by then iPod
Speaker 1: was beginning to define the market it and newcomers were
Speaker 1: having a harder time gaining any traction, so by two
Speaker 1: thousand six, Dell would abandon the Diddy Diddy Dumb Diddy do.
Speaker 1: In two thousand six, Microsoft tried to challenge Apple for
Speaker 1: that heavyweight championship and MP three players, and they launched
Speaker 1: the zooon. Do you guys remember the zoom? Do you
Speaker 1: guys remember what they called sharing on the zoom, Like
Speaker 1: if you had a song and someone else had a
Speaker 1: zoom and you could share one zoom song to another zoom.
Speaker 1: Do you remember Dylan Dylan shaking his head. It was
Speaker 1: called squirting. If you wanted to squirt your song, Dylan
Speaker 1: is a let's say that there's some disbelief in Dylan's reaction,
Speaker 1: but no, that is in fact what they called it.
Speaker 1: It was a method of being able to say that
Speaker 1: I bought a song, I could share it temporarily with you, Dylan,
Speaker 1: if you had your zoom, just by squirting it right
Speaker 1: over to you. I just squirt that song and then
Speaker 1: you would be able to enjoy the squirted song on
Speaker 1: your zoom. Dylan's give me a thumbs up, and he's, well,
Speaker 1: there's at least one finger pointing towards me. Um. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So a lot of people made fun of that, and
Speaker 1: obviously I'm still doing it today, despite the fact that
Speaker 1: the zoon is no longer a thing spoiler alert. Um.
Speaker 1: But you know, the zoon was an impressive attempt to
Speaker 1: challenge the iPod in many ways, it just it came
Speaker 1: a little too late for it to really have a chance.
Speaker 1: It had a color l C D display, and that
Speaker 1: display was gorgeous. I would argue that the original Zoon
Speaker 1: when it came out, its display was better than what
Speaker 1: Apple's iPod line had at that time. It also had
Speaker 1: an FM radio and thirty gigabytes of storage with the
Speaker 1: first model, and like I said, subsequent models would have
Speaker 1: these other features. Microsoft would pair this with a subscription
Speaker 1: based service through the Zoom Stores. The Zoom Store was
Speaker 1: kind of like the iTunes store, but they had a
Speaker 1: different strategy. They said, here's what we want you to do.
Speaker 1: You'll pay a subscription fee of fifteen dollars a month,
Speaker 1: and for fifteen dollars a month, you get all the
Speaker 1: music you can download. Now, that actually sounds fairly reasonable today,
Speaker 1: a lot of streaming music services depend upon a subscription base. Right,
Speaker 1: you might not pay the subscription base, but then you're
Speaker 1: getting lots of ads instead of just an ad free experience.
Speaker 1: But then if you if you opt in to a
Speaker 1: subscription service, then you don't have ads. Well, imagine this.
Speaker 1: Imagine that you pay fifteen dollars a month but you
Speaker 1: can download as much music as you like, putting aside
Speaker 1: things like data caps which obviously and and broadband speeds,
Speaker 1: which obviously makes an impact on how much you can
Speaker 1: take advantage of this. This is the sort of thing
Speaker 1: I would jump on in a second today because you
Speaker 1: wouldn't just have access to music, you would actually get
Speaker 1: to download those tracks, which means if the service ever
Speaker 1: were to go belly up, you could still listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite tunes right like, if the service goes away
Speaker 1: and the service was how you were listening to music,
Speaker 1: you have to find a different service that may or
Speaker 1: may not have access to the same labels that you
Speaker 1: were used to. This would be a way for you
Speaker 1: to actually hold on to those music files and be
Speaker 1: able to listen to them even if the infrastructure went away.
Speaker 1: But the whole idea came a little bit too early,
Speaker 1: I think, and Microsoft's attempts to market the Zoo never
Speaker 1: really captured a large section of the market, and two
Speaker 1: thousand seven, Apple introduced two products that changed the game again.
Speaker 1: First was the iPod Touch, which moved nearly all the
Speaker 1: controls for the device onto a touch screen interface, which
Speaker 1: meant that most of the face of the gadget was
Speaker 1: a screen and it allowed for really impressive video playback capabilities.
Speaker 1: The base model was sixteen gigabytes and it cost about
Speaker 1: four hundred dollars. But they also introduced another product that
Speaker 1: really disrupted thing, and that was the first iPhone that
Speaker 1: came out in two thousand seven, and Steve Jobs when
Speaker 1: he introduced it, talked about the fact that it was
Speaker 1: a computer, a phone, and an MP three player all
Speaker 1: in one and had the capability of acting as an
Speaker 1: MP three player, and it really spelled doom for a
Speaker 1: lot of standalone MP three devices. That smartphones became more
Speaker 1: popular and started to have larger amounts of storage, and
Speaker 1: the price wasn't ridiculously expensive or was sometimes supplemented depending
Speaker 1: upon what service provider you were using and where you lived.
