Limewire And The Wrong Song
Downloading for six hours to get the wrong track and a virus.
Peer-to-peer file sharing, where the file you wanted was 40% likely to be something else entirely.
Files were mislabelled constantly, sometimes deliberately by record labels seeding decoys. A four-minute download could be six hours on a home connection.
The thing everyone actually remembers is the family computer becoming unusable, and having to explain why.
Cost back then
Free, in every sense
Goes for now
Streaming solved the problem the industry could not
