30 years of music flashing before your eyes

I must be feeling nostaligic when it comes to music lately. I have posted on it here and here. But this animated infographic paints a pretty cool picture of the evolution of how we have consumed music over the years thanks to Bit Rebels‘ Richard Darell.

What if we did the same sort of infographic but the topic was personal storage. Would it look much different than this? Based on this compilation of pie charts, the CD was at its highest in terms of share in 2002 at 95.5%. What happened 10 years ago that started the migration from CD to HDD (hard disk drive)? Let’s take a trip down memory lane.

1999 – Napster
Digital music downloading / sharing is made a reality and sparked the beginning of a dramatic shift in how music is distributed – legally and illegally.

2000 – USB 2.0
USB 2.0 made the MP3 player a reality because it offered consumers a simple way to get music from the PC to the player.

2000 – Pandora Radio is founded
Internet radio starts to take storm giving consumers the opportunity to listen and download music from almost every possible genre.

2001 – Apple iPod
Say no more…

2003 – Apple iTunes music store
Set the standard for legal music downloading that even the music industry could get behind, and made the process so simple, your mom had an iPod.

2003 – iTunes for Windows
Open the floodgates!

2003 – Microsoft Windows XP Media Center
Microsoft takes aim at making the Windows PC the hub for all your digital music allowing you to stream it to any TV via “extenders”. Remember those?

2006 – Microsoft Zune
Does anyone out there have one?