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Sounds like Bowie was really a late-comer to online music distribution, by a few years at least.. I think the first mover award goes to Aerosmith for releasing

Sounds like Bowie was really a late-comer to online music distribution, by a few years at least.. I think the first mover award goes to Aerosmith for releasing and distributing "Head First" online-only in 1994. No one was using MP3 yet, so it was WAV encoded using a proprietary compression codec that was a separate download. The WWW had only just barely been invented and only a few physics nerds in Switzerland were using it, so it was released on Compuserve only. I signed up for a trial account to download the song. I only had a 9600 baud modem at the time and recall waiting overnight for the download. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/06/15/Aerosmith-Head-First-onto-CompuServe/5575771652800/ https://www.upi.com/Archives/1994/06/15/Aerosmith-Head-First... https://www.vice.com/en/article/go-aerosmith-how-head-first-became-the-first-song-available-for-digital-download-20-years-ago-today/ https://www.vice.com/en/article/go-aerosmith-how-head-first-... https://ultimateclassicrock.com/aerosmith-head-first-music-download/ https://ultimateclassicrock.com/aerosmith-head-first-music-d...

criddell 1y ago
Billy Idol was pretty early as well. He was on The Well in the early 90’s. https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/13/the-internet-is-punk-rock-the-story-behind-billy-idols-1993-cyberpunk-album-cyberpunk/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/13/the-internet-is-punk-ro...
microtonal 1y ago
1994, so late :-)! Frank Zappa proposed something akin to the iTunes store and streaming in 1983: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/frank-zappa-invented-napster-in-1983.243000/ https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/frank-zappa-invented-... We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12). [...] The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape. Providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night. The only thing he was missing were hackers, mega-hackers even: We require a LARGE quantity of money and the services of a team of mega-hackers to write the software for this system. Most of the hardware devices are, even as you read this, available as off-the-shelf items, just waiting to be plugged into each other so they can put an end to "THE RECORD BUSINESS" as we now know it.
- pimlottc 1y ago
  Proposals are great, but this is HN, credit goes to those who ship!
hluska 1y ago
This article seems like it’s part of a series. I hope it goes into Robert Goodale and BowieNet - I think that’s the most interesting part of David Bowie’s involvement with the internet. The whole story is kind of bizarre, but in 1998, Robert Goodale helped launch BowieNet, which was part ISP, part social network and a fan club. I can’t find the article I’m looking for about BowieNet but this one is quite good too: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/563779/when-david-bowie-launched-bowienet-internet-service https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/563779/when-david-bowie-...

criddell 1y ago

Billy Idol was pretty early as well. He was on The Well in the early 90’s. https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/13/the-internet-is-punk-rock-the-story-behind-billy-idols-1993-cyberpunk-album-cyberpunk/ https://blog.adafruit.com/2020/04/13/the-internet-is-punk-ro...

microtonal 1y ago

1994, so late :-)! Frank Zappa proposed something akin to the iTunes store and streaming in 1983: https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/frank-zappa-invented-napster-in-1983.243000/ https://forums.stevehoffman.tv/threads/frank-zappa-invented-... We propose to acquire the rights to digitally duplicate and store THE BEST of every record company's difficult-to-move Quality Catalog Items [Q.C.I.], store them in a central processing location, and have them accessible by phone or cable TV, directly patchable into the user's home taping appliances, with the option of direct digital-to-digital transfer to F-1 (SONY consumer level digital tape encoder), Beta Hi-Fi, or ordinary analog cassette (requiring the installation of a rentable D-A converter in the phone itself . . . the main chip is about $12). [...] The consumer has the option of subscribing to one or more Interest Categories, charged at a monthly rate, without regard for the quantity of music he or she decides to tape. Providing material in such quantity at a reduced cost could actually diminish the desire to duplicate and store it, since it would be available any time day or night. The only thing he was missing were hackers, mega-hackers even: We require a LARGE quantity of money and the services of a team of mega-hackers to write the software for this system. Most of the hardware devices are, even as you read this, available as off-the-shelf items, just waiting to be plugged into each other so they can put an end to "THE RECORD BUSINESS" as we now know it.

pimlottc 1y ago
Proposals are great, but this is HN, credit goes to those who ship!

hluska 1y ago

This article seems like it’s part of a series. I hope it goes into Robert Goodale and BowieNet - I think that’s the most interesting part of David Bowie’s involvement with the internet. The whole story is kind of bizarre, but in 1998, Robert Goodale helped launch BowieNet, which was part ISP, part social network and a fan club. I can’t find the article I’m looking for about BowieNet but this one is quite good too: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/563779/when-david-bowie-launched-bowienet-internet-service https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/563779/when-david-bowie-...