Speaker 1: People started seeing fewer reasons to purchase a dedicated MP
Speaker 1: three player, and the company that had dominated the market
Speaker 1: stood poised to kill that market. But that market didn't
Speaker 1: totally die. There's still plenty of dedicated MP three players
Speaker 1: out there, and there are a lot of reasons to
Speaker 1: buy one. You might want to pair an MP three
Speaker 1: player with your car, for example, and just have it
Speaker 1: be like an enormous mix tape for road trips, and
Speaker 1: that way you don't have to wear down your phone's battery.
Speaker 1: Or you might want a simple MP three player that
Speaker 1: you can wear while you're exercising, which removes the need
Speaker 1: to carry a bulky and expensive smartphone as you jog
Speaker 1: or hit the gym. But a lot of people are
Speaker 1: moving away from those dedicated devices and relying more heavily
Speaker 1: on their multipurpose smartphones, so they act as a phone,
Speaker 1: a computer, and NB three player, among other things. Now
Speaker 1: the NP three players history has a few more stories.
Speaker 1: I didn't mean to just end with the iPod Touch.
Speaker 1: That same year, Samsung launched the yp dash P two
Speaker 1: MP three player, another fantastic name, but this was a
Speaker 1: really pretty device. It had a touch screen interface, came
Speaker 1: out the same year's iPod Touch. A lot of people
Speaker 1: at the time thought it was a superior device to
Speaker 1: the iPod Touch. Not everybody, but a lot of people did.
Speaker 1: It had Bluetooth capabilities, which meant that you could pair
Speaker 1: it with a phone, and you could even use it
Speaker 1: to answer calls that were coming in from the paired phone.
Speaker 1: We also saw in two thousand seven a smaller Zoom
Speaker 1: and a third generation iPod Nano. Didn't really talk about
Speaker 1: the introduction of the nano, but the Nano was yet
Speaker 1: another very small uh I iPod or m P three player,
Speaker 1: meant for you know, easy on the go use. And
Speaker 1: the iPod Nano that came out in the third generation
Speaker 1: also had a color video screen, so you can watch
Speaker 1: really tiny video on your nano if you wanted to.
Speaker 1: For some reason, in two thousand and eight, we saw
Speaker 1: the sand Disc Sands of Fuse debut, also the Sony
Speaker 1: E series Walkman. These were both devices that when a
Speaker 1: totally different route. They were aiming at the budget market
Speaker 1: for folks who were unwilling or unable to shell out
Speaker 1: the big bucks for something like an iPod Touch or
Speaker 1: even an iPod Classic, which was still around at that point.
Speaker 1: These cost about seventy five much less expensive than these counterparts.
Speaker 1: On the other end of the spectrum where the iPod
Speaker 1: and Zoom models that included WiFi connectivity, which turned them
Speaker 1: into something approaching a smartphone, but without the cellular connectivity.
Speaker 1: This is kind of how it went for the following
Speaker 1: years until I think something else I should mention in
Speaker 1: the history of MP three players, and that's the year
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen. That was the year that Apple quietly
Speaker 1: killed off the iPod Classic. The iPod Classic lasted thirteen
Speaker 1: years two thousand one to two thousand fourteen, but in
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen you could not any longer by the
Speaker 1: standalone MP three player with that classic form from Apple.
Speaker 1: And as I said, there's still MP three players out there.
Speaker 1: If you go to any store or you go on
Speaker 1: Amazon or anything like that and you do a search
Speaker 1: for it, you'll find tons of them, but they are
Speaker 1: a much smaller niche market, and they're generally aimed at
Speaker 1: things like the the exercise crowd or stuff along those lines,
Speaker 1: as opposed to people who are more used to using
Speaker 1: their devices just to stream music online. But I'm curious
Speaker 1: to hear from you guys. Did you own an MP
Speaker 1: three player and what was your first MP three player?
Speaker 1: And also what eight songs would you include on your
Speaker 1: MP man if you had one? You can let me
Speaker 1: know by sending me an email. You can just use
Speaker 1: the address text stuff at how stuff works dot com.
Speaker 1: You can also give me a shout on Facebook or Twitter.
Speaker 1: The handle you can use is text stuff hs W
Speaker 1: as the handle that you use to contact me not
Speaker 1: you use personally, you use your own handle. That's just
Speaker 1: the one I use for the show. Anyway, I'll talk
Speaker 1: to you again. Release soon for more on this and
Speaker 1: thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com