This is a rebroadcast of a show that we first aired last fall.

From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media.

I'm Brooke Gladstone, and this week we're all about the music.

Everything that's gone wrong in the news business went wrong first in the music business,

at least the part that has to do with digital technology

and the fact that the stuff we used to pay for we can now get easily for free. And we have an

anniversary of sorts to hang our exploration on. Exactly 10 years ago this fall, recording industry

execs had to confront what many saw as a cancer on their business model,

a peer-to-peer file-sharing service known as Napster.

So that's the setup.

But we've decided to let public radio and TV reporter Rick Carr guide the hour.

He's been studying precisely this issue for a dozen years.

So, Rick, take it away.

In 1999, the major record labels were living Lovita Loka. They sold about $13 billion worth

music. Last year, just $8 billion. The industry's troubles started exactly 10 years ago this fall.

Back then, most people didn't know what an MP3 was. There was no satellite radio, no internet

radio. There was no Apple iTunes music store because there were no iPods. But there was a new

piece of software written by a college kid in Boston that let people copy one another's

music collections without paying. In the summer of 1999, Napster had only a few

thousand users, but the record labels trade association was already getting nervous. A couple

months later, nearly a million people were using the software. So Hillary Rosen, who was at the time

the head of the Recording Industry Association of America, or

...