These days the words 'MP3 player' almost invariably conjure to mind Apple's iPod, in much the same way that the words 'personal cassette player' were once replaced in the public consciousness by Sony's Walkman brand name. The iPod, however, was far from being the first MP3 player on the market. In fact, that distinction goes to the MPMan F10, made by Saehan Information Systems, in Korea, and first mass manufactured 10 years ago this month. It had just 32MB of Flash memory, and since USB ports were far from standard, connected via your PC's parallel port.
When you think about that now, it's a wonder MP3 players ever caught on at all - after all, how many songs at a listenable quality can you pack into 32MB? It wasn't as if the thing was cheap either - $250, when released in the US, and when a dollar really was a dollar, rather than fifty-pence. And then there were all the lawsuits
Even back in 1998 (that was even before the invention of the
ink cartridge), the recording industry was petrified of MP3s. But whether it actually saw the true potential of the MP3 player, or just saw a copyright infringement - unauthorised copying of a CD is still technically illegal - is probably debatable. Given the parlous state of the music industry today, it's probably safe to assume that it was the latter, though.
Thanks to the happy accident of being Korean based, and thus more difficult for Americans to sue, Saehan managed to escape the litigious attentions of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), but also, unfortunately for them, missed out on all the free publicity that being dragged through the courts gave its main competitor. Even though the RIAA's lawsuit against Diamond Multimedia's led to its Rio PMP300 player being, briefly, withdrawn from sale, the free publicity was such that, rather than the MPMan, it is now the Rio that is most often remembered as being the world's first MP3 player.
Given the ubiquity of the iPod today, and MP3 players in general, it goes almost without saying that the RIAA wasn't able to keep the Rio off the shelves for long, nor any other model, for that matter. That did not stop it trying for a few more years, though.
By the end of 1999 peer-to-peer file sharing of MP3s had already begun, but perhaps it wasn't until after October 2001, when Apple entered the MP3 player market with its 5GB iPod, that it became clear exactly how radically the landscape had changed for the music industry? Suddenly MP3 players had become sleek, light, easy to use, deeply fashionable, and capable of storing "1000 songs in your pocket", as Apple proudly advertised at the time. Within eight months, that basic capacity would double, and compatibility be extended to PCs as well as Macs. The march of the MP3 had now become unstoppable.
Six years later, the music industry, for the most part, still trails in the wake of the MP3; these days, issuing forth endless lawsuits against music lovers, instead of MP3 player manufacturers. Still, maybe one day they'll start to feel more at home in the new landscape? After all, they have already had ten years to adapt.
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