CYBARIS®, AN INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAW REVIEW
39
individual songs (“singles”) from an album instead of requiring the purchase of an entire
album.
17
By creating compressed music files that were nearly non-transferable, iTunes helped
reduce music pirating and illegal sharing, but, pirating continued to be a major issue for the
music industry.
18
The Rise of Streaming
Streaming is a digital method of continuously transmitting or receiving data over a
computer network that allows for immediate playback while the remainder of the data is still
being received.
19
Music streaming began in the 1990s and early 2000s with the Internet
Underground Music Archive and Last.fm.
20
Pandora Radio, a non-interactive platform, brought
popularity to music streaming via the internet.
21
Pandora generated a music station based on a
musician, a genre, or a specific song chosen by the user.
22
The platform was considered non-
interactive because the user could not choose which song would play on the station and the user
was only allowed to skip songs on the station a limited number of times per hour.
23
This form of
non-interactive music streaming played an important role in the rise and popularity of streaming
music from internet connected devices, but the user still lacked control.
24
17
Jeffrey Philip Wachs, Searching for Equality: A Conference on Law, Race, and Socio-Economic Class: Note: The
Long-Playing Blues: Did the Recording Industry’s Shift from Singles to Albums Violate Antitrust Law, 2 U.C. Irvine
L. Rev. 1047, 1048-1049 (2012).
18
Paul Boutin, The Age of Music Piracy Is Officially Over, WIRED (Nov. 29, 2010, 12:00 PM),
https://www.wired.com/2010/11/st-essay-nofreebird/.
19
Stream, MERRIAM-WEBSTER, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/stream#h2 (last visited May 5, 2020).
20
Kish Lal, Is Streaming Making Listeners Smarter or Complacent?, RED BULL (Apr. 10, 2018, 11:21 PM),
https://www.redbull.com/au-en/music-streaming-pros-and-cons.
21
Id.
22
Amy X. Wang, Put your lighters Up for Pandora, The Music Service that Briefly Changed the World, QUARTZ
(Jun. 26, 2017), https://qz.com/1006098/pandoras-p-radio-service-revolutionized-music-but-its-chances-of-
surviving-look-shaky-in-an-apple-aapl-and-spotify-world/.
23
17 USCS § 114(j)(6) (2020).
24
Rob Walker, The Song Decoders, THE NEW YORK TIMES MAGAZINE (Oct. 14, 2009),
https://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/18/magazine/18Pandora-t.html.