The First Time Tech Ruined the Music Business

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The music business was inturmoil at the turn of the century. Technologicalinnovation had made songs much easier to copy, andestablished artists foresaw their sales plummeting.

The companies that had once dominated the industrywere rapidly losing ground to upstarts who produced newdevices for playing music. The established companies urgedCongress to tighten up the law to prohibit copying, whilethe innovators argued that any such change would only harmconsumers.