21st Century Technology

Most music nowadays is listened through popular streaming services such as Spotify, Apple Music, and Google Play Music. Spotify, one of the most popular streaming services, was created in 2008 as a response to the growing piracy problems with downloading music. The company wanted a better way to download music than piracy while also benefitting the music industry. Popular file sharing sites that had piracy problems and were used before streaming services include Napster, LimeWire, and The Pirate Bay. Napster was created in 1999 as a peer-to-peer file sharing network that focuses on sharing digital music files across the Web. They were eventually shut down over using copyrighted material. The company was eventually bought by Roxio in 2002 but never became as popular as it was when it came out. The Napster name has disappeared in the United States but can still be found in the United Kingdom and Germany. LimeWire was also a peer-to-peer file sharing network created in 2000. It was a free platform that also included a paid improved version, similar to what Spotify has known as Spotify Premium. You would download the best file to your iPod, computer, or wherever you’re listening. It was ruled in court that LimeWire was guilty of copyright infringement and later the company was sued by the Recording Industry Association of America. The Pirate Bay was a file sharing website that involved torrents. The website wasn’t just for music, one could also download movies, games, software, and more. After Spotify was created in 2008, Apple created Apple Music in 2015, seeing how popular streaming music was. In the future Spotify and other streaming services might make products to go with streaming their music, like how Google created Google Glasses. These products could include voice-command earbuds or headphones that specifically stream the company’s music. If any new technology were to come from the streaming services it would have to make streaming their music faster and improve the quality of the music.