You read the latest interview with your favorite band speaking to Rolling Stone. In that interview they are asked who they are listening to these days. The answer is not what you expected. The rest of the interview is about this new band that they are excited about. Who is this new band and why do they sound so cool? You quickly log into your computer and start downloading a song from this mysterious band. The download is complete and the song is awesome! Now you know why this group is respected musically by those you respect in the industry. All thanks to the amazing MP3! MP3 is a small compressed format that allows you to quickly download music with very little sacrifice in sound quality. Moving image expert group, Audio Layer III is what MP3 means. This all happened in the 1980s when a German institute wanted to encode music in a different way. They did so and received a patent for the MP3. About 20 years later, there were many applications that made MP3s an everyday thing. People all over the world were downloading copyrighted music for free (Jones). In 1999 there were 60,000 MP3 websites and 6,000,000 people downloading them every day (Knab). Nobody cared, but then Napster came along (Jones). Napster will probably always be remembered as the MP3 software that allowed virtually any song to be downloaded at any time by anyone with an Internet connection. The music industry has managed to transform Napster from a free source to a paid subscription. Others like Napster still exist because they found ways around all the problems, but are currently being pursued by the music industry in terms of shutting them down. Record labels are upset about the control they are losing. A......middle of paper......ranti, Marc & Guth Rob. “Downloadable music wars intensify.” CNN.com March 25, 1999. December 5, 2002. .Jones, Christopher. "MP3 Overview." Wired. July 27, 2000. December 12, 2002. .Knab, Christopher. "MP3." Fourfront Media and Music. 1999. December 7, 2002. .Lazarus, David. “Downloadable music ready to rock.” Wired News. September 11, 1997. December 7, 2002. .Petreley, Nick. “Opinion: How Record Companies Could Embrace Napster and Keep Profits.” CNN.com. March 20, 2000. December 19, 2002. "The Future of Downloadable Music." Indian-Music.com. December 5th. 2002. .