Just over ten years ago the MP3 player was deemed the new file extension of an audio format that a company had been pursuing since the 1980s. They were ecstatic that they had finally and successfully completed nearly fifteen years of hard work.   This incredible invention, along with the Internet and its access to the world, has changed the music industry and how the average person listens to their music in a permanent way.  What was once unheard of is now available to anyone who wants one.

Some industry professionals will tell you that much of the changes and upgrades of broadband since the late 1990s have been done solely to improve the Internet and its ability to download music. Others will say this is an exaggeration. But if you look at the usage of the net and its increase once MP3 players became more popular, you will see where this can easily be believed. Once broadband became more easily available and noticeably faster more people wanted this improved service to use with their Internet. It did not matter to them whether they were using the Internet for research, corresponding across continents or downloading music. Broadband was the new and improved method of getting more information faster; it was made for your music downloading needs and your MP3 Player. This is all that counted with those who wanted access to more music.

Due to the fact that MP3 players are a way of sharing music all over the world, this changed the way the record labels sell their music. At one time to buy music, you had to purchase a record album, and then it was cassettes and finally CDs. Once music became available over the Internet and sharing songs became so normal, the labels realized that they were smarter to join in making music available this way instead of fighting it. They would not make anything fighting the changes. Now you can buy music over the Internet, legally and authorized by the record companies. You can then load the songs to your MP3 player.

MP3 has fueled the war between two very large companies and helped to improve the standard of music playing because of that. Sony came out with their MP3 players first but they were limited in what music they were able to play. They were only able to play music that was protected by Sony copyright. This certainly limited their use and frustrated the users. Then along came Apple and opened up the world of downloading music by allowing all music to be available to play on it, not just what they were trying to sell. The IPod, which uses the MP3 format, is outselling Sony by leaps and bounds.

Music trading has brought people from all over the world together. It is become a forum, which has been called peer to peer networking. This is how people trade music. You download a song onto one of the networks from your computer in the United States and someone picks it up in Australia, France or Turkey.  This technology is going to open up even more opportunities to those who know how to use the Internet.

Some people think that with the invention or MP3 players, that CDs will now go the way of the vinyl record, the eight track tape and the cassette tape. They feel that this truly digital format now available to carry around with you will replace those easily damaged very expensive CDs.  With the changes already made by MP3 players and the technological advances that continue to improve the speed of the Internet and the information available through it they very well could be right.