The past 10 years have been quite eventful for music fans. Music itself hasn’t changed much, including our primal instinct as music junkies to hunt and gather the tunes that suit us - we are, still, what we listen to. What has changed in the last decade is the pecking order, plus the new methods and tactics that keeps the music as close up as possible.

2001 – Napster shut down after two years of free music and lawsuits. This closure gave way to the birth of another file sharing application named Kazaa, which also suffered the same fate. BitTorrent was released the same year. Unknown to many, both Napster and Kazaa were recently resurrected as law-abiding entities. Sorry, but buying will never be as fun as sharing.

2001 – The iPod says hello to the world, and changes it forever. We’re no longer confined to listening to whole albums or compilation mixes. We’ve become our own radio stations, and we are in total control. Afterwards comes the mothership iTunes, catering to people who want to buy single tracks. Artists can no longer rely on carrier singles to sell an entire album, because listeners want to weed out the mediocre. Netcasts (digital media files downloadable via web syndication) are now known as podcasts. Six years later comes the iPhone, and we lived happily ever after.

2002 – American Idol, the spin-off of the British reality show Pop Idol, ushered in a new breed of solo musical talents that were either extremely good or barely decent. Fans were given the privilege to choose which idol wins via phone voting. Hence, the talent-search ended up as popularity contest. The good thing about their master plan is that artists are made famous even before they start selling songs, making their releases much more anticipated by a growing fanbase. If the fans are happy, the record label is, too.

2003 – MySpace, the social networking website, help place bands on the global map. Made by ex-Friendster employees, the website boasted key innovative features (for that time) that connected music makers and music lovers better. Phenomenal growth was apparent over the next few years, until it started losing its punch in 2007 when Facebook started to gain worldwide popularity. The website is still a useful tool for new music hunters, as more and more bands are added everyday.

2005 – Youtube.com was created by two former PayPal employees. In 2006, Google bought the video-sharing website that made everyone an instant director for $1.65 billion, and both parties definitely got their money’s worth. The video counterpart of Blogger hosted anything and everything, from user-generated music videos to the musical artists’ morning rituals. In 2008, YouTube was awarded the George Foster Peabody Award for embodying and promoting democracy.

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