2000s Music Timeline

· 2000 - Internet music-swapping site "Napster" is created, and alarms the recording industry which mounts a massive campaign to shut it down despite First Amendment concerns.
· 2000 - The first year recording sales actually declined -- record industry blames online music swapping as the cause and tried to advance digital copy protection schemes.
· 2000 - Consumer DVD recorders were introduced at the Comdex Consumer Electronics show in Las Vegas priced at $1000, but by the 2001 show came down to around $500; these video recorders can hold up to 4.7 gigabytes of video and multimedia content
· 2000 - Digital electronic books (E-Books) become a small part of the publishing industry, and several competing companies attempt to introduce the standards for them.
· 2000 - March 10 -- the so-called "Internet Bubble" burst leading to a recession/shakeout of the inflated technology industry, as reality started to replace "irrational exuberance."
· 2001 - Napster is forced to "filter out" content due to RIAA lawsuit; hints at fees to come other free peer-to-peer software including Gnutella are developed to take Napster's place
· 2001 - Intel announces a breakthrough in the speed of computer processing chips that will make computers several THOUSAND times faster; first systems expected to be sold in 2007
· 2001 - DVD video disk players outsell VHS video cassette recorder/players for the first time.
· 2001 - Music DVD's are introduced which can contain 7 - 10 times the amount of music, or multimedia content to augment the usual sound recordings.
· 2001 - The TV screen gets more junked up by "crawls" -- banners at the bottom of the screen, and other distracting divisions of the screen in imitation of computer desktops.
· 2001 - Reminiscent of VHS/Betamax, an alternate standard for consumer DVD writable disks is introduced to thwart piracy called DVD+RW (as opposed to original DVD-RW); Microsoft is among the chief proponents of DVD+RW; Apple remains with DVD-RW
· 2001 - October 23 - Apple Computer introduces the iPod portable music player for playing mp3 files, and it is a big hit, helping re-establish Apple's innovative reputation and improve their bottom line.
· 2002 - The F.C.C. (U.S. Federal Communications Commission) requires all new U.S television TV sets to include digital receivers in order to help the transition to digital
· 2002 - October 10 - The F.C.C. approves a digital radio broadcast standard developed by iBiquity Digital Corp., a company backed by broadcasters including ABC and Viacom.
· 2003 - Apple Computer introduces a downloadable music service via its iTunes music application, which proved that people would pay 99-cents-per-tune to download music legally in the wake of peer-to-peer free (but illegal) file swapping
· 2005 - Retailers Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy and Circuit City announce they will stop selling VHS Video Cassette tapes since DVD's are now the medium of choice for most consumers
· 2005 - December 20 -- the U.S. Congress agreed that Standard NTSC analogue TV broadcasts will cease in favour of all digital TV transmission nation-wide on February 17, 2009
· 2006 - January 27 - Western Union stopped delivering telegrams as of this date -- ending a service in the United States that it began in 1851; their primary business is still money transfers.
· 2006 - February 22 - Apple Computer's online music store integrated into its iTunes software and iPod hardware, sold it's one-billionth song on this date, proving that digital music can be accepted by the public when distributed across a network in a virtual form, as opposed to inscribed only in discrete tangible media.