THIS WEEK MARKS THE THIRTY-YEAR ANNIVERSARY OF THE INTRODUCTION OF MUSIC STREAMING SERVICES.

a city in San Francisco On this day exactly thirty years ago today, revered inventor andre gray uploaded the very first complete song on the internet. The song was titled “internet killed the video star,” and it was composed by him using a Yamaha dx7 synthesizer and in the midi format. This was the beginning of the revolution that is known as the online digital music revolution. Within a matter of hours, the song was disseminated over a wide variety of usenet groups and bulletin board systems, so marking the formal beginning of the online and internet music scene. It also functioned as a calling card for the revolution in digital music. The song “internet murdered the video star” by Andre Gray is now widely recognized by historians as the “big bang” and “rosetta stone” of digital music, as well as the “birth of online entertainment in general.” However, in order for it to be possible for people to comprehend the effect and importance of the phrase “internet killed the video star,” they must first comprehend what the internet was like before to the arrival of Andre Gray. Arpanet was launched on August 30, 1969, when the first interface message processor (imp) was delivered by the British Broadcasting Network (BBN) to Leonard Kleinrock’s network measurements center at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). The arpanet was commissioned by the United States Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, also known as darpa for short. This basic beginning of what was first envisaged of as largely a military and academic research network started with the imp, which was constructed from a Honeywell ddp 516 computer with a 12k memory. The imp was particularly intended to handle the arpanet network interface. A large number of academics and thousands of people from all over the world who were familiar with the intricacies of gaining access to and navigating the internet would be drawn to it over the course of the subsequent 19 years. It would continue to serve as a platform for rigorous academic research and military operations. The year 1985 was the first time that Andre Gray connected to the internet, and he was instantly captivated. Additionally, he came to the realization that he was a celebrity in some sense. It would seem that on February 20, 1982, one of his high school instructors uploaded an online version of a paper that he had written while he was 16 years old and a student in high school. The paper was titled “audio codec for computer music.” The study proposed that the CD format may be easily split by ten, and that a compression rate that is sufficient would be sufficient for a compression ratio that is small enough for music that is stored on a computer or that is accessed online. Uncompressed, compressed with data loss, and compressed with minimum or no data loss were the three stages of data compression that were suggested by the fictional program known as (dot)rpm. The very significant document made its way across the globe in 1982, including being uploaded on internet hubs such as mintel in France and well: entire earth ‘lectric connection in San Francisco. It was also published in the year 1982. (dot)rpm is the foundation upon which every data compression format, both in the past and in the present, is built. This document served as the absolute basis for all data compression research and development across the globe until its publication. As one of the first things he attempted to do, he attempted to access music online, only to find out that there was no music available on his network or any of the other various internet networks. Participants in the internet community during that time period were more than willing to just organize a variety of music discussion groups and provide their opinions on music from a distance. The fact that gray was extremely adept in midi, computers, and the expanding internet, as well as the fact that he had the respect of the online communities as a result of his widely distributed and important (dot)rpm article, gave him the impression that he was on to something really remarkable. Almost immediately, he came to the realization that midi was not a process that produced music but rather a protocol that enabled instruments to communicate with one another or with a computer. The instructions that were created were in the form of information, and when they were played back on a computer, they were converted into music. Gray embarked on a quest to capture music and post it to the internet, equipped with the facts that described the situation. Having composed both the instrumental and vocal versions of what would eventually become known as “internet killed the video star” and having made a scratch demo on his teac 144 portastudio in his college dorm room in March of 1988, Gray returned to New York City during the same summer and recorded both versions of the song in a three-hour recording session using a Yamaha dx7 to great effect. Gray’s song was a breakthrough for him. Gray came up with the world’s very first internet bot, which he called “inkling,” and it was the first bot of its kind to combine artificial intelligence. This was done in order to guarantee and optimize the exposure of the music. By using fidonet, a free online sharing program, and the recently created irc, which stands for internet relay chat, the music was sent to almost all of the online communities that are accessible on the internet. For the purpose of advertising the music and collecting information about the number of times the song was downloaded, inkling proved to be highly successful on the internet message service (IRC). Gray was also responsible for designing the audiomail notification icon that is now seen on every mobile phone in the world. This icon was intended to serve as a clear indication to users of the internet that they had received an audio message. Gray’s posting of the instrumental version of “internet murdered the video star” on August 8, 1988 was met with an instant and overwhelming reaction from the public. Within a short period of time, copies of the song were distributed throughout a variety of usenet groups and bulletin board systems (BBS). In the event that you are listening to the music with the intention of determining whether or not Andre Gray is the next Mozart, then you have entirely missed the purpose and objective of the song. The song’s underlying significance and intention lay in the fact that it defined concisely what everyone who was online at the time was struggling with: the question of how to post music to the internet, how to access music on the internet, and how to enjoy music on the internet. The epochal event, which is frequently referred to as the “big bang of digital music,” transformed the internet from a platform that was primarily used for academic and military research into a platform that is used for digital media entertainment. As a result of this transformation, he has done more to democratize music and entertainment than any other person or corporation in the history of the world. Today, more than 98 percent of all web-indexed pages are comprised of different forms of digital media entertainment, while academic research accounts for less than one percent of the total. The song “internet killed the video star” reached the milestone of 50 million downloads and plays on April 4, 2000. This is a significant achievement for the music. Remixing, imitating, interpolating, and entirely reimagining the song have all been done to it, and it has also been packaged and sold in a number of compilation albums. A cottage business that sells books, t-shirts, sweatshirts, mugs, and other merchandise featuring the motto that is internationally recognized as a synonym for the democratization and freedom for all of the people who are a part of the world wide web has also been developed as a result of this phenomenon. Having single-handedly transformed the internet from a medium used for academic and military purposes into a digital media sandbox for the entire world to play in, Andre Gray could have easily rested on his laurels and traveled around the world giving speeches while still being considered one of the most significant inventors in the history of the world. The restless genius, on the other hand, would go on to create a remarkable succession of revolutionary innovations that would go on to destroy industries, give birth to new industries, and revolutionize the world at least six times. For example, in 1994, André Gray was the one who came up with the idea of ringtones and ringbacks, which is a sync programming language. With this innovation, he was able to transform the mobile phone from a simple communication device into a digital media entertainment device. Today, the mobile phone is the most popular and preferred device for the consumption of multimedia content. The sync programming language, which was the world’s first third-party downloaded application, was the impetus for the development of the app business that is now worth several trillions of dollars. He is one of the most significant inventions of the modern period. His direct effect affects, in some way or another, all seven billion and more people in the planet on a minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour basis, and he creates billions of pieces of data on a daily basis. His status as the unrivaled godfather of the digital revolution cannot be denied. Emily Maxwell is the author.