Digital Music Players History
While iPods and other digital music players are a relatively new addition to every well-equipped college student’s backpack, their history dates into the late 1970s. That's long before Apple’s Steve Jobs burst onto the scene and revolutionized digital audio players.
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Early Versions
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The earliest digital audio player was designed by Kane Kramer in 1979. His device, called the IXI, was limited by its playback time, only 3.5 minutes of audio playback. While IXI never entered commercial production, it did receive a patent in 1981. Kramer later influenced digital music players when Apple hired him as a consultant and presented his work as an example of prior accomplishments in the field of digital audio players during litigation cases almost two decades later.
First Portable MP3 Player
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In 1996, Audio Highway became the world’s first company to announce a portable MP3 player and a system for uploading MP3 audio content to a personal computer, then downloading it onto a personal MP3 player. Its Listen Up player won an Innovations Award along with its Listen Up Personal Audio System at the Consumer Electronics Show in January 1997. In September 1997, Audio Highway began shopping the Listen Up player in the United States. Other copycats quickly followed. South Korea-based Saehan Information Systems began selling the “MPMan” player in mid-1998.
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Commercial Success
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Initial players were still limited. The commercially marketed flash-based players were available in 32 MB and fit about six songs in its limited storage capacity. However, this revolutionary technology was successful in initial holiday sales and exceeded performance expectations. Most important, it spurred greater interest in the concept of digital music.
Later Developments
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In 1998, Compaq introduced the first hard drive-based digital audio player. The player had an initial capacity of 4.8 GB, with an advertised capacity of 1,200 songs. Two years later, the upgraded 6 GB NOMAD Jukebox became available.
Apple Revolutionizes Digital Music
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In 2001, Apple released the first generation iPod, a 5 GB hard drive-based music player with a Toshiba hard drive. The iPod first experienced limited success, primarily within the established Macintosh community. In July 2002, Apple released the second generation iPod, an update to the original. This version appealed to a wider demographic through its compatibility with Windows computers. The iPod, which grew to include flash memory-based players, is the current market leader in digital audio players. Along with the iPod, Apple has revolutionized the practice of selling individual songs and albums via an online database with the iTunes store. Released in 2003, iTunes accounts for 70 percent of worldwide online digital music sales as of 2010, making iTunes the largest legal music retailer.
Cell Phones
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Around the same time Apple was revolutionizing digital music players, artists were starting to understand how to best reach listeners on the go. In 2001, musician Ricky Martin became the first artist to sell digital songs directly to mobile phones. While this practice started in South Korea, it quickly caught on elsewhere. In four years, more than half of all music sold in South Korea was sold directly to mobile phones. This convergence bypassed the need for separate digital audio players. All five major phone makers–Nokia, Motorola, Samsung, LG and Sony Ericsson–had scrambled to release music phones. By 2006, more MP3 players were sold in music phones than in all MP3 players put together. Apple attributed the production of the iPhone to the rapid rise of the music phone. Today, more than half of all mobile phones in the world have an MP3 player.
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References
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