Throwback Thursday

Twenty years ago, Napster introduced the world to unlimited file-sharing — and the music business has never been the same since.

Napster, the notorious Internet-based peer-to-peer file sharing service made its debut 17 years ago this week, forever changing the way we discover and share music and (ultimately) forcing the record industry to face the music: The Internet wasn’t going away and (with the help of Apple) would radically transform music distribution.

Nineteen years ago this month, Sound & Vision had just published its fifth issue. The cover featured the “world’s biggest TV” — an 80-inch Mitsubishi rear-projection TV that was positively huge by today’s skinny-TV standards.

Fifteen years ago Al Griffin and David Ranada teamed up to conduct a double-blind listening test with a half dozen $300-a-pair bookshelf speakers. (Gotta love those Sam Sisco caricatures!) Models from Acoustic Energy, Boston Acoustics, Jamo, KEF, Monitor Audio, and NHT were set up in two groups of three with each stereo pair situated so the “listener only had to turn his head slightly to bring the sonic image of each pair into focus.”

A lot has changed in the past 15 years. Ultra-thin TVs that hang on the wall have replaced bulky tube and rear-projection TVs. DVD and CD players have become quaint relics of the early days of digital. The list goes on…

Thirteen years ago today Apple launched the iTunes Music Store, allowing music lovers to buy and download music from top artists in digital form instead of having to copy MP3 files or ripping CDs into iTunes.

In September 2005 Apple unveiled the iPod nano as a replacement for the popular iPod mini. Considered super sleek at the time, the player was pivotal in the evolution of the world’s most famous music player...