My First Mp3 – Ever
byAt the gym this morning – yes I’ve started going to the gym – I had my ipod on random and came across a song I haven’t heard in a very long time. It was by a band called Less Than Jake that I made a website for in 1996. It grew pretty quickly and included a fantastic scrolling marquee, concert pics, bio, discography and of course, and insanely long url. It was hosted by ‘Rogers@Home’ and later edited with Netscape Communicator.
This was around the time where you could right click and “save as” mp3s off of private geocities-style websites. Before Limewire, Napster, even predating Audiogalaxy (where I also hosted an mp3 ftp site with a bitchin ascii character welcoming you when upon login). The first song I ever grabbed from a website was “Johnny Quest Thinks We’re Sellouts” by Less Than Jake and listening to it always makes me envision the little equalizer knobs bouncing away on my Winamp.
At work today someone mentioned that they still had the actual file of the first mp3 they ever downloaded. Since I was living with my parents when I was 16 and using a Windows machine you can imagine that my files are long gone. However, I still have an “archive mp3” CD that I burnt and often grab songs off of for nostalgia’s sake. Feel free to share your first mp3 story, in the meantime I have some NOFX, Gob, and Face to Face to go rock out to.
Update: I should mention that LTJ is still around and their latest studio album “In With the Out Crowd” was released last May.
6 Comments — Comments Are Closed
I’ll one up you. I had a web page in homage to Live, just one of those annoying, over graphic-ed, single page things and had AIFF copies of their song on it. Or maybe it was the Toadies. Either way, I was offering complete, uncompressed copies of music on the net before the RIAA was chasing people down with their lawyers.
As to my first MP3? No clue, but I recall the day I discovered them. Thought they were the coolest thing, and it took up a hell of a lot less space on your hard drive than the 40mb AIFFs I was dinking around with. Ain’t I just a rebel? :p
you way one-upped me :p
The first mp3’s I tried giving away were my radio and voice over demos. Cue crickets. Still can’t.:) My first mp3 grabbed was “Planned Obsolescence” by 10,000 Maniacs. No particular reason why, really. It was just there. I only remember this factoid because the date-stamp is still on the older system. Geez, I feel old. I want a Mac. Ho-hum.
miss604 i’m impressed with some of your ska/punk credentials there. any other favourites?
i went through my old mp3 archives last night, listened to lots of Lagwagon too 😛
haha. ‘homage to live’… actually… that very well could have been amoungst the first mp3s ! 🙂 Yeah – I really can’t remember … maybe Dave Matthews?… I think I was super into him at the time…
Download mp3s… wow, I remember getting SO excited about the idea… wow, it’s come so far!