Music

Music has changed over the decades and not just what's in -- Michael Jackson vs Justin Bieber ). Technology has changed the way we listen to music. Consider how quickly we went from playing vinyl records to cassette tapes to CDs to MP3 players and iPods.

Even the way we're getting music on our portable players is changing. In the 1990s, it was all about downloading music on peer-to-peer file sharing services like Napster. There were many software applications that came during and after Napster's heyday that required file downloads and transfers. Napster reached 80 million registered users before closing in 2002. Popular streaming services such as Pandora gained millions of registered and paid users in the years after. Services like Spotify, MOG, Rdio and Rhapsody give music lovers an alternative to downloading music illegally or paying per song on iTunes. These streaming services pay royalties to artists, music labels and companies for tracks available in their catalogs.

Another change in music is social sharing. One of the reasons Spotify and other players have gotten so big is because of Facebook's open graph. The world's largest social network allows their users to "re-think music discovery." The open graph syncs online players with the Facebook Timeline, so Facebook users can share what they're playing and liking in real time. Spotify, Earbits, MOG, Rdio, Slacker, and France-based player Deezer are listed as developer successes.

Image courtesy of Flickr, ifatma

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