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I have always been a big fan of music. When I was younger,
I didn't really have any music tastes. I would, like
the majority of young kids my age, listen to the mainstream
chart. The late 80s and early 90s saw a mix bag of musical
talent. But I didn't really pay much attention, I was
too busy, learning the how to use my computer, playing
football and watching television.
It was in 1996, when I finally got onto the internet through CompuServe and then AOL, that I rekindled my passion for music. I started by downloading and listening to midi files (music instrumental device interface). These were basically melodies of songs. Keyboards, playing the song. However, I longed to be able to do something beyond this. I wanted to be able to create (or 'burn!') my own CDs. This was left as a dream. I continued to mass, quite a big midi collection, but I knew, in reality, it was meaningless.
In 1997, I was watching [.tv channel], which used to
broadcast on Sky, back on the analogue signal. A viewer
had written in, requesting the desire, to be able to
copy, an audio CD on to their hard disk. This was laughed
at, by the panel of so-called "experts". They made an
important point, that just a single track would take
over 40mb of space. It was not until a year later, that
I discovered, WinAmp, and the MP3 file. Basically, what
MP3 does, is compress a CD track, to an amazing size.
One minute of audio, becomes only 1mb of data on the
PC. This was an amazing breakthrough. Now, fans of music
could exchange audio across the web, with reasonable
download times. Then came Napster. This was to be the
breakthrough program for MP3. It allowed people to share
their MP3 collection across the internet, using a process
called P2P (peer-to-peer). The music files are stored
on your computer, but a list is available to other Napster
users. They the connect through the Napster network
to the user's machine. I remember, spending weekends,
just logged onto the internet, downloading, track after
track. It was heaven. Could this last forever?
However, Napster was too good to be true. The US government
got involved, once some music labels and artists (Metallica)
took the company to courtt. There was panic. Napster,
was then overloaded, during its final online weekend.
A court, had decided to close the service down, due
to copyright infringement. At the eleventh hour, the
order was retracted, and Napster users, sighed in collective
relief. It was to be short lived. The service administrators,
had to filter out any illegal copies of songs. This
rendered the program useless, although some users, tried
to rename songs to disguise their actual contents. This
worked but only temporarily! Napster was closed, and
would be bringing back a paid service a few months later.
It was 2000, and MP3 fans across the globe, did not
have an alternative, after Napster. Although several
had sprung up across the web, there was not one that
looked promising. Then, while at university, I stumped
upon, Audio Galaxy Satellite. This was a turning point.
A neat, small program, downloaded onto my system, would
provide the status of all the current, download and
uploads. All the searching, and downloading was web
based. This was backed up by an extensive help facility,
and message boards. I used this program for the next
10 months, with no problems. Downloading around 4Gb
worth of MP3s at high quality. Again, I had a feeling,
that this was all too good to last. As expected, the
US legal system got involved, and songs began to get
censored.
By this time, I had been recommended a new service. Morpheus. This was a program, that enabled you to search for videos, software, images as well as music. Amazing. It was fast. I also had the ability, temporarily of downloading high quality songs. The problem was that although you could find most of the songs, you looked for, they were of poor quality and at times incomplete. I continued to use Morpheus, until Kazaa, come and took over. It is an identical program, with a much wider network capacity.
My MP3 Collection
I try, unsuccessfully to recall the first MP3 I downloaded, but it is difficult
to find this out. All I can find, is the oldest MP3
in my collection. It is - Enya - Anywhere Is, downloaded
on Sunday 29th March 1998. However, I started with an
MP3 collection of around 11 songs. My collection has
now grown to over 3000 songs. Smashing the 2000 mark
towards the end of December 2002. I now have a seperate 200gb drive dedicated to the digital medium.
View my entire collection by clicking here.
Last updated: 18th March 2007
*View my 00s (43%) mp3s by clicking here.
Last updated: 18th March 2007
*View my 90s (29%) mp3s by clicking here.
Last updated: 18th March 2007
*View my 80s (28%) mp3s by clicking here.
Last updated: 18th March 2007
Download the entire collection, in Microsoft Excel 2000
Format. Click here.
Jump to my links section for information, on where you can download MP3 files and start your collection off.
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