A Few Internet Music Firsts

23 Jan 2015

 

First band to webcast a concert online: Severe Tire Damage from the patio of Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center in California, June 23, 1993.

First major act to premiere a song online: Aerosmith with “Head First” via CompuServe, June 27, 1994. It takes more than a week for it to reach 10,000 downloads.

First Internet radio broadcast: WXYC at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, November 7, 1994.

First major act to webcast a performance: Rolling Stones, the Cotton Bowl, Dallas, Texas, for 20 minutes on November 18, 1994

First sign that something weird was happening: Fans were discovered trading tracks from Depeche Mode’s still-unreleased album, Songs of Faith and Devotion, in a Prodigy chatroom. The reaction of their label? “Meh. What could happen?”

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