Did you know the recorded music industry once sued someone for $72 TRILLION? This is the story.
[This was my weekly column for GlobalNews.ca. – AC]
In 1999, the recorded music industry was swimming, drowning in money. CDs had been on an upward trajectory for more than 15 years, reaching sales of 2.4 billion globally and one billion units in the U.S. alone in 2000.
Despite the massive scale of the CD industry and plants running flat out around the world, the promised decline in prices never came. In fact, the industry was caught in a price-fixing scheme that inflated the cost of CDs between 1995 and 2000 with a marketing plan called “minimum advertised pricing.” It’s estimated customers were overcharged US$500 million and up to US$5 per album. (The case was settled with a fine and a promise to give US$75 million to public and non-profit groups.)
At the same time, labels moved to eliminate the more affordable CD single. “Want just that one song? Too bad! Buy the whole album for 20 bucks!” And given the perceived rise in one-hit wonders by the end of the ’90s, music fans were in a surly mood.
The dam began to burst on June 1, 1999, when v1.0 of Napster was released into the wild. Within 18 months, the service had more than 80 million users sharing MP3s they didn’t pay for. Other illegal file-sharing programs popped up. Audio-Galaxy, Kazaa, BearShare, Grokster and dozens more. Other music fans turned to legal-but-often-used-illegally software like BitTorrent and uTorrent, programs that powered networks like The Pirate Bay.
